Éist

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXAtVLuw1E&hl=en]

Do listen to the music linked above, it is a hauntingly beautiful piece of music. Here it is played by The Corrs but the actual music is a traditional Irish piece titled Lough Erin Shore.  

By now I bet you’re wondering what on Earth this has to do with food, well it’s simple, last night we had our belated Saint Patrick’s Day meal and that piece of music reminds me of Ireland and that’s as good a reason as any to link it to our meal, isn’t it?

As per my usual annual routine (one year I will be spontaneous and do something different) I made a beef & Guinness stew with colcannon, white soda bread and brown bread.  

Colcannon is most commonly associated with Halloween but the green connection makes me want it around this time of year and anyways it tastes so good it would be dreadful to leave it out.

Colcannon is such a simple dish to make, simply mashed potatoes with some sauteed scallions and savoy cabbage (or kale more traditionally) mixed through.  There are however, a few rules to follow to get good results – cook the potatoes in their skins in just enough water to half cover them so they almost steam, peel them and return to the pot to ‘dry’ before mashing them, always add hot milk to prevent lumps.

The bread recipes are traditional ones from my family and as such I wouldn’t feel right typing them out here, some things just aren’t meant to be shared.   

The recipe for the stew came from Clodagh McKenna’s The Irish Farmers’ Market Cookbook, to be exact it was her Cork Beef Stew.  The meat (I used shin beef) was perfectly tender and melt in the mouth, although I did leave it in the slow oven for nearly six hours, instead of the recommended time.  The beef is stewed gently in a pint of stout, I used Guinness and enjoyed a glass of the Black Stuff too

Guinness, Ireland’s famous black stout, has been brewed in Dublin since 1759. It has a very special place in Irish life. In Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History, publican John O’Dwyer recalls the importance of stout in the lives of the poorest tenement dwellers in Dublin: They had nothing. They lived for pints. Drink was the main diet. It was food… they used to call the pint the ‘liquid food’.

Nowadays the ‘liquid food’ is used increasingly in cooking. It is a tasty addition to stews and casseroles, helping to tenderize the meat and imparting its distinctive malty flavor to any dish.

These wonderful gusty stews do taste even better a day or two after it is made, if you can resist that long. 

Dinner was absolutely stunning, the perfect comfort food and so reminiscent of previous visits to The Emerald Isle.  One day I will relocate there, of that I’m sure.

Share this: