Luck o' the Irish

Not to leave my daughter’s Irish heritage out of the mix (approximately 3/16, as estimated from my husband’s limited knowledge of his own ancestry), I recently made a “traditional” Irish meal for St. Patrick’s Day.  “Traditional” is in quotations because I basically took the Internet and the Joy of Cooking’s word for it.  On the menu: “Beef” and Guinness Stew, colcannon, Irish soda bread, and apple barley pudding.

Here’s the link to the stew recipe. 

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/soupssalads/r/GuinnessStew.htm

A few notes.  You’ll see from comments on the website that there is some controversy over whether Guinness is actually vegetarian.  I guess there’s fish intestine that is somehow used in the finishing process—only in some breweries but not others.  Well, this was news to me and, as a stout lover, this dubious information might not necessarily stop me from imbibing in the future.  In any case, I did use Murphy’s Irish Stout instead because it happened to be $.50 cheaper than Guinness at the store.  The recipe comments also note that the overall taste of the stew turns out quite bitter.  Even though I followed suggestions to reduce the stout and increase the vegetable stock to try to reduce the bitterness, I still found it rather bitter and wasn’t sure my three-year old (or invited guests) would like it.  I doctored it up by adding touches of brown sugar, honey, and even a trickle of molasses and I thought the overall product was quite yummy.  Perhaps not surprisingly, my husband, who had a stout to drink with his meal, didn’t think it tasted bitter at all.

The colcannon was delightful—drawn from the Joy of Cooking. 

The Joy of Cooking also supplied the recipe for Irish soda bread.  I had made Irish soda bread before using other recipes and it never has really wow-ed me.  There never seemed to be much flavor.  This time, however, I used the “tea bread” version in the cookbook, which basically adds a touch more sugar, buttermilk, and calls for it to be baked in a loaf pan rather than in the round.  I also added raisins and caraway seeds and, wow, was this tasty. 

The dessert, apple barley pudding, was borrowed from the Internet.  Reading the history of how a dessert like this came about was really interesting, and something that was fun to talk about during dinner. 

http://www.europeancuisines.com/Ireland-Desserts-Irish-Apple-Barley-Pudding

As my daughter gets older, I hope she’ll be proud and knowledgeable about both her Chinese side as well as her “butt” side (as she very jokingly called it after earlier hearing her father referring to himself and his heritage as a “mutt”).