Green cuisine
Still serving corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day? Blimey! It's time to update our view of the Irish table.
By Janet K. Keeler
Published March 15, 2006
For too many years, we've had the wrong idea about Irish cuisine. In fact, our notion of a typical Emerald Isle meal is decades out of date.
On Friday, St. Patrick's Day, we will prove that by making the required corned beef and cabbage, a dish that's hardly ever served in Ireland for special occasions. It's too ordinary and doesn't reflect the panoply of fabulous regional ingredients available to many Irish cooks.
While we think boiled meat and potatoes, they can nibble on artisan cheeses and hearty breads slathered with rich creamery butter. Far beyond beef, there is wild salmon, prawns, oysters and duck. The famine is over. Way over.
Ireland's seas and streams have always jumped with fresh fish, and those hills and vales of green support many small farms and grazing dairy herds. Smart chefs are finding new uses for them, and diners new pleasure.
The biggest culinary changes even show up in some of the nation's beloved pubs, according to Margaret M. Johnson, writing in The Irish Pub Cookbook Chronicle Books, 2006, $24.95.
Johnson says that you'll still find traditional country-style cooking in Ireland's pubs, but also tasty changes - more cause for the high praise that a new generation of chefs is winning for Irish food.
"I started to notice these changes a few years ago, especially in pubs in Dublin and the real 'foodie' areas around Cork," Johnson told the Associated Press recently.
Johnson is also the author of The New Irish Table (Chronicle, 2003) and The Irish Heritage Cookbook (Chronicle, 1999), among other cookbooks.
Most of us won't give up on tradition completely, but how fun to serve something new and delicious with boiled, cured beef. Consider a salad of arugula, baked goat cheese and roasted beets, or a tarte tatin of green tomatoes, a signature dish at Glencairn Inn in County Waterford, both from Johnson's pub cookbook.
Before we get contemporary, let's back up and talk a bit about corned beef, chiefly what the heck it is. In the weeks leading to St. Patrick's Day, packages of red corned beef appear in piles at most grocery stores. By today, they are accompanied by mounds of green cabbage.
Corned beef is a brisket, a cut taken from the lower forequarter of the steer. The raw meat is brined in a solution of saltwater and spices such as peppercorns and bay leaf to season, preserve and begin tenderizing it. To make it truly tender, it must be cooked in wet heat for a long time, usually hours depending on the weight. The brine makes the meat red.
Cooking instructions are printed on the packaging. Normally, tossed into the pot are carrots, potatoes, onions and, of course, cabbage. The cooking liquid is most often water, but a bottle of Guinness adds robust flavor.
At my house, we like to use the slow cooker for this dish, especially when St. Patrick's Day falls on a weekday. You can feel smug - and Irish - all day at work, knowing dinner is bubbling away at home. Without the Crock-Pot, dinner would be late and the diners would be predictably cranky, unless they'd gone through the rest of the Guinness.
Johnson's Arugula, Roasted Beets and Goat Cheese Salad With Whole-Grain Mustard Vinaigrette celebrates Irish cheesemakers. But since we're in Tampa Bay, not Ireland, we need to play the substitution game. Our usual cheese suppliers don't carry St. Tola, Corleggy or Corbetstown goat cheese, so we used a French variety easily found at the grocery store.
We made another concession, too. The recipe calls for rounds of goat cheese to be dusted with homemade bread crumbs and then baked. We used Japanese panko instead. Now that these big-flake bread crumbs are widely available, we like them for almost everything that needs breading. The result is a lighter, more crunchy crust.
The peppery arugula, sometimes called rocket, is mellowed with baby greens, and roasted beets add earthiness and gorgeous crimson. Tangy mustard vinaigrette is sweetened with a bit of honey. Unlike corned beef, this is a dish that demands an appearance more than once a year.
(Prepared honey-mustard dressing would work if you don't want to make a dressing from scratch, and we also liked the salad with a simpler dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.)
Fried isn't the only way to cook green tomatoes, and they are, indeed, served outside the Whistle Stop Cafe and the kitchens of Southern grandmas. Green Tomato Tarte Tatin is rooted in French cooking, but its old-fashioned charm has found a place on an Irish inn menu. The cuisine of Ireland, like that of many Western countries, including the United States, has borrowed and blended other cuisines into its own.
If Johnson's New Irish menu sounds a might fancy and a wee bit French, the best tastes of Ireland are simple and ancient, yet available today. A plate of salmon, soda bread and good cheese - the Irish make grand Cheddar, blues and buttery near-brie from cow's milk, not just goats' - would be at home in a spa or a jolly pub.
We would serve a generous wedge of the green tomato tart alongside a few thin slices of corned beef, sans the carrots, cabbage and potatoes. The tart can rest on a bed of mixed greens if you like. Don't forget the soda bread, which is available from grocery store bakeries this time of year. Remember the cabbage for another day; it's nutritious and comes in many forms, to be cooked brief and crisp or melded into soul-warming soups.
They say that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. We say vary the menu a bit, and you can actually eat like the Irish, too.
Information from the Associated Press was included in this report. Janet K. Keeler can be reached at (727) 893-8586 or krieta@sptimes.com Her blog, Stir Crazy, is at www.sptimes.com/blogs/food.
Arugula, Roasted Beets and Goat Cheese Salad with Whole-Grain Mustard Vinaigrette
Vinaigrette:
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Salad:
2 pounds small beets, washed
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 11-ounce log of goat cheese, preferably Irish, cut into 8 rounds
1 cup walnuts, ground in a food processor
1 cup white bread crumbs
2 large egg yolks, mixed with 2 tablespoons water
Canola oil for frying
1 large bunch arugula
2 ounces mixed salad greens
2/3 cup walnuts, toasted (see note)
To make vinaigrette: In a small bowl, whisk together all the ingredients until well blended. Set aside.
To start the salad: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place beets in a baking dish, drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Cover with foil and roast for 60 to 70 minutes, or until the beets are tender when pierced with a skewer. Remove from the oven, uncover and let cool. When cool enough to handle, rub off the skins and trim the roots. Cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices and cut the slices in half. Transfer the beets to a large bowl and toss with 2 to 3 tablespoons of the vinaigrette to coat. (Beets can be roasted in advance, refrigerated and then brought to room temperature for salad.)
Shape each round of cheese so it is ½-inch thick. In a medium bowl, combine the ground nuts and bread crumbs. Put the egg wash in a small bowl. Dip each cheese round into the egg wash, then dredge in the bread-crumb mixture, gently pressing on the crumbs and nuts to coat thoroughly. Place the rounds on a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Heat 2 inches of the oil in a large skillet until very hot. Working in batches, cook the cheese for about 1 minute on each side, or until crisp and golden. With a slotted spoon, transfer the cheese to paper towels to drain.
To compose the salads: Divide the mixed greens among 4 salad plates. Arrange the beets over the greens and top each serving with 2 rounds of cheese. Drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette and sprinkle with the walnuts.
Note: To toast the walnuts, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the walnuts out on a baking sheet and toast for 10 to 15 minutes, or until browned.
Source: "The Irish Pub Cookbook" by Margaret M. Johnson (Chronicle Books, 2006)
Green Tomato Tarte Tatin
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
6 medium green tomatoes, cut in half
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, left at room temperature for 30 minutes
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water
2 to 3 tablespoons minced fresh basil, plus whole basil leaves for garnish
Grated Parmesan for sprinkling on tart
Mixed green salad for serving (optional)
In a 10-inch-round ovenproof skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Stir in the brown sugar. Season the tomatoes with salt and pepper and place them, cut side down, in the skillet. Fry, without turning, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until caramelized. To stop the cooking process, remove the skillet from the heat and place in a large pan filled with enough ice water to come halfway up the skies of the skillet.
Unfold the pastry on a lightly floured surface. Roll into a circle 12 inches in diameter. Place the pastry over the tomatoes, tucking it around the edge of the pan. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Brush the pastry with the egg mixture and bake the tart for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden. Place a rimmed serving plate over the pan. With pot holders to protect your hands, invert the tart onto the plate and remove the skillet. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the minced basil and cheese. Let the tart rest for 5 minutes.
To serve, cut the tart into slices and garnish with the basil leaves. Serve warm or cold with a mixed green salad, if desired.
Source: "The Irish Pub Cookbook'' by Margaret M. Johnson (Chronicle Books, 2006)