Tuesday, March 18, 2014

ST. PADDY'S DAY IS IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

Well St. Paddy's Day 2014 is in the can.  Now for a little truth in advertising.  I was attempting to make it a more healthy dinner by making sure that the corned beef was trimmed of all fat before serving, making a lower calorie and lower fat dessert and using a Dr. Oz recipe for the leek soup.  It was a wonderful dinner with one glaring exception - my Grandma always told me if I could not say something nice to not say anything at all.....therefore just let me say that next St. Paddy's Day I will go back to my old leek soup recipe and say for one day of the year I will not worry about healthy.
 I think I mentioned before that Sally Lunn bread is a sure thing in the bread department and the easiest yeast bread to make as you do not have to knead this bread.  It turned out perfect and filled the kitchen with that wonderful homemade bread smell.  The other bread that I make that is super easy is Armenian Peda bread and as soon as the barbeque gets fired up again we will make Peda burgers and I will post the recipe of this easy and oh-so-good bread.
 Homemade horseradish sauce with corned beef is really the icing on the cake and this is such good sauce.  I guess I should mention something about my cooking.  When I bake I am diligent about accurate measuring but if it is not baking for me all bets are off and any recipe I consider a "suggestion" and I tend to add this and that and make changes as I please.  I tried that with the Dr. Oz soup and no amount of kitchen magic could salvage the soup, not even my secret ingredient, which is Green Tabasco sauce, not the red (I use it too but not in this way) but the mild green sauce can give a flat sauce, soup or stew just the little richness that is needed, not too much just a little, if you did not know it was added you would not know it was there.  This horsey sauce calls for Dijon but if you look closely at the photo above you can see the grains - I only use Edmond Fallot Dijon or his grainy mustard and I substituted the grainy in this recipe, just like it better.

New England boiled dinner, so good for St. Paddy's Day. While on a recent vacation Trader Joe's opened their first store in Idaho (woohoo) and so I moseyed in for a few things including my corned beef.  This was the first time I had ever cooked corned beef that was not cured - this was fresh.  Well, I have to say the best corned beef we have ever had, hands down.  It was so tender and the flavor was wonderful, just enough seasoning and was not salty at all, just right.  Thank you Trader Joe's!

The best part, dessert.  The little individual raspberry trifles turned out perfect and the recipe makes either (2) big ones (we shared one and put the other in the freezer for another time) or (4) small ones.  Great  recipe.

All the recipes are on a previous post.

Thank you for stopping by.


4 comments:

  1. I'll take seconds

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  2. Your Sally Lunn seems to be more cake like than bread like. Wondering what the source may be for your recipe?

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  3. Sally Lunn bread is an old English recipe and sometimes made into loafs and buns and typically was served for breakfast. It is a rough textured bread that is so simple to make as it is not kneaded but left to rise in a bowl once, then punched down and put into the container you wish to bake it in and then let to rise once again before baking. It looks cake-like I think because of the container it was baked inside. I have been making this bread since my grown children were quite small. It is a perfect accompaniment to soups and stews and I prefer it to Irish soda bread to serve with corned beef. Hope this answered your question and the recipe for the bread is on the post entitled St. Patrick's Day Menu. p.s. Makes good toast the next day too! :)

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