Food, good food

I completely forgot to post about our amazing St. Patrick's Day dinner that Hannah made for us.  She planned a three course meal and prepared everything to perfection!

If you've been reading my blog, you already know about Hannah's passion for Ireland. 

 

The landscape is beguiling

 

 

the music is enchanting,

 

 

 

the accent is intriguing,

the food .....

 



Wanting to keep this Authentic St. Patrick's Day Dinner tradition fresh each year, Hannah chose a different menu from last year's.  

Cabbage soup with Irish bread

Bangers and Mash

Brownies with mint chocolate chip ice cream { Ok, so this isn't Irish, but it was festive with the green ice cream.}

Cabbage soup is a great staple food.  It's healthy and cheap! The recipe she used is here.
Hannah used it as a guide.  She used the entire cabbage and then used enough homemade chicken stock to adjust for that.  She also just used head cabbage instead of the savoy that the recipe called for since the savoy was 5 times as expensive. I'm sure foodies would argue that the nuance from Savoy cabbage would enhance the flavor, but our budget much preferred the other.

Last year Hannah made Irish soda bread.  It was a sweet bread with raisins.  This year she made one without raisins.  It was much more like Artisan brown bread...very authentic, very European.  The bread recipe is here

 

Trader Joe's sells actual "Irish Bangers" - which are large sausages
 made with pork, water, and breadcrumbs, as well as some spices. {They used to sell them year round, but now they only sell them in the month of March.}

 

Did you know that "bangers" was applied to sausages during World War II when food in Britain was being rationed. Strict rationing lead sausages often being filled with water to bulk them out. The high water content resulted in the sausages exploding easily when fried, and they were therefore nicknamed "bangers." The word "mash", as you can guess, is simply an abbreviation for mashed potatoes.

 

Hannah served this dish as part of our supper, but it is also traditionally served as a breakfast with tea.

 

You really should try it -even if you just use regular mild sausages {Iserno's makes a great nitrite free sausage.} It's simple, delicious, filling, and comforting.

She got the recipe here 

The only tweaks she did were tripling the recipe for our large family +1 guest, and

she omitted the beef gravy ingredient altogether. 

 

This meal left us very full and looking forward to next year's menu with anticipation!