Cab Caraway

Feeling like I'd missed the boat on St. Patrick's day, when I saw a small corned beef at my supermarket, on sale no less, I grabbed it and brought it home to prepare. True to tradition, I boiled it for hours (perhaps even a little too long, as it fell apart in shreds rather than carved into nice slices) and served it alongside some steamed yellow fingerling spuds.

I pressed the potatoes with my thumb to half-crush them, a trick I learned from Jamie Oliver; it gives them a little more texture and visual interest than mashing. A little dab of butter, a sprinkling of chopped parsley and they were ready.

You gotta have cabbage with corned beef, right? It's tradition. It's proper. It can be ever so boring. So, I decided to re-think the cabbage part.

First, I had purple, not green, cabbage in the crisper and it needed eating. Second, I thought onions would improve it immensely. So, I hauled out my little pot of bacon fat, sautéed the onions first briefly in that, then added the shredded cabbage - but the stroke of genius came when I was remembering my soda bread from St. Paddy's day and wishing I had some to go along with this meal.

Caraway seeds!

I sprinkled about a tablespoon of those tasty little brown commas throughout the pan of cabbage, ladled just a tablespoon or so of the cooking water from the corned beef into the pan and steam-stirred it until the cabbage changed in color from dark orchid to true amethyst. It still had it's crunch but it was a quieter crunch than before. Man, that was good!

I must admit that the color combo on the plate was perhaps not the prettiest I've ever made but the flavors were happily complementary and that Cab Caraway was "the berries," as my dear Irish father would have said.

Beginnings And Endings

We've been eating out a lot lately - I guess everyone is in the same boat as the old year ends and the new one begins - so it felt really good to make a homey meal in our own kitchen for a change.

Dorothy Parker once defined eternity as "a ham and two people." She was profoundly wise. I love ham but even a small one is the Energizer Bunny of the meat world - it just never quits! So, I had purchased a couple of smoked pork chops as a way of having ham-like flavor that doesn't last forever. I planned a simple pan frying to prep them, as they are already fully cooked.

Rooting around in the vegetable bin for something to accompany them, I came up with a head of Savoy cabbage and remembered my California Aunt Sally (as distinct from my Connecticut Aunt Sally) who sautéed purple cabbage with bacon bits in bacon drippings as a side dish. I thought I could do a similar riff by using the pork chop drippings, the salty water from the package and a little green onion for color and extra flavor.

That's all I did. Once the chops were removed, I threw in the water from their package (just a tablespoon or so), thinly sliced cabbage and green onion and tossed it around in the fat left in the pan until it was just beginning to relax. One pan to wash, good flavors to savor. What could be easier?

At the end of the meal, I grabbed the bones and part of my unfinished chop, popped them into some water and made a little soup base from the leftovers. Now, I'm trying to decide what kind of soup would be great with those beginnings.

Early Irish

I'm half Irish, although I didn't learn that until I was well into my teens. Because our mother was descended from folks who arrived on the Juneflower (perhaps not quite as early as those on the Mayflower but soon after), growing up we always heard a lot about her family tree. When we'd ask Dad about his ancestors, he'd just grin and say, "After they hung all the horse thieves and murderers, we've been a very pure line since then."

It was only when my Dad's mother, a wonderful little lady who told me stories of riding a camel to the Pyramids and following her husband's fleet clear around the world, came to live with us that I learned that we were Irish.

I was a convert and converts are the fiercest believers. I went through a phase where most of my foods were prepared from Irish cookbooks and I was defiantly proud of the peasant half of my heritage. I've calmed down a bit since then but I still love watching movies about Ireland (or at least Hollywood's vision of Ireland) and I still enjoy the occasional dinner of corned beef, cabbage and potatoes.

Having tried several times to cook the cabbage in the corned beef water and ended up with a soggy mess, I have lately gone to lightly sauteeing the shredded cabbage in bacon fat, then laying it alongside my corned beef. The spuds were simply cut into spears and roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper until tender. It may not be an authentically Irish preparation but it satisfies both the finicky WASP and the earthy peasant in me.