St. Patrick's Day Menu

I love having dinner guests. I love cooking for other people. I might go a little crazy sometimes; my first Thanksgiving had a giant turkey and probably 6 or 7 sides, plus 2 desserts. When we knew we were having dinner guests, I decided to try some of the recipes from my to-try binder. I just realized it would make the perfect St. Patrick's Day menu.

The stew recipe I used can be found on Irish American Mom, an Irish woman living in Kentucky, who shares Irish recipes using American ingredients. I had a little bit of trouble with some of the ingredients: frozen pearl onions and bittersweet chocolate chips aren't easy to find here (the clerk tried to tell me semi-sweet was the same thing.) But eventually, I found all the ingredients. I won't go through the whole recipe here since she has a really thorough tutorial with photos. I'll just tell you some of the differences:

• I took the instruction to julienne the parsnips to heart, so mine ended up as shoestrings. Still good though
• I would cut the potatoes smaller to ensure that they soften enough
• Instead of using a bowl/plate to dredge the beef, I put the flour, salt and pepper into a gallon size ziploc bag, added the beef and shook to coat it
• Between no prep the night before, dropping G off daycare and an emergency run to buy a larger crock pot, I had barely 6 hours to cook the stew instead of twelve. It was on high for 3 hours, then low for 2, then high again for the rest of the time
• I had a slight panic attack because the stew tasted off when I tried it after combining all the ingredients. I was sure I had doomed our guests to an inedible meal and emergency delivery pizza. Luckily, by the time it had cooked, the flavours were rich and perfect. 
• I don't like the taste of Guinness, but it was great in the stew. I used the extra stout bottle. Don't bother measuring out 1.25 C, just dump in the bottle; the head makes it impossible to measure.

I would highly recommend this recipe and will definitely make it again. The beef was fork tender, the veggies were soft and it was nice and filling. The leftovers are freezable and even the weather cooperated: nothing like a rainy night for warm stew.

As some of you know, I'm horrible at making sides, but what goes better with stew than bread? Since returning to the States, I've missed Irish bread so much, and this seemed a good opportunity to finally get over my hesitation and bake my first loaf of bread! Irish American Mom has a recipe for brown bread, but I didn't want to have to buy whole wheat flour, pastry flour, wheat germ, etc, so I searched for a soda bread recipe and found one from a Southern food website, of all places. But it used all purpose flour, and I had everything but the buttermilk and cream of tartar. You guys, this was SO easy! Why have I never made bread before?? It took half an hour to prep, less than an hour to cook and made the house smell delicious, as well as tasting delicious. The recipe is pretty self explanatory. The only thing I'd recommend is after melting the butter, stick it in the fridge, mix in the buttermilk first, then mix in the butter, otherwise you'll end up with little clumps of flour that don't incorporate. This happened to the first batch of dough I made and it was horrible, but the second batch was perfect. It was soft on the inside, crusty on the outside, warm and tasty. It also had the added benefit of making the house smell great. It's not sandwich bread, but it is delicious and the perfect accompaniment to the stew.

Again, if you make any of these, let me know how it goes and if you enjoyed it! Happy cooking!

Lentil Soup

Is there anything as amazingly comforting as soup? The correct answer is NO.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm a soup freak! It can be 90 degrees outside and I'll be curled up in a blanket with soup. Ramen is one of my favourites, but I have a pretty wide repertoire for soup. Greek avgolemano, shrimp bisque, shrimp and corn chowder, egg drop, I love them all! I bought some lentils to try to make my own lentil soup, and the weather has been cooperating by being chilly. James was going out of town for the weekend, and  figured it was the perfect time to try the recipe that was full of some of his not-so-favourite foods. My mom sent me the recipe below, with some of the modifications she had made to it. I made some further modifications and ended up with a soup that G ate two bowls of!

Instead of the porcini and portobello mushroom, I just chopped up 8 oz of regular white button mushrooms and added them in step two. The microwave thing was weird to me but it worked really well. I left my carrots pretty chunky since I just cut up baby carrots. G liked that, but I think I'd have preferred them more minced. Instead of fishing out the bacon after cooking, I crumbled  up the 4 slices of bacon and left them in. I also don't like Swiss chard, so I substituted frozen, chopped spinach instead, and I think it turned out great. I didn't add any salt or pepper, and didn't serve it with oil, but I did top it with parmesan.

One thing I did notice was that with all the stuff in the crockpot, it was almost overflowing, and since I was cooking it on high, it spilled a little and ended up hissing a bit. The dogs thought some creature had gotten into the house and I was wondering if there was a squirrel in the stove vent somehow (you never know here!) Eve after the lentils had absorbed a lot of the liquid, there was still a full crockpot left. We'll have delicious leftovers for a while, and I'm planning on freezing some of it for another week.


If you try it, let me know how it goes! So here's the original, from Slow Cooker Revolution:

Locro de Papas

A few years ago, one of my dad's coworkers went to Ecuador and came back raving about a soup called Locro de Papas, for which she shared this recipe from Laylita. Dad passed this recipe on to his little soup fiend and I've had it sitting in my pantry for years now. A month or so ago, I decided to try it. We could NOT find achiote powder, which is also called annatto powder, or could be made from annatto seeds and I used too few potatoes, so, keeping that in mind, I attempted it again Sunday night. It was a perfect soup night--a storm had moved in and the plastic roof over part of the house magnified the sound of the rain until it was all we could hear. With blankets on the couch and Harry Potter movies being drowned out by the rain, James ventured over the bridge to a Whole Foods to buy a tiny little packet of annatto powder. Upon his return we started peeling and cubing potatoes, dicing onions, mincing garlic and cilantro and using the KitchenAid grater/slicer attachment to grate an entire block of Monterey Jack cheese.

Onions, garlic, cumin and achiote

The coated potatoes

 As soon as we add the achiote to the onions, garlic and cumin, everything turned bright red-orange and it soon smelled like Middle Eastern food. After adding a bit more oil to keep the onions from burning, they had softened up and we added the potato cubes and made sure they were coated with the refrito or base.

After mashing

We added the SEVEN CUPS of water (make sure you have a big pot!!!) and after the potatoes softened, we used out coated potato masher to mash up the potatoes. When mom and dad made this soup, they used an immersion blender to make the soup smoother, so it all depends on what you're looking for. Ours ended up chunky, and almost like a stew once it was served. We then added the cilantro and the cheese. The recipe only calls for 1 cup, but I used the entire block (it was a small block, but still more than a cup).


When the cheese had completely melted, we served it up. I added diced avocado, hot sauce and feta cheese on top. This isn't the most flavourful soup, so salt and pepper will need to be added, but I wouldn't bother adding it until you've served it--the potatoes seem to soak it up when it's still cooking. The hot sauce adds a nice kick and the feta adds to the creaminess. The avocado is fantastic in the soup, and even if you're not the biggest fan of avocados, I'd recommend trying them with the soup. It was a fantastic, filling meal that left us plenty of leftovers that heat up beautifully. Definitely a soup we will make again and again on cold days.

The final product