"boiling" news and stories

Yesterday I asked the question, "Corned Beef or Smoked Pork Shoulder for dinner?" and now I have an easy recipe for a St. Paddy's Day feast of a Boiled corned Beef and Vegetables dinner. Tomorrow I'll have the same for the Boiled Smoked Pork Shoulder dinner.

So get yourself out to the store and grab some meat and veggies, they should be on sale and if you hunt around you can put together a feast for your friends and family for relatively little money. I got enough to feed 10 people for around $25.

1-2 Corned Beef- get twice or even three times as much as you think you'll need so that you have tons of leftovers for sandwiches and hash.
1-2 lbs. of Potatoes- Small boilers or Yukon Golds, I like the small Peruvian Purples for their combination of floral and earthy taste that goes so well with this dish and the great color too.
3-6 Sweet Onions- like Vidalias or Peruvian Sweets
1 Small Cabbage
1 lb. of Carrots
Any other root vegetables that catch your fancy like turnips or rutabagas, parsnips, beets, etc.
Assorted spices- Pickling spice or make your own with black peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seed, coriander seed, allspice, clove, etc.
Six Pack Guinness Extra Stout

Click to continue with the recipe.

I got in a long phone conversation last night with a friend of mine, Chef Josh Gamage, about St. Patrick's Day. I asked about how it's celebrated here in Maine from a food and drink standpoint. Growing up in NY I am used to enormous partying, eating mediocre corned beef and cabbage, and drinking many pints of stout; while grooving to the madness of the Upper East Side and the Parade. No green beer for me, thanks. Then the next day I buy a half dozen corned beef when they go on sale and freeze them for later use.

Josh told me that here in Maine it isn't celebrated as much as I am used to, but at home there is usually a New England boiled dinner on March 17th. The question is, what meat is boiled for the dinner? It seems that according to Josh there is a 50/50 break on whether it will be boiled Corned Beef or boiled Smoked Pork Shoulder.

I immediately ran to my library and the internet to do some research. I found that boiled pork is much more likely to be an authentic Irish meal. Beef wasn't a traditional Irish food, but pork was and is. With bacon, basically any cut of pork or smoked pork the choice for St. Patrick's Day dinner. It seems that beef was exported to England but too expensive for the Irish, but pork was a plentiful food.

To repeat an often used phrase, soup is good food. Especially this time of year, when soup warms the body, soul, and can be good if you're watching what you eat too.

January is National Soup Month, so that's a good opportunity to link to some great soup recipes, like this one for Chicken Noodle Soup over at Yahoo (though I never put onion in mine!). Food & Wine has this recipe for Sausage and Mushroom Soup, and Alton Brown has this one for Garden Vegetable Soup. Of course, there are so many soup recipes that there are usually entire sections devoted to soup, including this one over at AllRecipes.

And yes, Hobo Soup is real.

I keep four delightful chickens in my backyard for their plentiful fresh eggs and overall charm as pets. Here in Portland, Oregon, backyard chickens are somewhat in vogue, and I subscribe to a lively Yahoo! group dedicated to all that is urban chicken farming. (No. We don't eat our chickens. Because I knew you would ask.)

Yesterday, one of its members, Lori, gathered some eggs from her Ameraucana, and boiled them up for breakfast. Imagine her surprise when she peeled one that had cracked in the pan -- the perfect image of the Virgin Mary!

Lori's trying to figure out if she can preserve the egg. In the meantime, let us know what you think: is God once again speaking to us from our food? And is he reminding us how we should all treat our chickens better? I think so.

[Larger version of photo after the jump.]

I had the opportunity to taste some very expensive and seriously delicious coffee yesterday. Peet's Coffee is bringing some of their blends to grocery stores in Philadelphia, and so they've come to town with their coffee educator Erica Hess to promote the availability of their products around the City of Brotherly Love.

My first exposure to Peet's coffee was Christmas when I was 14 years old. My cousins, knowing that I was getting an espresso maker from my parents, brought with them a pound of espresso roast from Peet's down from Berkeley as a gift. I remember it as excellent coffee and the fact that its availability was sort of limited in those days made it seem that much more special.