"Get That Inta Ya!" (As They Say in Ireland)

Okay, by popular request, a food blog for this week. It sounds like we have quite a few cooks in our class, so this should be good. Some of you were asking about Irish food the other day. Ireland isn't exactly known for its cuisine, unlike some of your countries. Meals there tend to be pretty straight-forward "meat-potato-veg" affairs. In fact, a friend of mine who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Dublin told me once that he had never had a dinner that didn't include potatos until he tried spaghetti at age twenty-one.

I worked in supported-living housing for homeless men for a few years when I was over there. Most of the men I worked with were in their 50s and 60s and had come from very traditional, farming-type backgrounds. Part of my job was cooking dinner for them. They were naturally suspicious of any experimentation. "You're learning the fine art of Irish boiling" my friend said. Any spice more exotic than salt or pepper was suspect. The same with any vegetable aside from carrots, cabbage, parsnips, peas, beans, or turnips--in other words, any vegetable that didn't traditionally grow in Ireland. Once I tried to serve broccoli for a change and one of the men said, "I'm not eating those wee little trees!"

So anyway, the Irish recipe I'm going to share with you is typically simple and potato-based, but actually very delicious. It's one thing I picked up over there that I still cook all time, and it always makes me feel a bit homesick for Ireland. Lochlan likes it too. It's very good, filling comfort food for winter days like these. I learned to make it as "boxty," but I've also heard it called "colcannon."

Irish Boxty

Ingredients
Potatos (about 2 for each person you are feeding)
Cabbage, chopped (preferably savoy cabbage, a dark-green, leafy variety)
Milk
Butter
One small onion, finely chopped
Salt and Pepper

Clean the potatos and cut in half or thirds. Put them in a large pot and just cover them with water. Bring the water to a boil and cook for 5 min. Then put the chopped cabbage in the pot on top of the potatos, cover with the lid, and cook for another 15 minutes or so. (You can use as much cabbage as you like; I think about 1/3 of the volume of potatos works well). Remove the pot from the heat. The cabbage and potatos should be tender. Scoop the cabbage out and set it aside. Drain the potatos and mash them, adding milk and butter to taste as you go. They should end up smooth and creamy and rich. Then drain the cabbage, squeezing it to remove extra water, and mix it into the mashed potatos. Next add the chopped onions. Again, you decide how much you want depending on the volume of boxty. Then add salt and pepper to taste, and you are ready to eat!

2/12/08 Blog Topic for P1 Reading and Writing
(Notice I'm giving you until Tuesday. I thought it was only fair because I was so late getting this up!)
Share a favorite recipe with the rest of us. Tell us where you learned it and how you feel about it. If you are one of our chefs, then do your stuff. If not, just tell us something simple like how to make a sandwich you like. Or just write about food in general: what you like, what you hate, what you eat at home, what you eat here, etc.