St. Patrick's Day
Stay in and cook up a storm today or prep a hangover brunch for your post-St. Patrick's Day binge. This menu I put together is all comfort to warm your heart and leave fat glistening on your lips. Pick and choose a few items to make for yourself or have a potluck and assign dishes to your friends.
I love me a dang rainbow cookie. But who says you have to use all of the colors? My favorite color happens to be a light, muted shade of green, so it was perfect that my friend Sam wanted to come over and bake! We used this Bon Appetit recipe for ombre rainbow cookies as a jump off point.
Firstly, Sam made the batter with almond paste. Then she divided into two. One bowl got more green food coloring than the other and then they were transfer to lined baking sheets.
Our cakes were baked and turned out onto a cutting board. Sam slathered the light green layer with apricot jam and then carefully placed the dark green layer on top. We let it cool before slicing up into small cubes.
Aren't they cute? Let them sit out at room temperature for a couple hours if you don't like them so cakey and more like a cookie. Fun fact: you can toast them until they are crunchy to make biscotti!
I'm terrible at baking! If you want to trade meats for baked good, I'm happy to shoot photos of your delicious treats in my kitchen.
My salad dressings aren’t very complicated. Half a lemon, a count of one-two pour of olive oil, a pinch of salt and maybe 5 turns of the pepper mill (course, of course). Hefty, handful of green, in this case, baby kale. I find delight in the added flourishes which yield variation in my salads: a nice cheese hidden at the bottom, candied nuts or a roasted vegetable. I bring you, the lomo chip!
Lomo embuchado is cured pork loin, sliced super thin. Akin to its cousin prosciutto in that is part of a pig and cured, but small circular discs. I took advantage of the low oven setting from the tomato confit I had going already and placed a single layer of lomo slices on a rack nested in a sheet pan. It doesn’t have much fat to drop off like bacon, but it lets the hot air circulate in the oven, crisping both sides. You’ll know they’re done when they are still a deep red and crunch like a chip with no gummy chew.
Beet relish was an unintended add-on to my St. Patrick's Day corned beef. When I had my DIY Cleanse and juiced, I made sure to use the discards from every fruit and vegetable.
In the case of beet remains, I added a boiling mix of cider vinegar, sugar, salt, dill,and horseradish in a clean swing-top jar. It sat in the fridge for about a week and what the heck, here we are. The interesting difference between this and other beet concoctions is that mine started raw. A bite was much more earthy and my insides were dyed a very striking pink hue (beware when you pee).
I readied heat-safe bowls with scoops of pillowy potato, shimmied a tablespoon in the middle to make a divot and lay a healthy pat of butter in there. They rested peacefully covered with foil at the back of my stovetop, where the oven sends its most precious residual heat. When it was time to eat, I plopped crunchy fronds of cabbage atop the bowls.
The very first cookbook anyone ever got me was Eric Ripert’s On the Line. I was still very new to seafood, so many of the recipes seemed out of my grasp. I flipped all the way through and at the end were the garnishes and pantry items.
Tomato confit was the first recipe I tried from a book. Most of the time it was Food Network or watching people cook out of the corner of my eye. When you hear the word confit, you mostly think of duck, but in this case, it refers to the slow process of baking for a long time. The original recipe calls for a 200-degree F oven and peeled tomatoes. Why do French people hate tomato skins? I don’t know.
I took plum tomatoes, cut off the stem cap and halved them. The oven was on at its lowest setting (240 degrees F). Since my oven can’t go any lower, it balances out the fact that I’m using thick tomato pieces. Lined up in a single layer the tomato babies received a shower of salt, fresh ground pepper and a touch of olive oil. I turned the pans every hour until the tops dried out and the fruit still firm enough to hold together. The ideal result is when you take a bite, you get this concentrated tomato flavor with a bit of sweetness. The water has evaporated but enough left for a squish to leave all the goodness for you to gobble.
Any thinner slices and longer time in the oven will give you sundried tomato junk. I may hate them but if you like that sort I nonsense, it does keep pretty well in the fridge.
The business of actually making these is very easy. 4 ingredients. But the morning I decided to try it had a lot more going on. Perhaps 45 minutes before my guests Mo and Ramsey were to arrive at my house, I decided to surprise them with shamrock shakes. It couldn’t be hard! I googled around and found that I had everything except ice cream. So, still in my pajamas, I threw on a coat and went down to the store. French Vanilla. The register.
I get back to the door and reach into my pocket for the keys. Hoo boy. No keys. It’s freezing and I’m holding a cold package of ice cream. I make futile attempts at buzzing my own apartment. Futile because my roommate Dylan is notoriously difficult to wake. Jeff was out of town. I buzz my neighbors and thankfully, they let me in. However, I still had to get into my own apartment. I survey my wallet for a card that I wouldn’t mind ruining (the insurance one) and Ocean 11’d my way back into the house. I did a little dance and rushed to get the shakes pre-made.
Do not, I repeat, do not put all 48 ounces of vanilla ice cream into the blender at once. I had put in a cup of milk and 6 drops of green food coloring. It exploded. All over the counter and floor. And it was GREEN. Don’t be like me. Overall, I used a cup and half of milk with half a teaspoon of mint extract.
My guests arrived right when I was washing the blender. Two hours into brunch, I asked, “Do we want another beer or do we want the surprise?” All smiles, I went to the freezer and revealed the pitcher of shamrock shake. There were jigs.
Confession: half the time I don’t know what I’m doing or I’ve never tried it before. I’m lucky to have so many successes from pure logic, observations and research.
My idea of corned beef came from a can with a key where you twisted a strip of metal off. It was more precarious than the Spam can. My mom and grandma would make corned beef hash for breakfast with a plain omelette and steamed rice. Neither is it the kind of hash where it’s more potato with beef pressed into a cake, nor discrete pieces of dry fried beef or potato; but softened, almost bolognese, beef with tender medium dice potatoes. Spoonable. I’ll have to make it to show you sometime.
My real encounter with legit corned beef didn’t occur until fairly recently at Katz’s deli. Oh, it’s a sliced, cured meat? And damn, it’s great. Two days before this St. Patrick’s day brunch, I looked up Alton Brown’s corned beef. I felt optimistic because I had all of the spices on hand, but to my dismay, the recipe calls for a 10 day cure. Ain’t nobody got for TIME for that. Could I pull off a shortcut corned beef in a day and a half? The short answer is resounding, "YES!".
Serve with a spatula because these babies are super soft.
