The Secret Ingredients to a Purposeful Life

Sunday, March 18, 2012

What we had for St. Patty's Day

Happy Green Day, St. Patrick's Day comes just once a year, so why not make it a fun holiday? ;-) In case your kids want to know, here's a link describing what it's all about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Day

 Around here, we like the breaks of fun holidays throughout the year and won't miss an opportunity to celebrate. A few friends wanted to know how I cooked our corned beef this year, so here goes...
This is the finished cut up corned beef.
The first step that I took was to desalt the corned beef. I put the beef into a large pot of water with three cut up potatoes and brought it to a boil. Then I strained the meat and potatoes from the water in a colander, tossing the salt filled potatoes and started the same process again. I did this three times. Then, I let the meat soak in a mixture of water and one can of 7 Up.
Ingredients:
3 lbs of corned beef (found in a package)
17 whole cloves
2/4 Cup hot sweet honey mustard or sweet honey mustard w hot sauce or cayenne pepper. (Divide mustard into two 1/4 cup portions).
2 heaping Tbsp's of brown sugar

Brown Soda Bread is what I serve with this meal. You can make it homemade (ask me for the recipe if you want it) or ask for it at your bakery section. ;-)

Cabbage, onions, garlic (optional), potatoes, carrots and etc. ;-)
Instructions for cabbage:
To make your boiled cabbage, just simply cut up your veggies and add enough chicken broth to cover them, bring to a boil and simmer them until tender. During cooking, add garlic (optional), salt and pepper to taste.
*Note: do this when the meat has only 30 min's left to cook. ;-)
This year I took pictures of a new method of sauteing them and I did not like it nearly as well as this much easier way. It was many more steps and just not as good. If anyone wants that recipe just ask because I did snap a few images of the process. ;-)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Take the corned beef from pkg and discard the liquid it came in. (Save the spice packet for another meal, bc you will not need it for this recipe).
Lay corned beef, fat side up, on a folded heavy duty aluminum foil piece. Poke your whole cloves into the meat covering it evenly spaced.

3.Mix together your honey mustard and hot sauce if you did not purchase the hot honey mustard:


4. Spread the top of meat with the honey mustard mixture. (Remember you are only using half of your mustard for this first coat).

5. Add the brown sugar on top of the mustard.


6. Make a type of basket with the bottom foil:
The ends of the foil are simply folded toward the middle on each end.

Then just fold that piece down to seal the top side, making a rectangular bowl for the juice to rest in.

7.Take a second piece of foil and make a top lid to your foil bowl (no need to fold it in half making a double layer like the bottom one).
View of side of your rectangular foil bowl with lid:

8. Make sure you have a puff, you don't want the foil touching the top of your meat, or you will loose it's very yummy topping.

9. Now place this foil package into a shallow roasting pan, without a lid and bake for 2 hours.

10. Your timer rings, take out meat and separate your top from your bottom by preying up on one end. Be careful of the burning steam!
11. Spread your reserved honey on top of beef and broil it for 3 minutes. Do not leave, watch it carefully, because it could burn fast. You want a golden browned look.
Browned.


12. Meat before cut after tearing off foil.Let it rest 5-10 minutes. Then cut across the grain of the meat into 1/2 thick slices, cutting diagonal would have been preferred (Patrick cut it "acrossed" before I noticed; he did, however cut across the grain the meat).

13. Let your guests or family know to not eat the cloves; they can remove them prior to taking a bite. I like to leave them in because they decorate the meat nicely. ;-)
    Enjoy! ;-)     Not sure why                                                   these above photos look so bad (kinda green, or something). I just clicked in a hurry, as we were about to eat. ;0)


Beer:
Of course we had to put green food coloring into our beer. ;-D
Dessert:
To finish off the green theme, make yummy green velvet Woopie Pies! Just Red Velvet cake mix with green food paste added and icing in between (you can also use ice cream, or white custard; you can make the stuffing green as well).

Make green cake pops, Cake balls, or you can name them cakesicles! Starbucks has recently made these little tasty fellas the current rave. The thing is, they are so easy to make! Simply take a cake (out of a box mix, or your favorite recipe) tear it into small bits, add some icing and make little balls that fit into the palm of your hand. Poke sticks into them (I like the rounded ones. One long one can be cut into two. Or have them look like little truffles (like in picture below). Then dip them into icing! You can also sprinkle them with whatever you like: colored sugars, sprinkles, coconut, nuts, etc. Place on wax paper. They only look like they are hard to make!

Here are some great ideas of desserts using green tea. I will be looking into making some of these ideas myself:
http://cookingwithjapanesegreentea.blogspot.com/2011/03/matcha-tea-mousse-pies-and-japan-in-our.html

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