St. Patrick's Day 2013

Irish Blessings and Prayers

Every March 17th, the green begins.

There are parades, shillelaghs and emerald-clad leprechauns with pots of gold.

Green beer and shamrocks and cookies and cakes frosted green.

It's fun of course, but judging from a few articles

in the Irish Times  newspaper, 

hardly an accurate representation of Irish culture.

Even so, it is said that on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish.

One of the things I've always liked about St. Patrick's Day

are the greeting cards with the Irish blessings printed on them.

I don't know if they are really Irish blessings, 

but I find them pleasing regardless.

Here are a couple of my favorites

from "Irish Blessings, Toasts and Prayers"

by Scott Kessman for Yahoo.com:

May love and laughter light your days

and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,

wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world

with joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons

bring the best to you and yours!

And this one, which has been a favorite of mine

from the first time I read it on a ceramic plaque in my grandmother's house:

May the road rise to  meet you

May the wind always be at your back

May the sun shine warm on your face

And rains fall soft upon your fields

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

And Kessman also mentioned an old Gaelic blessing

that was traditionally hung over a home's entry: cead mile falte,

which means 100,000 blessings.

And that's what I wish for everyone this St. Patrick's Day!

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Egg Recipes

Alsatian Eggs
What happens when a beginner tries an exotic egg dish she saw on a cooking show?

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

All the women in my family-- 

my mother, my grandmothers, sisters, aunts and cousins--

all can make claim to being good cooks.

It's just part of our nature I guess.

I learned a lot about cooking by watching my mother and grandmothers,

but after I was first married, 

I also learned a lot by watching cooking shows on PBS.

The French Chef Julia Child, The Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr,

and the Southern cook Nathalie DuPree were all favorites of mine.


My idol, Julia Child 
Photo from Samuels Public Library 
http://samuels-reads.blogspot.com/2012/08/reading-lists-julia-child.html

But they weren't the only ones I watched.

In the early 1980s, I started watching a PBS show 

broadcast from a community college somewhere in Florida.

I can't recall the name of the show, nor the name of the chef,

but several things about it are indelibly seared into my memory.

The chef was a late-middle aged, rather ample gentleman

who easily got out of breath as he moved around the kitchen set.

Occasionally he had to remove his black-framed glasses and mop his brow,

and he wheezed a lot.

He kept a large white flour-sack dish cloth handy 

and used it to wipe off his cutting board.
He punctuated every step with the adjective "lovely,"

and no dish was complete until he blessed it with a sprinkling of salt and "peppa."

One weekend, this chef prepared a dish that I thought would be good.

Why I thought that it would be good is a mystery to this day, 

considering that the recipe called for sauerkraut, cheese, and eggs.
But my husband likes sauerkraut,
and my dislike for it had not yet been firmly established.
I think this dish is the one that solidified my aversion to sauerkraut.


photo courtesy of morguefile.com

The dish was called Alsatian Eggs, 

and I spent a lot of time preparing it: 

heating the sauerkraut and caraway seeds,

poaching the eggs, nesting them in the sauerkraut,

then covering all with Swiss cheese and baking it in the oven.

If I recall, there was beer in the recipe too.

I brought it out of the oven, and it was paler than pale.
And it was the singularly most unappealing dish I have ever eaten.

To this day, "Alsatian Eggs" is the code word around our house for inedible food.

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com
I don't know what the black thing is in the sauerkraut photo,
but it symbolizes the unappealing mass that came out of my oven 
the time I made Alsatian Eggs, Florida style.

I Googled Alsatian Eggs this week to see if I could find the recipe.
And I did find this recipe for an Alsatian Eggs Appetizer
on the web site called Bucharest-guide.
There was no mention of sauerkraut in that recipe and the eggs were hard boiled.
And there was this recipe for Eggs Alsatian Style
in which the eggs were scrambled with a beer-cheese sauce
and served on toast.

Neither of those mention sauerkraut, although The A-Z of Alsatian Gastronomy
says that Alsatian cuisine is esteemed for its innovative
use of eggs, cheese, and cabbage.
But  Oeufs A L'Alsace wasn't mentioned in the list.
Even so, I'm wondering if we were too hasty in dismissing
this egg dish from our inventory of dishes.
No. On second thought,
sometimes it's better to let sleeping Alsatian eggs lie.
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Kitchen Adventures

                

Kitchen Adventures:

           Tripping through Eating Well magazine's Vegetarian Recipes

For me, cooking is a good way to get up and get moving.

It gets me away from long hours at my desk.

And there's nothing more pleasant on a cold, nearly Spring day

than a warm kitchen in which food is being prepared.

Recently, in order to take my mind off of the cold and gray weather--

which makes me want to curl up into a ball under a blanket 

and eat chocolate Girl Scout cookies--

I committed myself to preparing a new vegetarian recipe every evening.

Most of them came from Eating Well magazine online 

and its "Healthy Vegetarian Recipes and Menus" page.

The first dish was unusual in that it paired savoy cabbage with wheat pasta.

 It was called Alpine Mushroom Pasta, and it wasn't bad

although cabbage and pasta aren't very complementary in my book.

photo from eatingwell.com

The next night, Basque Vegetable Rice, a spicy rice dish similar to Spanish rice.

I had mushrooms left over, so I added them. 

It was good, but a little too spicy.

And the third night, Catalan Sauteed Polenta with Butter Beans,

which was by far my favorite, mixing sauteed polenta, spinach, 

and great northern beans that I soaked and cooked myself.

photo from eatingwell.com

The fourth dish was Asian Tofu Salad, to which I added seaweed salad.

It would have made a better side dish 

because frankly that was a lot of seaweed,

and I definitely have to be in the mood for that tangle of green.

After my semi-successful foray into unusual recipes,

I was inspired to go through a vegetarian cookbook my sister had sent me

several years ago. I love Indian food, so when I saw a recipe for

Parsnip and Aubergine Biryani, I was in.

Little did I know what a commitment of time I was making.

I chopped.

I sauteed.

I blended.

I chopped some more.

Sauteed some more.

Blended some more.

And then simmered the whole of the ingredients for 40 minutes.

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

And then, two hours in, I still wasn't finished.

It was at this point my husband kindly offered to pick up Chinese food.

I was getting tired, but it was too late to turn back.

And I still had to cook the rice which had been soaking.

And then, after draining the cooked rice, 

the recipe said I had to pile it on top of the vegetable mixture

but then fashion it in the shape of a volcano, complete with an opening.

I learned it's very hard to make rice do anything it doesn't want to.

Finally, I decorated the rice with cooked onions, cashews, and currants

and popped the whole concoction into the oven for another 40 minutes.

At 8:00 p.m., nearly 4 hours after I had begun, the biryani emerged from the oven.

The rice volcano had fallen into the sea off vegetables during baking,

but I was encouraged to see that the gray sauce didn't look quite as gray.

The whole dish was edible, but not really to our taste.

And there was a lot left over.

So now, I have a decision to make;

do I go through the motions of freezing it, 

knowing it will get pushed to the back of the freezer

until I one day notice a brick of rice and waxy cashews 

covered in ice crystals and ask myself what it is.

Or do I just put it down the garbage disposal now.

Hours to cook it followed by months of its languishing in the freezer 

versus

30 seconds in the garbage disposal.

I'm thinking.