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| In Which We Discuss Holiday Dining |
If you live in Boston and/or you have Celtic heritage, you know it's almost St Patrick's Day. The actual holiday is the 17th, but my family tends to celebrate on Sundays because that's when everyone's around. Today's menu is:
- pot roast
- potatoes, turnip, etc (root veggies)
- biscuits served made and with Kerrygold butter
- a delicious lemon cake with lemon curd between the layers and frosted with cream cheese frosting
But what if you have a bit of Irish in you, but you're not exactly rolling in the green? How do you celebrate St Paddy's when you can't afford fancy foods? What is a boiled dinner? What if you're like me and you don't like the whole "whiskey and Guinness" thing that this holiday seems to inevitably devolve into?
The thing is, even if you're not Irish, this holiday has come to consume your culture group, too, I'll bet, with much drinking and carousal. Which is odd, considering that it's a religious holiday for the Catholic Church, commemorating the death of the eponymous Saint Patrick, who supposedly drove the snakes from Ireland - a country with no fossil record of serpents. That's a heck of a deep clean, Pat.
St Paddy's has become a holiday to celebrate Irish heritage, hence the tidal wave of green and gold and beer and whiskey that we've all come to expect. Most people don't observe the Saint Day so much as the celebration for celebration's sake, so we'll progress from that standpoint.
So if you're on a tight budget, or if you can't get out much due to health issues or the current coronavirus concerns, then here are some ideas for you!
1. St Paddy's for Breakfast
If you're on a budget, on a timer, and/or you just aren't one for big heavy meals late in the day, then this is a good option for you. Instead of going out and spending over $20 on a corned beef roast or $50 on a brisket or something mad like that, spend under $4 for a can of corned beef hash! You take that, dump it in a nonstick skillet and fry it up until browned and/or crispy in places, serve it with eggs, hash browns, and toast with some coffee (maybe make it Irish with some Bailey's if you booze and the Bailey's flavored creamer if you don't, or skip it altogether if that sounds bleh). If you're a tea person, Irish Breakfast tea isn't too expensive, thankfully.
Bonus points if you use rye, Irish soda bread, or potato bread for your toast, and if you've got the money to splurge, then spring for some Kerrygold butter - it's worth the premium.
2. St. Paddy's for Lunch
Well, if you didn't have your beef and taters for breakfast, there's always a corned beef sandwich on some potato bread with some sliced Kerrygold cheese. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Also yes.
If you don't have access to the good cheese, or if you're lacking corned beef, don't fret. You can just have a beef and cheddar melt of some kind and call it close enough. If you're extra creative, you can cut the sandwich to look like a shamrock or something.
3. St. Paddy's Snax
Ah lovely snacks! What do you guys think are acceptable snacks for an Irish holiday?
Cheese.
Potatoes.
Pub Snacks.
My personal suggestions? Grab some Kerrygold Dubliner cheese, some potato stix, and a tube of Utz Pub Mix and go to town while guzzling coffee or tea.
4. The Dinner
Here's where people get hung up. Everyone's all obsessed with the idea of the perfect boiled dinner, and frankly, it's not always worth it.
There are three parts to a "traditional" boiled dinner, if my mother's offerings over the last 30 years are any indication. Meat, Potato, Veggies, Bread.
Traditionally, the meat is a Corned Beef roast, which you can either roast or boil with the potato and or veg. My mother has switched to brisket in recent years, but since that was $50 minimum and enough to feed an army this year, she decided to use a more sensible pot roast. These are easy to find cooking recipes for, and if you want to go full Irish with a pot roast, then you'll want some whiskey or something. For me, I prefer things a little simpler and don't like to add alcohol to most dishes. Sorry.
As for the corned beef, if you do plan on getting one, look for a "gray cured" one, since that red color on most corned beef roasts is naught but dye and weirdness, and it's not all that good for you. My family avoids most red foods, to be honest, because they seem to cause gastric distress (ie heartburn and gas).
For your potatoes, it's up to you how you eat them. You can boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew... or you can chop them into chunks and roast or boil them with the rest of the veggies.
The rest of the veggies usually include cabbage (get a fan going), onion, carrot, turnip, etc. This being a March holiday, most of what people would have had available would have been root veggies. If you want to bring in the beets, then do it! If you want radish, go for it! Whatever you think would taste good with your beef, chuck it in the pot or pan and cook away.
Bread can be complicated if you let it be. If you want to go for a full-on Irish experience, then a soda bread can't be beat. If you want to make a joke, it's potato bread for you. If you're just into bread and don't particularly mind how you get it, then go for white or rye bread! But if you have a crowd and you don't want to be using a knife at the table to get the bread apart, then I suggest making your own biscuits. Rolled biscuits are easier to pull apart and butter, whereas drop biscuits are faster to make and heartier. You can serve them with butter, and if you want to make them into desert, you can add berries with whipped cream, or you can just do what my mother does and load them with butter and molasses.
If you're looking for some other desserts, then you can really go HAM here. Whatever your greedy guts desire, you can make. So long as you have the ingredients, utensils, and the time. My mom, as I've mentioned, made a lemon cake with homemade lemon curd and cream cheese frosting. It's incredible. She's also made pudding in the past, as well as custard, cookies, and a bunch of other amazing things. You really can't go wrong with dessert for St Paddy's, and that's the joy of the holiday.
It's pretty versitile.
Much like the Irish.
Anywho, that'll do it for me today!
FC
