Corned Beef & Cabbage and Colcannon

OK, so it's a cold rainy St. Patrick's Day. What could be more appropriate to have for dinner (even in the middle of Lent...) than these hearty iconic Irish plate fillers. Look for Bangers and Mash another day. Left over corned beef is great for home-made reubens. That's right!

Here is our little 3 lb corned beef covered in a brown sugar, apricot jam and grainy mustard glaze surrounded by cabbage wedges and carrots, with a bottle of Harp poured in for good measure.

 

And right along side, colcannon - mashed red potatoes with braised kale rounded out the meal. Read more for the instructions.

We started with a typical corned beef (well kind of typical, with that odd knob of meat sticking up through the fat cap...) that you can find at any grocery store. Roasted it in a covered roasting pan for 4 hours at 300 degrees (rule of thumb - cook approx.1 hr per pound, but we let this go longer). To give it a little pop, we made a glaze of brown sugar, apricot preserves and grainy mustard, about a tablespoon of each stirred together and spread over the roast 2 hours in. Also added a bottle of Irish beer - Harp in this case for flavor and to keep the roast moist.

An hour before end of cooking time add a cabbage cut into wedges and a couple carrots cut into pieces on the bias. Put the lid back on.

    Done

  

For the colcannon -

Kale and red potatoes (and a Harp because... why not?)

Sautee 4 big handfuls of kale with 3 minced cloves of garlic and half a medium onion chopped.

Boil and mash 6 - 7 medium red potatoes (leave the skin on), add milk, butter, salt and pepper. Then stir in the kale.

 On the cutting board

On the plate