Ahira's Hangar

Tonight's dinner, in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

3 lb uncooked corned beef brisket (in pouch with pickling juice is okay)
2 carrots, chopped into 2" pieces
5 small red potatoes, halved
1 onion, quartered
1 small turnip, chopped into 2" pieces
3/4 cup malt vinegar
1/2 bottle (6 oz) Irish stout (I like using an oatmeal stout)
1 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp black peppercorns (whole)
1 tsp dill seed
1 tsp allspice (whole)
1 bay leaf
1 small (2 Lb) head cabbage, cut into wedges

In a LARGE (6.5 qt) Crock-Pot, place the carrots, spuds, onion and turnip in bottom. Add the liquids. Spice rub the brisket. Place on top. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours. Add cabbage wedges. Cook an additional 3 hours on LOW. Serve with Coarse Grain Mustard and Horseradish Sauce.

Menolly's notes:
We’re not fans of boiled potatoes, so I substitute 5 additional chopped turnips for the red potatoes. Although I am thinking of subbing fingerlings to try one day…

We like our cabbage really soft, so I put it in at the same time as everything else.

The newer crockpots cook much hotter than the older ones that this recipe was written for. Check for doneness after eight hours, although it can cook for twelve hours with no problem.

Some online friends who have tried this recipe find the stout and malt vinegar to be a bit bitter. I have suggested they substitute a lager and apple cider vinegar. This seems to work well for those who try it.

We're making stir fry tonight.

A bottle of Sze Chuan hot and spicy stir fry/marinade sauce (not in the mood to make a hot sauce!)
frozen vegetarian egg rolls (I love home made egg rolls, but they are time consuming...) as appetizer

things to fry up in my trusty wok (soaked in the hot sauce, of course):
lamb (lamb stew meat was about a third the price of beef and chicken when I went to the store today)
water chestnuts (canned)
bamboo shoots (canned)
bean sprouts (fresh)
brocolli (fresh)'
carrots (fresh)
green onions (fresh)
snow peas (fresh - one of my greatest weaknesses)

It will be especially heavy on the snow peas!

The spice and fiber will probably make me sick, but at this point I am beyond caring.

I come from Liverpool in the UK and we eat, and talk, Scouse. We're called Scousers because we have a very specific accent (UK is a small place but has an awful lot of different accents), and because we eat a dish called Scouse. It is actually a variant on Lobskaus, a Norwegian dish, obviously brought over in the great days of Liverpool as a port.


ILb of neck end of lamb (or the cheapest cuts of meat you can find)
2 Onions
3 good sized carrots
half a bag of spuds (probably 2-3ILB altogether)
turnip/swede whatever cheap root veg available

Get your biggest pan, start browning your cut up meat, then dice all your veg and add to the pot.
Cover with stock, cook long and low.
When I say long and low, I know people who reheat this dish up over a period of four or five days, and swear that the last bowlful is the only one worth having. It ends up looking like lumpy wallpaper paste, but tastes beautiful, and is cheap, cheap, cheap!

Welcome to The Cantina, Brasidas.
What an awesome first post!
(at least, I think it's your first post here in The Cantina)
That stew sounds heavenly, just my kind of cooking for a cold winter's day.

You know, I'll bet there's a version of a cheap, filling stew in just about every style of cooking there can be. The cheaper the better, the further it goes the better, but still has to be tasty. That's real[i]cooking![/i]

Stupid italics won't work

Baked potato with either tuna or beans (can't decide which), maybe a ton or two of parmesan to help the flavour along.

Last night I made a huge pot of bolognese, but I'm not in the mood for pasta two nights in a row. I have all the ingredients for sweet and sour cabbage soup. I think that will be dinner tonight.

Having an early supper - a Chicken Tetrazzini meal that I grabbed from the hot foods deli on my way home from work. It's pretty good.

Roast pork, roast potatoes, mushy peas, carrots. More tomato ketchup than you thought feasible, feet up in front of the box.

Baked potato, broad beans, and sirloin steak. Although I now live in Oz, I haven't yet succumbed to the bizarre notion of using a barbecue (everyone has a perfectly good kitchen over here, so why do they insist on cooking in the open air?) as, and this is a secret that aussies really don't like to talk about, barbecues don't work. There, I've said it. You either get meat black as night on one side and raw on the other, or completely encased in charcoal whilst still being bloody on the inside. Your typical aussie (male especially) simply can't cook, but as there is alcohol involved in 'throwing a barbie', everyone's standards are sufficiently blurred not to notice. Until the next day's horrendous digestive problems.
For any aussies out there who would actually like to see how good meat can actually taste, here's a simple steak dish:
Get a frying pan on the go, with a little olive oil until it's almost smoking. The frying pan will be on the oven, not in the yard.
Season your steak with a little salt and pepper. I love sirloin steak, but any decent cut will do.
Into the frying pan and leave it alone! Don't keep picking it up and turning it over and using your stupid bbq tongs just so you can. Give it 4-5 mins and then turn over and leave it alone!
Another 4-5 mins and remove the well-done meat to a warm plate. Yes, shoot me, I said well-done.
Throw about 100 ml of red wine into the still hot pan and start skwooshing around with a wooden spoon, getting all the gorgeous bits and bobs off the botom of the pan. When it's reduced a little bit, it's your sauce. Or your 'jus' as these poncy restaurants will have us believe. Onto the steak, bit of parmesan on the baked potato (you won't die if some parmesan finds its way onto the steak either), bit of butter on the beans, heaven on a plate.

My hub does great barbecue, but since he never drinks alcohol while cooking, that might be one of the keys.

*nodding*

Too true.
I'm the grillmeister here, and I don't drink alcohol while grilling either...