What's for Dinner, Sun., Mar. 16

[NJCher]

What St. Paddy's Day goodies are you cooking up?

We will probably have a big parade today or tomorrow in my town. We have lots of Irish pubs, and they usually have buffets with corned beef and cabbage plus other Irish specialties.

Now as for me, I'm searching for an Irish cooking idea. Tired of stews and have to pass on corned beef due to the high salt content.


Cher

[pinto]

1. Basic corned beef and cabbage. And Sam Adams beer (they made the right call on So. Boston parade)

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Sorry, nothing particularly Irish for me.

On the schedule for tonight is stuffed peppers, and tomorrow is 'pizza' rolls. (Pizza dough rolled flat, coated with butter, garlic, and mushrooms, then rolled back up into multiple layers and baked as a sort of weird, multilayer calzone.) My housemate doesn't care for either corned beef, lamb, or cabbage.

If I had my druthers, I might do a shepherd's pie, but I just don't have the ingredients all in stock atm.

[fizzgig]

7. what's your recipe for the peppers?

i've never even had them, but decided i'm going to make some. i've poked around online, but have no baseline for them. they look simple enough, just wondering if you have a tried and true recipe.

[pinto]

9. I stuff them with cooked rice, diced Italian sausage, diced onion. Add some tomato sauce, spices.

Bake covered till heated through and the peppers are soft. Take the lid off, shred hard cheese over the top and run them under the broiler till bubbling and a bit browned on top.

[fizzgig]

11. do you top with the sauce or mix it in?

i've seen some recipes topped with ketchup, but i am not a fan of ketchup.

thanks

[pinto]

13. I mix all the stuffing and the sauce together before baking. Sauce is a little thick -w/tomato paste

A little bit of liquid in the baking pan to steam the peppers. Then uncovered, cheesed and broiled.

Ketchup? I agree with you, no way. At least not in this.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

10. Well, first we take ye olde generic bell

peppers in whatever colour you prefer, ones that look like they've got a lot of interior room. We've got one of the large oval crocks, so we can actually do up to six at a time, but generally end up doing four, so that we've only got one lunch's worth of leftovers. I slice the tops off horizontally near the top, and remove the stem, and slice just enough off the bottom to make them stand upright (If you get ones that are too 'pointy' at the bottom, you end up having a hole in the bottom when you do this leveling cut, which doesn't work so well, so you want the ones that are already pretty level across the bottom.)

I brown a pound of ground sirloin in a large pan, chop up a dozen or so slices of pepperoni into little squares and sprinkle them in,then turn that down to low and stir occasionally while I boil up some water and throw in maybe half to two thirds of a cup of orzo. Cook that til it's mostly ready (and you can be doing this at the same time you're browning the beef, or course.), possibly still a little al dente, drain off the water, mix the orzo in with the ground beef, then mix in 7-8 oz of shredded mozzarella and a cup or so of spaghetti sauce. As it melts, the mozzarella will leave all sorts of stringers all through the mix.

Take a large spoon and scoop the mix into the peppers, pop the tops back on and stand them up in the crockpot, then pour a half cup to a cup of water in the crockpot, put the lid on it and turn on low, and ignore for 3-4 hours.

The filling is already basically cooked, the crockpot is just steaming the peppers. I like to be able to simply cut them with my fork, but if you like them tougher, you can cut down on the steaming time.

If you don't have a crockpot, I suppose you could do something similar by simply roasting the peppers, then laying roasted pepper slices across servings of the filling.

[fizzgig]

12. forgot the mozz yesterday

i have plenty of cheddar, maybe i can to more of a bbq cheeseburger deal with them.

thanks!

[cbayer]

21. In NOLA, that's called a stromboli (maybe elsewhere as well)

I like to brush with pesto, then put pepperoni, mozzarella, peppers/onions and whatever else I might have.

Roll it up, bake and serve with tomato sauce.

Yum.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

23. Aha!

Thanks, I figured it had a name, I just didn't know what it was. We do it with a variety of ingredients, but I got a nice mix of shitake and other shrooms on the cheap the other day, so I thought I'd go minimalist with mine. Housemate is a cheese fanatic, hers are always stuffed with mozz as well as whatever else she's doing. I tried pesto exactly once, and got horribly sick. I assume it was 'off' somehow, and not really the pesto's fault, but I've still never used it ever again.

[Lucinda]

3. Not sure yet!

I could have spinach pizza or maybe leftover Chinese.
Bill has been making lots of chicken stir-fry lately!

[NJCher]

4. Hi, Lucinda

Sounds like you are feeling a lot better.

Hope it's OK I started the thread this a.m. I felt a strong need to plaster a big shamrock somewhere.


Cher

[MerryBlooms]

5. Irish soda bread #2 about to come out of the oven-

(one for us and one for my husband's pals at work tomorrow)

Simple grilled salmon and salad for tonight and then tomorrow traditional corned beef n cabbage.

[livetohike]

6. Leftover spaghetti, steamed broccoli and garlic bread

[fizzgig]

8. nothing st. paddy's related here

i want to get a loaf of bread going here shortly, i just have no idea what will go with it.

[greatauntoftriplets]

14. Pot roast.

I don't like corned beef.

[pinto]

15. LOL. It was usually a ham for us today, but corned beef was on sale...

So I thought I'd go traditional. A bit different, though. Baking instead of boiled dinner style. We'll see.

[greatauntoftriplets]

16. I used to get teased about not liking it.

My mother, who was not Irish, usually made pot roast though sometimes she did do corned beef because my father and sister like it. I hope the baked is good.

[cbayer]

22. I'll be interested in how this turns out.

I have never baked a corned beef before.

[pinto]

27. Me neither, but it worked. Tell the truth I knew I wasn't going to do a big boiled dinner thing.

This worked out fine.

[cbayer]

28. So it wasn't dry?

Edited because you answered my question in your post below.

[pinto]

25. It came out great. Baked @ 350, covered, w/the beef brine juice and ~ 1/2 inch of beer, 50 minutes.

Added sliced carrots, yellow onions and some yams I found in the fridge, recovered - 20 minutes. Added sliced potatoes and cabbage for another 20 minutes, covered. Uncovered for another 10 minutes. Really pretty simple.

Pulled the beef to a plate to set, all the veggies and juice to a bowl. Sliced the beef across the grain. Some hot mustard on the side. Scooped out the veggies, topped with some of the juice as a sauce.

2 and 1/4 pound brisket. Instructions were 50 minutes per pound, so this was close to the recommendation. I figured that 1/4 pound would take care of itself, sitting on the cutting board.

Now, it's leftover ideas. I see a breakfast, a sandwich, soup and a stir fry...

[cbayer]

29. Sandwiches and corned beef hash!

[pinto]

33. Yes and yes! Especially the hash.

[bif]

17. Spaghetti & meatballs

[dem in texas]

18. Cleaned out the fridge, but it ended up being a tasty lunch

I looked in my fridge and found 2 slices of pizza left from a few days back, some stale veggies: celery, carrots, cabbage, some cooked great northern beans, a little parmesan cheese and 4 old granny smith apples

I made minestrone soup using two cans crushed tomatoes, a quart pack of chicken stock, 3 cloves minced garlic, chopped onion, chopped celery, carrots and cabbage. Had a little bit of spaghetti, broke into short pieces and soaked in a bowl of hot water, added this near end of cooking. Adding a little water and last of all added the parmesan cheese. I seasoned with salt, pepper, pinch of basil, a little cayenne and shake of tabasco sauce. I like something green in the soup, so I added about 1/4 each of frozen green beans and English peas.

Made a little cobbler with the granny smith apples. Cut the pizza slices in bite size pieces and put in oven until they crisped up. Served soup with pizza bites with apple cobbler for dessert. The soup made about 4 quarts, we ate one quart, one is in the fridge and I froze two for later.

Cleaning out the fridge does not always give me such good results!

[cbayer]

20. Congratulations to you!

Don't you love it when you can use just about everything you have and it turns out great!

I love the pizza bites idea. Great thing to do with soup.

[cbayer]

19. A friend is bringing over some chicken and he is supposed to cook it…..

but I know how this generally goes.

I will probably make chicken with rice and a salad.

My cupboards are pretty bare. I did a major fridge clean out last night because the drains had gotten nasty and smelly. I think I got the smell out, but it might need another dose of clorox.

Would love to have a corned beef dinner, but I'm guessing that I'm not going to find that around here.

To the store tomorrow, I think.

[Aerows]

24. A feast

lush salad, thick toasted garlic bread, a chuck roast that is falling apart done in a garlic, onion and beef stock at 375 for a few hours, green beans (my favorite vegetable) and rice.

The best part is whatever doesn't get eaten tonight will be tossed into a pot to make beef stew.

[grasswire]

26. Reubens!

With a mango salad for contrast. Mangos, lime juice, diced red pepper, toasted coco nut flakes.

[spinbaby]

30. Spatchcocked a chicken

Then roasted it with a good sprinkle of kosher salt, a grinding of black pepper, and a sprinkle of fresh rosemary leaves. The leftovers are in the pot now making chicken soup for tomorrow.

[applegrove]

31. Sweet potatoe soup with sour cream and bacon.

[laundry_queen]

32. Yeah, nothing irish.

I don't even know what constitutes Irish cuisine.

We had lentil chili. My kids hate beans, but I won't make chili without them because I don't want to eat just plain meat. So....this time I put a ton of lentils in instead of beans and it was a total hit. Every single kid ate a lot of chili and told me they didn't even know the lentils were in there. That's what I was going for
We also put out a bunch of 'fixins' like nacho chips, fresh salsa, sour cream, guacamole, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese so we could make our own nacho chili dip. The kids loved it.