Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Colcannon and Turnips and Halloween


A belated All Hallows Eve post.
Turnips were the original jack o lanterns, here's a link to how to carve them:
TURNIP JACK O LANTERNS

(image swiped from that article)

Colcannon is a traditional dish served at Halloween. Here is my version.
Colcannon ala Otters

Potatoes - 2-3 lbs
Kale 2-6 stalks
OR
Cabbage -1/4 to 1/2 medium head
OR
a little bit of both
onion - 2-3 small to medium
bacon - 6 slices
Milk or milk substitute, optional
Mace, optional

Cook kale and cabbage in lightly salted water until tender but not quite done. Drain well. You can reserve the cooking water and use it for boiling the potatoes, increasing the vitaminability of this dish.
Cut the bacon into a fine dice ( I find this much easier to do when the bacon is half frozen).
Fry bacon until crisp in a large iron skillet or fry pan, drain off the oil.
Dice the onion and cook with bacon on low until caramelized
Squeeze out the remaining water, and add the kale and cabbage to the onion/bacon mixture.
Cook on medium high until cabbage gets a bit browny on the edges, adding butter or oil if need be.

In the meantime, be boiling your potatoes.
When they are good and tender, drain, then mash the potatoes roughly, and mix in the bacon/kale/onion/cabbage mixture.
If the potatoes are too stiff, add water or your choice of milk.
You may also add a tiny pinch of ground mace at this time.
(What, you thought the Mace was to mash the potatoes?)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the mustache on that one!

Anonymous said...

I do remember reading to my students about the turnips, but I had forgotten. Thanks for the reminder.