A Family Tradition With a Spin

I spent St. Patrick's Day this year with my friend who just moved from Philly to Nashville, so I didn't do any of the cooking I normally do.

It's been years since I did the full-on corned beef and cabbage dish that my family does to celebrate our Irish-American heritage, but I do typically make Irish soda bread. A very dry peasant food, the bread consists of flour (no yeast, so very easy), buttermilk, baking powder, salt, caraway seeds and raisins. The caraway seeds, of course, give the bread a flavor reminiscent of seeded rye bread, but this bread is very dense and texturally worlds apart from rye.

In truth, this bread is best toasted with some butter or jam to help get it down. The raisins help in this department ever so slightly, moistening it a big. I admit these two flavors are a bit of an acquired taste together, so while this might not be everyone's favorite dish, I decided to add some caraway seeds and currants to some leftover cabbage to make a side dish with a lot of personality. What you'll need:

green cabbage
canola oil
butter
caraway seeds
currants
water

I put some oil and butter in the pan and let them heat to the point where when you put the cabbage in the pan, it sizzles. When I washed the cabbage, I dried it off with a paper towel so when I added the cabbage to the oil it wasn't too wet crisp up.

Then I let the cabbage cook until fairly soft. I added about a teaspoon of caraway seeds and about a tablespoon of currants. Caraway seeds are very potent, so be careful not to dump away when adding them.

Then I raised the heat and added some water to the pan to help along the cabbage's wilting process. It also helps reconstitute dry fruit, like currants. Like a lot of my cooking seems to go, I just happened to have currants and not raisins in my house, so that's what I used. Zante currants are just a variety of grape, anyhow. They're just usually used in Middle Eastern foods. My mother made Irish soda bread one year with dried cranberries, so you can experiment with that too, if they are your preferred dried fruit.

I let the water cook off and had my side dish.

It's always hard to eat someone else's family's food, and equally it's hard to express the comfort when you taste those flavors you've eaten your whole life. For me, this dish was like remembering a dream. You're familiar with it, but you know you've never really experienced it before. Think of what those tried and true flavors are for you, turn them on their head, and you might surprise yourself with what you come up with. 

Fruit For Dinner

As a final side to the portobello mushroom burgers I made, I thought a slaw would be a good addition. The kale chips were already serving the role of the chips you'd normally eat alongside a burger. So I figured I could make a healthier than cole slaw option that went well with the meal and was healthier.

To play off the blue cheese I put on the burgers, I thought I'd take some of the Fuji apples I had on hand and blend them with the cabbage I also happened to have. I swapped out the traditional slaw ingredient of mayo with a scoop of Greek yogurt to add a little extra healthiness to the dish. What you'll need to complete this dinner triumvirate of lip-smacking healthiness:

green cabbage, cut into slices
Fuji apple, diced
lemon juice
Greek yogurt
apple cider vinegar
blue cheese crumbles

First I diced up one apple and tossed it in a bowl. I added a splash of lemon juice to make sure the apple kept its color and didn't brown.

Then I chopped up some cabbage into slaw-style pieced. This is pretty easy. Just slice the cabbage very thinly, working from the top toward the end. I probably ended up adding about a cup of cabbage.

Then I took about a tablespoon of greek yogurt and mixed it in with the cabbage and apples. I splashed the apple cider vinegar on, probably a total of a tablespoon.

I mixed the whole thing up and then added some crumbles of blue cheeses — the same blue cheese I put on the burgers. This side is actually excellent for something like those spicy kale chips, since it's very cooling and refreshing in your mouth. And there is no better pairing in the world than Fuji apples and blue cheese.

I put some plastic wrap on the slaw and let it sit in my fridge for at least 30 minutes before dinner time so all the flavors had time to blend. All in all, I think portobello mushroom burgers with kale chips and this cabbage apple slaw was probably the healthiest dinner I've ever had in my life. It was also one of the most amazing. If this is where this blog is leading me, then I like my new spin on dinner.