[Sca-cooks] Spices and the Irish Common folk

[Judith L. Smith Adams]

"Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:     I remember once being asked, one slowish March 17th evening, in one 
of the French restaurants I worked in, to create a souffle special 
for the evening's dinner service. I braised about equal parts of kale 
and leek in cream sauce, then worked in potato puree and beaten egg 
white, et voila! Souffle aux pommes Colcannon...

The exec chef at the time never did figure out what it was supposed 
to be, but several people coming home from the Saint Patrick's Day 
Parade ordered it (probably in a state of drunken whimsy), and 
laughed hysterically when it arrived (they were beautiful, if I say 
so myself). A waiter returned to the kitchen with a ramekin that 
looked like it had been licked clean, and said, "The guy at table 20 
says Lughnasa's not for another five months, but it was good anyway."

Adamantius

  SNIP
  
Souffled Colcannon suggests a bit of whimsy on the part of the cook, too, I think, however it (the whimsy) was inspired!!  But what fun, and I'll bet they were both beautiful to look at and yummy to eat...  Was the exec chef the only one who missed the joke??  
   
  Wouldn't it be fun to recast a meal of dishes stereotyped, rightly or wrongly, as traditional Irish cooking... and maybe the French cooks favored by the Anglo-Irish lords did so...  
   
  Bake or braise the meat in red wine and spices, as Simon suggested, and serve it with either a white or brown onion sauce... Or top the almost-cooked meat with a mustard/crumb crust and brown nicely...  Or...  Your Souffle de Colcannon... or perhaps a delicate clear-broth shellfish soup with tiny potato dumplings flavored with fresh chives...  
   
  Appetizer timbales of pickled herring with a savory, herbed soda bread...  A palate-cleansing scoop of iced ale, a sort of beery granita with sage leaf garnish... the soup, or the souffle with the beef... dessert of sherried custard with sugared violet garnish...   I don't think the soup or the custard is particularly "Irish," I just got carried away...  
   
  While I've been looking the other way, has the world of fashionable food discovered the lowly cabbage?  I was trying to think of other dishes that, like colcannon, would lend themselves to the haut cuisine treatment if one just thought about it...  
   
  How about cabbage rolls with a filling of sauted shallot and onion, minced chicken (veal and chicken would be yum, and the veal would be closer to the usual hamburger, but for some of us, there's an ethical conflict), rice, egg, cream... with maybe nutmeg and white pepper... Steamed, maybe casseroled, dressed in a fairly light tomato/cream sauce...    
   
  Or a cabbage-roll sushi:  center strips of steamed carrot and cooked, spiced chicken/veal and a few plumped currants, surrounded with sushi rice, and all rolled up in steamed Savoy leaves:  Cut crosswise as for sushi, and serve cold with sweet-sour-hot tomato dipping sauce...  
   
  Terrine of layered potatoes, kale, corned beef in gelatine or cream sauce, cabbage... served hot or cold...  Would be wonderful for a picnic...
   
  Oh, my , that was fun...  Mundane life has been stressful lately, and it is good to laugh and play with my food, if only via keyboard :-)
   
  I am unfamiliar with Lughnasa - an Irish holiday, maybe??   
   
  Judith, still drooling for colcannon, soufleed or conventional 

			
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