Braised Irish Lamb Stew

Today we all are a ‘wee bit’ Irish, so drink a glass of Irish Whiskey to all of those who have gone before and celebrate their glorious memories!

Whiskey, invented in Ireland, is derived from the Gaelic words “Uisce Beatha” – and means Water of Life. Whiskey has been enjoyed in Ireland for over 800 years and in many other civilized countries for over 500. Irish Whiskey is made from cereals grown in Ireland, mostly barley, malted and un-malted. Irish Whiskey is triple distilled and matured for seven years or more.

Irish Old-Fashioned
To a lump of sugar, crushed with a dash of Angostura Bitters, add ice cubes, a shot of Irish Whiskey, a twist of lemon peel, one slice of orange and a cherry. Stir and serve in a wide glass.

Irish Coffee
Heat a stemmed whiskey goblet; pour in one jigger of Irish Whiskey, 3 cubes of sugar, fill goblet to within 1 inch of brim with a rich brewed coffee. Stir to dissolve sugar, top with slightly aerated whipped cream, so that the cream floats on top.

Irish Handshake
Add together 2 parts Irish whiskey, 1 part Green Curacao and 1 part fresh cream. Using a cocktail shaker, shake well with chipped ice and serve as a cocktail.

Irish Cream Coffee
10 oz. rich brewed coffee
1½ jigger Bailey's Original Irish Cream
¼ cup heavy cream, whipped until stiff peaks form ground cinnamon (optional)
Pour hot coffee into the heated glass. Add the Bailey's and stir well to blend. Top with a mound of whipped cream. Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired.
Yield: 1 serving

The luck of the Irish is legendary, so if you want a great Irish meal here is one that will definitely have you dancing the Irish gig for sure!



Braised Irish Lamb Stew

Ingredients
For the lamb:
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon ground cumin
⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2½ pounds boneless lamb shoulder or boneless leg of lamb, 1½ -inch cubes
For the stew:
1 onion, cut into 1-inch cubes
3 carrots, roughly diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 lemon, zested
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup dried apricots
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons freshly chopped mint leaves

In a mixing bowl add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, cardamom and salt. Mix well until the mixture has turned into a paste, if the paste is too thick add a little more olive oil. Add the cubed lamb to the bowl and toss around to coat well. Cover and set aside.
Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add ⅓ of the lamb, and brown well. Remove to a plate, and repeat with remaining lamb.

Add onions and carrots to the pot and sweat for 5 minutes. Stir in the fresh garlic and ginger; continue cooking for an additional 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, then return the lamb to the pot and stir in the lemon zest, chicken stock, apricots, and honey.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1½ to 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until the lamb is tender. Sprinkle the stew with chopped fresh mint and serve right out of the pot.

Serves 6
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George's notes:

• Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Be it Ireland, America, Australia or Peru, the 'wearin' o' the green' is now a world-wide event embraced by dozens of nationalities. The spirit of St. Paddy's Day is such an infectious one, it cuts across all religions, nationalities and other man made barriers. So get decked in green, put a shamrock on your lapel and cry out "Top o' the morning to ye" to every one you meet!

I drink to your health when I'm with you,

I drink to your health when I'm alone,

I drink to your health so often,

I'm starting to worry about my own.

Happy Saint Paddy’s Day!

Roasted Vegetable...

When I was growing up, the usual dinner was meat, potatoes and a vegetable; usually peas or carrots. By dietary standards it was nutritious, but not too exciting. Well, forget about just meat and potatoes for a minute. A delicious side dishes; whether a vegetable, a bread, rice or other grain can make a meal memorable.

It doesn't even take much imagination to add a bit of Parmesan cheese, garlic or some herbs to help a vegetable go from everyday to great. Here is one of my favorite side dish that is really a simple recipe and a great way of making any dinner a special occasion.

This colorful dish has the perfect blend of sweet and savory. It is simple to prepare and can be served as a side dish, salad, or light meal.



Roasted Vegetable Medley

Ingredients:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided
8 new potatoes cut into 1 inch pieces
2 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 zucchini, cut into 1 inch slices
1 yellow squash, cut into 1 inch slices
1 bunch fresh asparagus, trimmed
½ cup roasted red peppers, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Grease 2 baking sheets with 1 tablespoon olive oil.

Place the various vegetables onto the baking sheets. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, then add the zucchini and asparagus, and drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Continue baking until all of the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes more. Once tender, remove from the oven, and allow to cool for 30 minutes on the baking sheet.

Toss the roasted peppers together with the garlic, basil, salt, and pepper in a large bowl until combined. Add the roasted vegetables, and toss to mix. Serve at room temperature or cold.

Serves 6


George’s notes:

• The Healthy Eating Pyramid doesn’t worry about specific servings or grams of food, so neither should you. It’s a simple, general guide to how you should eat when you eat.
• A healthy diet is built on a base of regular exercise, which keeps calories in balance and weight in check. Read five quick tips for staying active and getting to your healthy weight, and a dozen ideas for fitting exercise into your life.
• As grilling vegetables is to summer, so roasting vegetables is to fall and winter. Not only does the cooler weather make it a wonderful time to turn on the oven for an hour, but the veggies available in fall are practically designed to be roasted. Many roasted vegetable recipes call for favorite fall vegetables like carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, turnips, winter squash, eggplant, and more.

Kailua Pork....

While here in Florida, I am making nightly dinners usually with a meat and two sides. Using the local supermarket, Publix, for last night’s dinner I had an old family favorite - we call Kailua Pork. This terrific recipe came out of the wonderful cookbook ~ Tea Time at The Masters® ~ and is so easy to prepare. For the sides I sautéed some fresh spinach and roasted a few fingerling potatoes.

I wanted to utilize some dill I had in mom’s fridge and saw a recipe in the community paper with dill, buttermilk with the roasted potatoes. So, I picked up some fingerling potatoes at Publix and gave it a try. If you haven’t tried fingerling potatoes yet, you really need to ~ they have a wonderful creamy and nutty flavor. Let me tell you, this recipe was delicious. I am thinking of using the dill sauce for other dishes as well. The sauce was creamy but light, earthy yet extremely flavorful.

Sautéed spinach is my favorite side dishe and I knew that my parents love spinach in any form. While sautéing the spinach, I put a touch of lemon zest knowing that the flavors go really well together.

Definitely give these recipes a try ~ they may become your family's favorite, too!



George's Kailua Pork

Ingredients:
5 pound center-cut pork loin roast
¼ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons cooking sherry
1 large clove garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon thyme
¾ cup peach preserves
¼ cup chili sauce
1 cup water
1 8-ounce can water chestnuts, drained

Marinate roast in sauce made from soy sauce, sherry, garlic, cinnamon and thyme for 2-3 hours, turning often. Place on rack in shallow pan and roast at 325 degree F for 30 to 35 minutes per pound. In a saucepan, combine reserved marinade, peaches, chili sauce and ½ cup water. Bring to boil, stirring constantly. Baste pork and cook 10 additional minutes. Add remaining water and scrape up brown bits. Add pan juices and water chestnuts to sauce and heat through.

Let pork rest for 10 minutes before slicing, ladle sauce over slices.

Serves 6




Fingerling Potatoes with Sour Cream Herb Sauce
Recipe from Venice Herald-Tribune

Ingredients:
1 pound fingerling potatoes cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons minced garlic

Preheat oven at 350 degree F
Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and place the potatoes. Add the olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper; mix well. Cover the potatoes with another sheet of aluminum foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Take the cover off and bake for another 15 minutes. Take out and mix the minced garlic. Cook for another 6-7 minutes, making sure the garlic doesn’t burn.

Sour Cream and Herb Sauce
Ingredients:
½ cup low fat sour cream
¼ cup milk
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh chives, chopped
Zest of one lemon
Juice of half a lemon
2 teaspoons salt
Pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients in a medium bowl and keep aside. Right before serving, mix the potatoes with the sauce.

Serves 6

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George's notes:

• Fingerling potatoes are a family of heritage potatoes which naturally grow much smaller than conventional potatoes. They also tend to be elongated and slightly knobby, making them very finger-like in shape. The unusual looking, flavorful potatoes can be used just like regular potatoes in an assortment of roasted, broiled, baked, grilled, or boiled dishes. Many grocers stock fingerling potatoes in season, and they can also be grown at home, in temperate climates.
• The Kailua in the name of this recipe is in "name only" ~ there is no Kahlua in this recipe, nor is there any Hawaiian affiliation. Maybe long ago, the sweet southern lady who developed this recipe thought water chestnuts were Hawaiian.
• The Masters® Golf tournament is played annually at the Augusta National Golf Club, in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia. This year it will be held April 8 thou 11, 2010.
• Roasting a boneless pork loin roast slowly will guarantee moist, tender meat. Loin refers to the type of cut.

Clip art of pork cuts from Ask The Meatman™

Chocolate Chess Pie...

There are many pies that I would call my favorite; nevertheless, there is just not enough space in the bloggersphere to give my complete list here. But one pie that has gone the way of the old Southern culture, like RC Cola and a moon pie, is the Chess Pie. A particularly sugary pie characteristic of a filling composed of eggs, butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla. Somehow the chess pie has not really become a darling of our new nouveau foodies and made trendy.

That's all for the best, really. Chess pie isn't supposed to be trendy. It's supposed to remind us of grandmother's house, taking us back to a simpler world with a simple dessert. I know that every time I have a slice, a pure satisfaction comes over me as I slowly eat my way through the buttery custard and crust,while remembering wonderful childhood memories.

But we all know those times have changed. And even our palettes have changed. So, below I offer a makeover of this southern classic. This recipe has long been a family favorite. And with its rich, gooey filling, this pie is a choco-holic's dream!



Chocolate Chess Pie

Ingredients:
Butter Pie Crust (see below)
~ Or pastry for a single-crust pie
2 cups sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon cornmeal
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup milk
½ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare Butter Pie Crust; set aside.

For filling, in a large bowl, combine sugar, cocoa powder, cornmeal, flour, and salt. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, butter, and vanilla. Stir egg mixture into sugar mixture until smooth. Stir in pecans.

Pour filling into pastry-lined pie plate. Bake about 1 hour or until filling is set and crust is golden. If crust begins to brown too fast, reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees F and cover edge of crust with foil. Cool pie on a wire rack. (Filling will fall slightly during cooling.) Chill within 2 hours. If desired, serve with whipped cream.

Serves 8 to 10
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Butter Pie Crust

Ingredients:
½ cup salted butter
1 heaping tablespoon sugar
1 cup flour (unsifted)

Mix the butter and sugar together in a bowl with a spoon. Do not cream! Place the butter and sugar combination on a flat surface and add half a cup of the flour and lightly mix to combine the ingredients. Add the other half of the flour and knead just until a dough begins to form. Do not roll out the dough.

Press the dough into a glass pie dish (you can use metal, but glass performs so much better and cooks more evenly) using your knuckles, so the dough doesn't stick as much. Place in the refrigerator until ready to pour in your pie filling and bake.

Makes one single crust

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George’s notes:

• No one is really sure where the name comes from, but there are some neat theories about it. But here in "The History of Chess Pie" many ideas have been outlined.
• The pie seems to have no relation to the game of chess, which has led to much speculation as to the origin of this term. Some theorize that the name of the pie traces back to its ancestral England, where the dessert perhaps evolved from a similar cheese tart, in which the archaic "cheese" was used to describe pies of the same consistency even without that particular ingredient present in the recipe.
• There is also a theory that the word "chess" pie comes from the piece of furniture that was common in the early South called a pie chest or pie safe. Chess pie may have been called chest pie at first because it held up well in the pie chest.

I want to thank everyone for your thoughtful comments & prayers for my mother. Her surgery was very successful and she is doing extremely well. Mom is a fighter and a difficult individual to keep down, so she will be back on her feet in no time.

Please continue to keep her in your thoughts and know that she truly appreciates each & everyone of you for your kindness. I am still in Florida, but will post when I can. ~ George

Blue Cheese Gougères...

Today I'm feeling a whole lot of blue, and sadly have to say that I will not be posting for a while here at “A nod is as good as a wink...” but I want to thank all my followers & readers for their never ending support & kind comments these last many months. During this time, I have had the great opportunity to get to know & follow some incredibly talented and creative people.

As you have read and learned here, family & friends are the most important things in my life. I love the give & take and the camaraderie that comes with friendships… and for me, the members of my family are my dearest friends. So, when friends need help, I am there on a moments notice.

I received a call from my parents, who informed me that my mother is requiring major surgery. So today, I am heading further south to Florida to be with them for whatever time is necessary. It could be a few weeks or a few months. During that time I will occasionally be checking in with my fellow bloggers and leaving comments when I can, so keep blogging your terrific post. I know there will be some great post that I will miss, but believe me ~ I will be browsing through and catch as many as I can.

Till my return, I leave you with this post I wrote last evening...

I am feeling blue in a good way. Blue cheese is one of those mixed blessings; when it's good, it's very, very good. But when it's bad, it's horrible. And when it's used in a reckless way in recipes, it can be very very bad indeed.

The worst offender of the many types of blue is Stilton, when using it as an ingredient in cooking. But don't get me wrong – I do enjoy draining the last drops of a good red wine while nibbling away at some creamy, stilton with perhaps a crisp apple and a few walnuts at the end of a great dinner. I also have several winter salads that feature stilton crumbled over mesclun greens with a wonderful walnut vinaigrette drizzled over the top.

I have found that blue cheeses are an excellent way to give tang to most recipes that call for cheese. Several months ago, I posted a wonderful cheese straw that would be good with a mild blue cheese. Here is another terrific hors d'oeuvre that I think you will find to be a big hit at any party. Enjoy…




Blue Cheese Gougères

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
½ cup unsalted butter
1 tsp salt
A few grinds of black pepper
A few grinds of nutmeg
1 cup plain flour
4 eggs
3 ounces crumbled harbourne blue or Dorset blue vinney
¼ cup grated parmesan, for sprinkling over the top
1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water, for glazing

Preheat the oven to 425 degree F.

Line two baking sheets with parchment. In a saucepan, heat the milk, butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg over medium heat until the butter has melted and bubbles appear around the edge of the pan. Beat in the flour with a wooden spoon – the moment the mixture comes together into a smooth dough and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, stop beating. Tip into a food processor, add the eggs and cheeses, and pulse until smooth, thick and shiny.

Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a large, round tip or use a plastic bag with the corner snipped off; or just mould it with two spoons. Pipe mounds about the size of a walnut on to the baking sheets. Dampen your finger with water and lightly press down the tip of each mound. Brush lightly with egg wash and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden, and serve at once.

To make them ahead of time: cool the cooked gougères and then freeze. Defrost and warm through for five minutes at 400 degree F before serving. They will still be delicious, just not quite as melt-in-the-mouth light as they are when fresh out of the oven.

Makes about 45

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George’s notes:

• Blue cheese is a general classification of cow's milk, sheep's milk, or goat's milk cheeses that have had Penicillium cultures added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, blue-gray or blue-green mold, and carries a distinct smell.
• Blue cheese is believed to have been discovered by accident. The caves in which early cheeses were aged shared the properties of being temperature and moisture controlled environments, as well as being favorable to many varieties of mould. Roquefort is said to have been invented in 1070 AD.
• Maytag is a blue cheese produced on the Maytag Dairy Farms outside of Newton, Iowa. In1938, Iowa State University developed a new process for making blue cheese from homogenized milk, instead of traditional sheep's milk. In 1941, production of the cheese was started grandsons of the founder of the Maytag appliance company, Frederick L. Maytag. In the beginning, the milk for the cheese came from a prize winning herd of Holstein cattle that was established by E.H. Maytag, another son of the Maytag founder.
• A gougère, in French cuisine, is a savory choux pastry with cheese. Grated cheese may be mixed into the batter; cubes of cheese may be pushed into the top, or both.