Colcannon

Happy St. Patty's Day, everyone! Are you wearing green? I'm not. I don't really own anything green; it's not a great color for me. Thank god no one at work is fanatical about the whole wear-green-on-St. Patty's Day-or-get-pinched thing. That would have sucked! Elementary school bus rides really traumatized me on that front.

Anyway, I've been thinking long and hard about what to do for my St. Patty's Day post. Something green? Something with Guiness or whiskey? Something super Irish? I did the first two last year, so I decided to go Irish this year. What do Irish people eat? Shepherd's pie...corned beef...soda bread...potatoes! Gotta have potatoes. 

The Simply Recipes blog had a post on Colcannon earlier this week that looked pretty tasty, and I really wanted to try it. What is colcannon, you ask? It's a traditional Irish dish consisting mainly of mashed potatoes mixed with kale or cabbage and served with a heap of butter. It sounds kind of weird, but apparently it's so good that there's even a song about it.

I was a little hesitant about cooking kale, because I had never eaten it before, but...turns out I actually have eaten it before! Raw, it didn't look familiar, but as the cooked kale/garlic smell wafted out of the pan and hit my nose, I realized that kale is the mysterious green leafy vegetable my parents always cooked at home but never knew the English name for. Awesome! And delicious. Mashed potatoes are always good, but they're even better when a salty, textured vegetable is thrown into the mix, with a big dollop of butter. Those Irish folk really knew a thing or two about eating potatoes...

Recipe for colcannon can be found here, courtesy of the Simply Recipes blog.

One year ago: Godiva Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Buttercream Frosting