A St. Patrick’s Day Feast

This weekend we had an early St. Patrick’s Day party with a few families we’re close with.  The first Christmas we were back I wanted to do an “Irish Coffee” dinner but we didn’t plan well enough and it didn’t happen.  This past Christmas I wanted to try again but, again, we didn’t plan ahead and we ran out of time and that’s when I proclaimed to hubby “Let’s do a St. Patrick’s Day thing.  No, we’re going to do it for St. Patrick’s Day!  It’s going to be our thing, a yearly St. Patrick’s Day party.  It’s going to be a thing!”  And, so it is.

While my original vision was to do a big Irish themed dinner, we couldn’t settle on whether we should do an adult’s only dinner or do a family afternoon.  So we decided to do both.  We started with a family afternoon where the kids swam, played, did crafts, and went on an impromptu tadpole catching adventure followed by a nice Irish inspired dinner for those families who wanted to stick around.

While I’ve known for years that I wanted to stick to a traditional Irish dinner being sure to honor the culture which took us in for over two years, not falling into the American vision of what Irish is (just say “no!” to corned beef and hash!), I have to admit I did go the “American way” for the afternoon snacking.  I decided to do a veggie tray, fruit tray, cookies, juice and candies all in green and our guests brought green cookies and cupcakes!

 I made mint spritz cookies in the closest thing I had to a four leaf clover shape.  My veggie tray included: snap peas, broccoli, green peppers, celery and cucumber with ranch dressing.  My fruit tray consisted of: green apples, green grapes, kiwi, and honeydew melon.  I did the same juice I did for Valentine’s Day but with kiwi instead of strawberries (sparkling water with pureed fruit) and while the flavor was good, I should have strained out the pulp as the kiwi ended up much pulpier than the strawberries were.

For the dinner, I made my “famous” (within my family anyways) fish soup, homemade Irish brown bread, shepherd’s pie, banoffee pie and a green salad.

The biggest hit with the crowd was definitely the shepherd’s pie.  I have the admit, though, that I don’t use a traditional recipe from Ireland, I actually use a recipe from a local South Florida Irish restaurant (recipe can be found here).  The key to a good shepherd’s pie, though, is the lamb.  Don’t try to leave it out, it’s not nearly as good (and if you do, it’s actually a cottage pie, not shepherd’s pie!)

My fish soup also went over well (and Honeybun requested “the entire pot!”).  It’s a recipe I developed myself and is super easy but delicious—I don’t measure ingredients and usually just throw in whatever amounts I have, but here’s a guess to amounts for 4 servings!

• Saute 1/2 onion in a 2 tablespoons of butter.
• Add 4 cups chicken stock (I use bouillon usually) and I add a healthy dose of McCormick’s Vegetable Seasoning.
• Add 1-2 lbs cubed fish (I usually use salmon and 2 kinds of whatever whitefish I have on hand).
• Heat to boiling, reduce heat and simmer at least an hour.
• When fish is tender and starting to fall apart (or about a half hour before you want to eat) add 1 ½ cups cream and continue simmering until soup thickens slightly. 

The Irish brown bread I made is a recipe from Craic in the Kitchen, the cookbook from The American Women’s Club of Dublin (you can buy a copy here):

• 1 ½ lbs wholemeal flour (in Ireland, this is a coarsely ground whole wheat flour.  I use regular whole-wheat flour here)
• 6 oz. bran (I use oatmeal)
• ¾ oz baking soda
• 1 oz sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 liter buttermilk

(as you can see, a good kitchen scale is really handy for this recipe!)
Combine flour and bran.  Dissolve sugar, salt and baking soda in buttermilk and add to flour mixture.  Grease and flour three loaf tins and divide batter evenly.  Bake 40 minutes at 400°F.

This was the first time I made Banoffee Pie and it came out really good despite my rush to make it before work Saturday morning!  It’s a simple graham cracker crust filled with toffee filling, topped with sliced bananas and whipped cream (banana+toffee=banoffee, who knew?!?!)  I used this recipe and instead of one big pie, I did individual servings in muffin tins and aside from my whipped cream melting, everyone really enjoyed them!