Crushed New Potato Colcannon

Name: New Potato Colcannon
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 35 min
Ingredients: 1 1/4 pounds (600g) new potatoes, unpeeled, washed well and cut in half; 3/4 pound (400g) savoy cabbage, washed, trimmed and coarsely shredded; 2 tsp sunflower oil; 4 rashers prosciutto, cut into 1/2 inch slices; 6 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced (scallions); 2 TBS (25g) butter, cubed (optional); salt and pepper to taste

Monday, 15 March 2021

New Potato Colcannon. This is a delicious colcannon recipe I wanted to share with you before Saint Patricks' Day on the 17th of March. There is something pretty wonderful that happens when you combine cabbage and potatoes and Ireland.

Its called Colcannon! And its very Irish. This is a slightly healthier version of the original. Created to be low GI and very diabetic friendly.

During the 17th and 18th century in Europe and Ireland, cabbages, potatoes and leeks were considered to be the basic foods of the common serf, man. In other words, most people. Only the very wealthy could afford to eat fancier foods.

Colcannon is the inevitable result of mankind's ability to make lemonade out of lemons. And it is a most delicious way to present these three simple ingredients. This dish however uses milder spring onions rather than the much stronger flavored leek.

A first reference to Colcannon in Irish History was found in the 1735 diary entry of William Bulkely, a traveler from Wales who was introduced to the dish on a Halloween night in Dublin:

“Dined at Cos. Wm. Parry, and also supped there upon a shoulder of mutton roasted and what they call there Coel Callen, which is cabbage boiled, potatoes and parsnips, all this mixed together. They eat well enough, and is a Dish always had in this Kingdom on this night.”

The word colcannon is derived from the Gaelic term “cal ceannann” which means white-headed cabbage. Although generally speaking these days the dish is made from either Kale or the darker green savoy cabbage!

Humble ingredients put together in a most delicious way, this is considered haute cuisine in many multiple Michelin star restaurants. In short this is a beautiful side dish well deserving to be served on any table!

This version I am sharing today boasts the addition of some smoky and salty pancetta. Oh, I just adore bacon and pancetta. Both go so very well with cabbages and potatoes of any kind, hence the addition of pancetta to this dish only makes sense.

New potatoes are considered to be low GI. In order to be considered low GI, a food must have a glucose index score of less than 55. These carbohydrates take longer to break down than their higher GI counterparts, which means that they cause a persons sugar levels to raise much more slowly, which is good news when it comes to controlling your diet as a diabetic.

I love it when the side dish becomes the star of the meal. I am a vegetable lover after all, and could be quite happy if I never ate meat again.

Well, I tell, a bit of a lie there because I would miss a good steak every now and again, and I do kind of like roast chicken and turkey. And a really well done Prime Rib Roast is a magnificent thing to behold and to eat!

Okay . . . I guess it's settled. I just like to eat. But I do have my favorite things and vegetables are one of them!

This Crushed New Potato Colcannon is a delightful side dish! Chock full of lovely savoy cabbage and new potatoes. It is also a perfect side dish to enjoy on Saint Patrick's Day.

I have also used spring onions, which have a nice mild onion flavor, not too harsh. It goes really well with the cabbage.

Savoy cabbage is quite a mild flavored cabbage. If you were to use leeks, or even regular onions, you run the risk of them overpowering the dish.

This is a case where you want to be able to taste the cabbage. Another reason I chose savoy is because it is has such a pretty green color and Saint Patrick's Day is all about the green!

This is a side dish that goes together really quickly once you have the individual elements of it ready to go. I sautéed the prosciutto first in a skillet, reserving the drippings for the finish.

The cabbage itself, was lightly steamed, so as to help preserve that rich green color. The potatoes were boiled in lightly salted water, just until they were fork tender.

You could actually do all of these things earlier in the day or the night before so that when the time came, you could quickly and easily just throw the dish together.

Spring onions/scallions are cooked in the pan drippings, just long enough to wilt them without browning. Once you've done that you quickly add the potatoes to the pan, heating them through and crushing them a bit in the process.

Then you add the cabbage and prosciutto, gently tossing everything together and heating both as well. A knob of butter is optionally thrown in at the end to add a bit of richness, but I can tell you, this beautiful side dish is every bit as delicious without it. ''

This was served simply with some grilled bangers/sausages, steamed carrots and a spoonful of grainy Dijon mustard. It would also go well with grilled pork or lamb chops, or even grilled chicken.

In fact, this is pretty tasty all on its own. Not to confess or anything, but I could be quite happy with just a plate of this and nothing else!!

Crushed New Potato Colcannon

Yield: 4

Author: Marie Rayner

Prep time: 5 MinCook time: 30 MinTotal time: 35 Min

A healthier version of an old Irish favorite. Its delicious!

Ingredients

1 1/4 pounds (600g) new potatoes, unpeeled, washed well and cut in half
3/4 pound (400g) savoy cabbage, washed, trimmed and coarsely shredded
2 tsp sunflower oil
4 rashers prosciutto, cut into 1/2 inch slices
6 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced (scallions)
2 TBS (25g) butter, cubed (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Add the prosciutto into a large skillet, along with the oil. Cook, until crisp. Scoop out and drain on paper towels.
Set the skillet aside for now and reserve the pan drippings.
Put the potatoes into a saucepan of lightly salted water. Bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 18 to 20 minutes until tender. Drain well.
Cook the cabbage in boiling water for about 3 minutes, until just tender. Drain well, run under cold water and drain again.
Reheat the drippings in the skillet. Add the spring onions to the skillet and soften without coloring.
Add the cabbage and heat through. Drop in the potatoes and lightly crush.
Stir through the prosciutto and season to taste. If you are using butter, stir it in now.
Serve hot.

Did you make this recipe?

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Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake

Sunday, 14 March 2021

Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake. Our Dan was saying earlier in the week that he was craving a chocolate cake. I knew just the cake to bake him. This sinfully decadent Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake!

This delicious and easy chocolate cake is probably one of the quickest and easiest chocolate cakes you can make and it packs a fabulously tasty triple whammy of chocolarte flavours! A hat-trick of moist chocolate decadence!!

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Homemade Vanilla Wafers

Saturday, 13 March 2021

Vanilla Wafers. I am sure most of us are familiar with these cookies. I think they are called Nilla Wafers in the shops, but basically what they are is round crisp vanilla flavoured cookies. They are an integral component of Vanilla Wafer Banana Pudding.

This is a pudding in which these crisp vanilla cookies are layered in a dish with vanilla pudding and sliced ripe banana. Topped with whipped cream, it is a favourite dessert for many people! Me included.

When I lived in the UK Vanilla Wafers were very hard to come by. They just didn't have any. They did not exist. If you wanted them you had to make your own homemade Vanilla Wafers.

I think my most important job when I cooked at the Manor was to keep the Mrs happy. Actually in retrospect . . . I think that was everyone's job. If the Mrs wasn't happy . . . wasn't nobody happy!!

She was always on a diet and so my job was to prepare meals that were relatively low in calories as she was always counting them. And she wanted a calorie count figured out for every single meal.

She reckoned that she could not ingest any more than about 5 or 6 hundred calories a day. So not good, and it didn't matter how much I tried to explain the mechanics of nutrition to her, her mind was made up. She would weigh herself about 6 times a day and if it went up even an ounce, she freaked out.

It was very bizarre behaviour to say the least. But we are all different, n'est ce pas? That is what makes life interesting.

One thing she liked me to make for her were these Homemade Vanilla Wafers. It was a recipe from out of one of her Cooking Light Cookbooks. She liked to call them her "diet" cookies.

I wish I had a dollar for every one of these I baked for her. I would be a very wealthy woman by now. She might even have to come work for me! haha

I used to have to bake these for her several times a week. As soon as they were gone, she requested more, and whenever she took one of her many trips to America, a shoebox of a double recipe of them went with her in her luggage.

One time I accidentally put too much butter in them. She said they were the best Vanilla Wafers anyone had ever baked for her and that was that. From then on I had to make them exactly like that. I didn't dare tell her the reason they were so good was because there was extra butter in them.

Truth be told though . . . even if they had had the required amount of butter in them, they wouldn't have been diet cookies. Somehow I think the diet/low fat properties of any type of cookie kind of go down if you eat almost the whole three dozen in one day.

Ahem . . . just sayin' is all! Don't shoot the messenger!

There were many, many nights I found myself baking these for her at 3 o'clock in the morning in readiness for her leaving on one of her frequent trips. I would be totally exhausted, so it is no wonder that I accidentally got too much butter into them one time.

She had a thing about flying. She was deathly afraid of flying. Many people are like that, its not that odd. In order for her to be able to fly however, she would stay up all night packing the night before she left. Misery love company however, and she required someone to be with her, to talk to, to help her pack. The job of helping her fell to me.

This was for two reasons really. The first was that the "cook" had always done this with her. I was the "cook." The second was that I actually lived in a cottage on the Estate and nobody else that worked there was "trapped" like I was. When the house you live in is tied to your job, you end up doing all sorts of things that nobody else would do, because you don't want to lose the roof over your head.

In any case I kind of enjoyed those packing nights in an odd sort of way. They made for a really long day of work however. I would have worked all day from 8:30 am and then I would be up all night until 6 or 6:30 the next morning, so very close to 24 hours.

I had many things to do during that night. I would have to decant some of her expensive perfumes into smaller travel sized bottles. I can remember my horror one night when I accidentally decanted the wrong one into the wrong bottle and had to tell her what I had done. She "was not amused."

Aside from that, I would need to do her makeup bag, pack all her vitamins into small bags (one for each day she was going to be away), stuff all her shoes and put them into cloth bags. Put all of her jewelry into jewelry bags. Stuff the sleeves of her clothing with tissue and pop them into dry cleaning bags, etc.

This was on top of watching her try on a variety of outfits in an attempt to decide what she was going to wear to whatever function she would be attending. She wore only Armani, Vera Wang, Chanel, etc. Very expensive clothing.

As she tried things on she would drop them onto the floor when she was done. It fell to me to take them down to the laundry room and press them back into perfection before packing them into her cases or returning them to her closet.

As you can imagine when you have been up as long as I had been, it was kind of scary to be pressing and steaming these expensive clothes with a hot iron. I can remember being very afraid that I would ruin one. She really was taking a chance in letting me do that. (You can't make this stuff up!)

But it was really one of the more interesting aspects of my job (the packing bit). I never would have had such intimate contact with so many very expensive items in my life otherwise.

I can tell you one thing it did, however. It taught me to never have anything in my life that it would destroy me to lose or ruin. Stuff is only stuff at the end of the day and ain't none of us taking any of it with us when we go!

I suddenly found myself with a hankering for these the other day. I had not baked them since I finished working at the Manor, some 11 years ago now! I knew this recipe off by heart, having baked them so many times in the past.

They were still moreishly good. Crisp and buttery and addictive! We enjoyed some of them layered in glass dishes with some sliced banana and pudding, with whipped cream on top, as you do.

I wonder all these years later if she has ever figured out why she could never take off those last two pounds she was fighting to lose. Well, I'm not telling her and I suggest you don't either!!!

I do suggest, however, that you bake these delicious, buttery, crisp and wonderful Vanilla Cookies!

Vanilla Wafers

Yield: 3 dozen

Author: Marie Rayner

prep time: 10 Mincook time: 15 Mintotal time: 25 Min

These were supposed to be light, but the mistaken addition of extra butter made them even better, so they are not so diet, diet cookies. These are crisp and buttery and oh so moreishly good.