Irish Stew

Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite non-children books.  Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is a book nobody in America seems to have heard of, but everybody should read.  It’s a hilarious story about three Englishmen in the late 1800s, all the best of friends, who decide to take a boat trip down the Thames.  The book is of their adventures while they’re packing and on their trip, as well as a lot of random digressions from the narrator.  The best parts are in relation to food.  For instance, there’s a huge long part about them trying to open a can of pineapple without a can opener, and the injuries to pride and person that result from it.  I reread that part recently, and I was nearly crying from laughter.

I first heard about Three Men in a Boat when I was traveling in England.  While we were visiting Hampton Court Palace, some of us sat next to our tour guide, Ian Godfrey, at lunch.  He asked us if we had gone through the hedge maze on the grounds.

I had, and we talked about people getting lost in there, and the technique for how to get out (I won’t tell you, so that if you’re ever in the Hampton Court Palace maze you can relish in getting lost and figuring it out yourself).  Then he started chuckling to himself.  I asked him what was so funny, and he asked if I had read Three Men in a Boat.  I said I hadn’t.  He continued chuckling to himself as he explained that it was “a very English book,” “a classic,” and “quite silly.”  (I remember during this conversation just relishing in the fact that I was having a conversation with a real Englishman.  His accent was awesome!)  He talked about a particular part of the book, where the characters go into the Hampton Court Palace maze, and get so hopelessly lost that they end up electing a leader and charging about the maze trying to find a way out.  I was totally interested, if only for the cultural aspect – A famous English book that they don’t talk about in America, which has a scene that takes place where I’ve been?  I was all over it.  And the fact that it was supposed to be funny put it at the top of my reading list.  I’ll never forget Ian saying the author of the book, all slow and poetically as only a true Englishman can do: “Jerome K. Jerome.”  He repeated it several times, and I promised I would check it out.

So when I got to Oxford, and I had a tortuous couple of days to wait for the 7^th Harry Potter book to come out (how do I manage to sneak Harry Potter into everything?  I astound even myself), I decided to go to Blackwell’s Bookshop and buy Three Men in a Boat. 

I am forever glad I did.  It’s rich with English humor: ridiculous yet subtle, absurd and yet strangely mundane.  Every bit of it is entertaining – I never got bored reading it.  It's also 100% clean, which is a necessary qualification for me, and very difficult to find.  Plus, I got a kick out of reading parts and thinking, “I’ve been there!”  I loved it so much that I shared it with a bunch of my family members and friends when I got home.  Everyone who read it loved it.  I think it’s now one of my sister Sarah’s favorite books.

I hope that through my ramblings and reminiscences, you get the point: This book is awesome!  And I was delighted, upon rereading it, to realize that it mentions TONS of food!  So I’m going to be posting twice about this delightful, “very English” little book.  Tonight’s feature is Irish stew.

While camping on the bank of the river Thames, the three men – George, Harris, and J (the narrator) – decide that “it would be a splendid opportunity to try a good slap-up supper.  [George] said he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew” (Jerome 191). 

This would be a wonderful idea, except that none of these men really know how to cook, and George’s understanding of “Irish stew” is shaky at best.  He seems to think that Irish stew is just a bunch of leftovers boiled into a stew.  This doesn’t sound too bad until he starts adding pork pie, cold boiled bacon, and half a tin of potted salmon to the pot.  “He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things.  I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and we put those in.  George said they would thicken the gravy” (192).  They even considered adding a dead water-rat the dog had found.  Fortunately, after some debate, they decided to decline the dog’s offering.

In terms of how the stew actually tasted, J says: “here was a dish with a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.  And it was nourishing, too….  The peas and potatoes might have been a bit softer, but we all had good teeth, so that did not matter much; and as for the gravy, it was a poem – a little too rich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious” (193).

You may be wondering, “Why, Mary, after reading that nasty description, would you ever consider making such a stew?”  Good question.

This whole Irish stew business made me curious.  Clearly George didn’t know what he was doing, so what is a real Irish stew supposed to be like?  I looked it up.  Turns out Irish stew has a pretty set recipe for it’s base – it usually consists of lamb, potatoes, and onion.  Other ingredients vary, but it will commonly also include carrots, cabbage, and parsley.

I decided that didn’t sound nearly as bad as the Three Men in a Boat stew.  I actually wanted to try it.  I figure Jerome K. Jerome wrote so well about the preparation and final product of George’s stew that I could deviate from the literature a bit and make a proper Irish stew (except for the lamb, because I’m cheap).  You can choose for yourself which one you’d like to try.

Irish Stew

Serves 3-4

½ tbsp butter

½ lb beef chuck, cubed in small pieces (1/4 – ½ in)

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

¼ cup onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped in small, thin pieces

2 cups water
1 cup chopped cabbage

1 tsp beef bouillon

2 medium russet potatoes, chopped in small, thin pieces

½ cup frozen peas

¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped.

Place butter and meat in pot over medium-high heat.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir the meat until all sides are brown.  Add onions and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-7 minutes.  Add water and cabbage, cover, and boil mixture for 30-45 min.  Taste broth, and if it needs more flavoring, add bouillon.  Add potatoes and boil for an additional 25 min, still covered.  Add peas and parsley and boil for a few more minutes uncovered.  When the potatoes are soft and the meat is tender, it’s ready for eating!

Browning the meat

How do you like my gigantic pot and plate-lid? I work with what I

've got.

After adding the potatoes

The great thing about this stew is that overcooking the potatoes is okay, because it thickens the broth to the characteristic “stew” consistency.  (Please don’t add eggs to thicken the gravy like George did.  Follow these tips for thickening stew.)

This stew was delicious!  Seriously, it was awesome!  It was simple and easy (although I was hungry, so I didn’t like waiting over an hour for it to cook), and it definitely had a distinctly Irish flavor while not being too cabbagey or parsleyish.  What is it about potatoes, cabbage, and parsley that make you think of green hills, flutes, and Riverdance?  It was a nice way to bring me back to my family roots.  I might make this for St. Patrick’s Day instead of corned beef and cabbage (which is a family tradition and definitely good, but the stew is a better). 

I would like to thank Ian Godfrey – who I’ll never see again, I’m sure – for pointing me toward such an amazing book, which led to many laughs and such a yummy dish.  Next week’s post will feature a dessert from Three Men in a Boat (I cooked it tonight, so I promise I’ll post it soon).  Be sure to come back then and check it out!  In the meantime, go to your local library and check out Three Men in a Boat.  Seriously, you won’t regret it.

English Tea Party: Peppermint Tea

"O' peppermint tea -
two delights per sip
as steamy hot as passion
cool as a wintry lake dip
~Astrid Alauda"

You may have guessed it, but maybe not. Mary and I made all the fixins' for a tea party. This post is pretty simple because 1. There's no real recipe for our tea besides teabags and water and 2. There are so many mentions of tea in English literature that I'm not even going to bother putting quotes up.
Now, for most people, "tea time" equals English Breakfast or Earl Grey. For others, "tea" means black tea or green tea. However, Mary and I follow the Word of Wisdom and it discourages against tea that is not considered herbal tea. We chose Peppermint tea and what a good choice it was! Peppermint tea has been my favorite of the herbal teas for years. I would drink it when I was sick from the time I was little until now. It has saved my throat many times during performances and peppermint is just clean and delicious.



In case you aren't sure about making tea, the first thing you'll want is hot/boiling water and the next thing you'll want are tea bags. Mary and I used the peppermint tea from my favorite brand Celestial Seasonings. The longer the tea bags "steep", (To soak in liquid in order to cleanse, soften, or extract a given property from) the stronger the tea. I personally like strong tea so I let my tea bags steep for 3-5 minutes. Usually people add milk, sugar or cream to their tea. Two spoonfuls or "lumps" usually does the trick in mine. You can also add a twist of lemon to bring out the flavor more.



The next bunch of posts will be all about this tea party we had. So let me recommend the following post if you ever plan on having a tea party (and it's SOOOO fun!). It's especially entertaining if you read it out loud in a British accent, adding strange inflection (like anger or sadness). http://brendacoulter.com/BrendaCoulterServingTea.htm



Enjoy!! We had fun using really old and beautiful china but you can use whatever you like!

Yorkshire Pudding

This is the week!  Are you ready for five fun-packed days of fabulous foreign foods and favorite (or favourite)... friends of... fffff..... yeah, I ran out of Fs.  But are you ready?!

Alright, so we cooked the top winners on the poll (Results can be found on my Tues, November 9^th post), as well as a couple of extra things.  We’ll be posting something everyday.  My post today is on Yorkshire pudding.

We Americans generally think pudding comes in three flavors: chocolate, vanilla, and tapioca.  In England, however, pudding is more often a dinner dish than a dessert (what’s with me and alliterations today?).  I’m sure you have heard of the infamous black/blood pudding.  Things like that sound less than appealing, but it’s fun to try new things.  My adventures with food in England included things like fish and chips, sandwiches, Cornish pasties, roast duck, and lots of chocolate.  No pudding.  So I decided to try some Yorkshire pudding and really get a feel for the following scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, during the start of term feast.

“There are house-elves here?” [Hermione] said, staring, horror-struck, at Nearly Headless Nick.  “Here at Hogwarts?”

“Certainly,” said Nearly Headless Nick, looking surprised at her reaction.  “The largest number in any dwelling in Britain, I believe.  Over a hundred.” [...]

Hermione looked down at her hardly-touched plate of food, then put her knife and fork down upon it and pushed it away from her.

“Oh c’mon, ‘Er-my-knee,” said Ron, accidentally spraying Harry with bits of Yorkshire pudding.  “Oops – sorry, ‘Arry –”  He swallowed.  “You won’t get them sick leave by starving yourself!”  (Rowling 181-182)

Naturally, I wondered exactly how disgusting it would be to get bits of half-chewed Yorkshire pudding sprayed on you.  Poor Harry.  First Voldemort kills his parents, and now Ron is spitting food at him.  He has a hard lot.

Yorkshire pudding requires beef drippings to make.  Meat drippings, in case you aren’t aware, are basically drips of melted fat that ooze out of the meat as it cooks.  It sounds totally nasty, but it is really flavorful and delicious.  And if you’ve ever had homemade gravy, you’ve had drippings, because that’s where all the flavor comes from.  Cooking the meat also adds a nice protein to your meal.  Coincidentally, it mentions Harry eating “a sizeable chunk of steak” (Rowling 181) in the same scene.

So before you can make the actual pudding, you have to make a beef roast of some kind and catch the drippings.  My mom made a small sirloin tip, which yielded just enough drippings for a two-person pudding.  I stuffed the meat with slices of fresh garlic by cutting holes in the meat all over the top and sides and sliding the garlic in. Then we coated it with lots of salt, pepper and garlic powder, and dabbed on some olive oil.  After that it was ready to pop in the oven on a broiler pan (this is a special pan that catches drippings well.  Click here to view) and bake. The temperature and amount of time depends on the size of your meat and how well done you want it. We baked our 2 lb roast at 400 F for about an hour, until the pop-up thermometer popped up.  For hints on cooking your particular roast, you can try consulting allrecipes.com.

Cooked sirloin tip

Alright, now that that is taken care of, on to the pudding! 

 Yorkshire Pudding

(serves 2.  If you want to calculate for a specific amount of servings, click here for the source recipe on Allrecipes.com)

¼ cup and 2 tbps all purpose flour

1/8 tsp of salt

1 egg

3 tbsp water

2 tbsp beef drippings

3 tbsp milk

1. Mix flour and salt together until blended. Make a well in the flour (a hole in the middle), add the milk, and whisk until consistent. Beat the eggs into the batter (this may take a little while).

Just after adding the eggs, but before beating them

Add water and beat again until the mixture is light and frothy.  Refrigerate for an hour.  (That last bit is unnecessary.  I didn’t do it).

2. If the batter has been refrigerated, allow it to come up to room temperature before using. When the roast beef is ready to come out of the oven, ready the mixture.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Pour off drippings from roast beef and measure out desired amount (about 1/2 cup should do). Pour drippings into a small loaf pan (again, for larger measurements, see the source recipe) and place into the oven until the drippings sizzle. Pour the batter over the drippings and bake for 30 minutes (or until the sides have risen and are golden brown). Cut into two portions and serve immediately, otherwise it will fall.

Here’s what it looks like.  It’s a little weird looking, I know.

Before baking

After baking.  No, I don't know why one side it higher than the other.

We also made mashed potatoes, just because it seemed fitting.  I was delighted later, though, as I read the Goblet of Fire scene and saw this:

“Aaah, ‘at’s be’er,” said Ron, with his mouth full of mashed potato.  (Rowling 181)

  

Follow this recipe for the best mashed potatoes you will ever make.  They don't even need gravy.  They're that good.

Mashed Potatoes

(serves 3-4)

4 small, peeled potatoes.

2 tbsp butter

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup sour cream

1 clove garlic, minced

Heavy whipping cream, to desired consistency.

1.      Chop the potatoes into small slices and boil until they are soft and a fork stabbed into them goes through smoothly.  Drain.

2.      Put potatoes in a large mixing bowl with butter, salt, garlic, and sour cream.   

Potatoes before mixing. Caution: They will be hot!

     With a hand mixer, beat potatoes until they are smooth.  Add cream as you beat until you get your potatoes to the desired consistency. Be sure to taste the potatoes to make sure they are salty enough.  Serve.

Mashed potatoes!  One of my favorite foods.

Here’s the whole meal.  My mom made cream of asparagus soup to go with it, but that’s not really part of the Harry Potter thing.  Leave a comment if you want that recipe.

The spread

My plate of deliciousness

Below is me trying the Yorkshire pudding.  I know it looks rather unappetizing, but it was delicious!  It tasted like a soft, buttery pastry with a little salt from the drippings.  I will definitely make it again!  But I still wouldn’t want Ron to spit it on me.

And for the fun of it, here are some of my England pictures of Harry Potter sites.  I will give you the names of the actual places.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to leave a comment naming which Harry Potter movie each of them are from, and the context of that scene, if you can. 

#1 - King's Cross Station, London.  I was walking around the station and wandered up some stairs.  Suddenly, I gasped, "Oh my gosh! This is from the scene in the ____ movie when___!"  Then I took a picture.  Do you recognize it, too? 

#2 - Christ's Church College, Oxford University, Oxford

#3 - This one is sort of cheating.  The Harry Potter movie crew didn't film here, but they modeled their set after this room, which is the dining hall at Christ's Church College, Oxford.  They also used it in multiple movies.  But it should be pretty obvious.

#4 - Millennium Bridge, London

 I apologize for the poor quality of the England pictures.  I had a 2 megapixel dinosaur at the time.  But I hope you had fun guessing! 

Back to Back Posts: English Food

So after I wrote the last post, I was talking to Mary about English food. Both of us have been lucky enough to go to England (not together, unfortunately). I had a great time there and I know Mary loved it there too. I wanted to make a picture post of food that I ate in England, to give you all an idea of what English food is like ...and I just miss England. Here we go! (Caution: you may see me in these pictures as a blonde...this might be weird for some of you)



I had this lovely meal in the Chester Cathedral in Chester, England. That is Dandellion and Burdock soda ( I still have the bottle!) and Tuna with Sweet Corn Sandwich. The soda tasted kind of like...rootbeer and dirt and greenery... But I liked it!


This is an Egg Custard. I was in the town where the Bronte sister's parsonage was and went around the corner from this pub to the little bakery. The lady laughed at me when I asked what it was.


This is Yorkshire pudding. I was totally not expecting it! (Oh the naive girl I was). This is Yorkshire pudding with bangers (sausages). It's pretty good but definitely greasy and salty, like a lot of English food.


Before I left for Europe, my dad was so excited for me to have a Ploughman's lunch. I was excited when I finally got it but it's basically just a sandwich platter. I liked the pearl onions a lot =)


I love this picture. I was at the tea room directly across the street from Jane Austen's house and my friend Annie and I had tea and crumpitts with jam and clotted cream. I'm not even kidding. It was the most picturesque thing of the day!


I love this picture too. I just saw it in a random English town one day...it made me happy =)


This is in London. I was going to have fish and chips when I was by the coast but I was so bus sick I couldn't eat anything. The guy got mad at me because my friend Annie had other food that she wanted to sit down and eat at his restaurant and I ordered fish and chips. When he told me we couldn't eat there, I told him to make it to go...and he was grumpy about it, hence the fork.


Yes, this is also London. Yes it's raining. Yes I'm sitting ON THE GROUND in the middle of one of the dirtiest cities in the world eating sushi. This was right before I was going to see Les Miserables (I was leaning against the theatre). I went to this sushi restaurant that you went through a line with a box and picked out individually wrapped sushi rolls. It was so cool!


This is English junk food! I bought this right before I got on the Chunnel for Paris. I love English chocolate. =)



Oh, so back to the Harry Potter theme...I got to go to Lacock Abbey, where they filmed parts of the first two Harry Potter movies.


This is inside Lacock Abbey...looks like Hogwarts, huh? That's because it is!!


And finally...platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London. This was an interesting day. I dragged a bunch of my friends to go to this landmark...many of them didn't find it a priority, but I definitely did. I begged the people who came with me to videotape me asking a person in the station "Excuse me, could you tell me where I might find Platform 9 3/4?" (complete with British accent)...but none of them wanted to do it...so I just asked a worker (no British accent) who smiled and told me where it was.

Wow, I miss England now. I wish I could go back as the person I am now. A year ago feels like forever, and I've grown up and learned a lot since then. I want to go back! Oh yeah, I also saw a guy outside the Museum of Modern Art in London that I thought was Daniel Radcliffe. I took a creepy picture of him so I could zoom in and confirm if it was indeed Daniel Radcliffe...it wasn't.