In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I threw a little party last night and decided to cook an Irish-themed meal. Which turned out to be two dishes that both contained Guinness. For the nondrinkers in the family, Guinness is an Irish stout that's very creamy, rich, and dark in color. It's pretty mild, as beers go, but has a slightly smoky and sweet flavor.
The main dish was a Guinness pie that cooked nearly all afternoon in the oven and made the apartment smell delicious. Seriously, I was chewing on the walls and the sofa after a few hours. Though they could have used a little salt.
This is the pie filling, which was mostly mushrooms, stew beef, onions, and Guinness. The skillet was full to the brim when I started, and it cooked down for about 3 hours until it turned into the smooth, savory, rich stew you see above.
And then I placed a pastry top on there and baked it for a little longer.
Which resulted in this. The pastry was flaky but substantial, and the stew filling beneath was savory and delicious. The perfect dish to start breaking in a new cast iron skillet.
And then for dessert, I tried my hand at a Guinness cake. Lisa had made one and I heard about it (and also how Dad wolfed down the four or fives pieces that Lisa brought over for both he and Mom to share), and so I have her to thank for the inspiration here.
The cake was really easy to make, and I could almost eat it without the frosting. It's dense, moist, not terribly sweet, and has a really heavy texture. But then you also get some cream cheese frosting for good measure.
I used up all my creative energy on those two things, but by the time dinner rolled around I wished I'd also made some colcannon (inspiration from Steve and Rachel on that one). It's probably not too early to start planning for St. Patrick's Day 2016, right?
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Congratulations on the new cast iron skillet!
ReplyDeleteThose both look pretty good, but it's the cake I'm mostly interested in. We did have colcannon this week (as well as cabbage and noodles).
So...I want to know....did you use trotter gear or cheddar in the stew/pie?
ReplyDeleteLooks like there's a new Barnhart blog on the block, Greenificent. & it looks to cover fields of interest that I'm also interested in. Nice!
ReplyDeleteAnd I wish I'd had some trotter gear to try out, Steve, but I didn't know what it actually was until too late in the process. So I used the cheddar cheese (extra-sharp, of course) instead. But maybe I'll make some trotter gear in preparation for the next time I make this.
Those look really good, Ben! I'd love to have tried both of those, and hope we can talk you into making them the next time you're home. :) Congrats on the new Blog, Steve! Will look forward to more posts on it!
ReplyDeleteRight. You will need to exercise patience with my new blog... it took me a year to get this far.
ReplyDelete