Mar 28, 2012

March KTC Event: Irish Grub with Rick and Shawn


Happy Spring, Kissers! It is a partly-sunny, partly-cloudy March morning...I woke up early enough to see Fernando off for the day...I had my coffee while I watched the hummingbirds at the feeder at the window.
I saw a bald eagle soaring over the lake, and even enjoyed a slice of peanut-butter toast already. The morning seems to be off to a good start! And, a bonus! My mom, who arrived last night, is evidently sleeping in late, so I even have a couple of unexpected hours to myself. So I said to myself, "Self? What could be a better way to pass the time than to update our KTC blog?" Needless to say, my Self and I agreed.

And so does little Ricky!
We recently met at Rick and Anne's place for an afternoon of Winter-spooking, Irish-style. Shawn and Rick had planned a simple meal of traditional Irish fare in honor of St. Patrick's Day. On the menu:
We had a leisurely (lazy?) start, and chatted a while over snacks before getting started...
Meg tossed some beautiful beef chunks in flour to brown for the stew...
And we chopped up some onions to brown...
Dearest Joyce took on the odious task of peeling a mess o' pearl onions...
Speaking of pearl onions, a couple of fun oniony facts! According to Produce Oasis...Did you know that...
  • Pearl onions are also known as scallions?
  • Exposure to fluorescent lighting turns onions and potatoes green?
Even Fernando got in on the action - here, he tries his hand at frying up some very excellent smoky bacon from Bavarian Meat Products, a specialty German-style deli in Pike Market...
Jessica got started assembling the ingredients for one of the soda bread recipes (tomato paste in a tube included here only for "fun factor!")...

We browned up the stew meat and added some Guinness and beef broth to the pot. Whoa, foam!
After we re-combined all the goodies in the pot (save those dastardly pearl onions, which Joyce was still patiently working on), it looked like this...
Finally, we added the pearl onions. Nothing to do with the stew now but wait!
Meanwhile, outside was one of those sunny-rainy-blustery-sunny again early Spring days. We enjoyed a short break in the weather...
And Shawn enjoyed a short break in the floor - she'd injured her back with a poorly-timed home-improvement effort, and tried to stretch things out using Anne's recommended Miracle Ball Method.
From this vantage point, Shawn could easily observe Anne's shark - Talk about a face only a mother could love!
This thing was amazing. It was like a remote-controlled helium balloon...Rick had a controller that he could use to make the shark "swim" through the air around the house. It was super cool! See for yourself!
Poor Max was definitely creeped out by the whole situation...He didn't let that shark out of his sight!

Spectacular afternoon light...
Now that the stew was on, we threw together two soda bread recipes and got them into the oven to bake (Sorry, I didn't catch any photos of the bread prep! But it was all mixed by hand, and virtually no-knead). It was really nice to just visit while we waited on things to cook...Anne shared with the group the experience of attending her mom's first play, which sounded amazing. (Anne, if there is a link or info, email me and I'll post it here!)
We chatted some more, and enjoyed a few more snacks...Then it was time to tackle projects related to fresh heavy cream - Hooray!

Shawn splurged on fresh, regular-vat-pasteurized (as opposed to the ultra-pasteurized products more commonly found at local groceries...I love living here!) heavy whipping cream from a local dairy in Lynden, Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy.

I learned a bit about the difference between vat pasteurization and ultra-pasteurization from Fresh Breeze's website:
We have 2 large, sealed vats which hold around 200 gallons each. After the milk inside reaches 145 °F, we hold that temperature for 30 minutes, and then quickly cool the milk to about 33 °F. The lower heat leaves more of the good proteins, providing our milk with a richer flavor, while still effectively destroying any pathogens that may have been present.

Most plants use an HTST system, which is a continuous flow process, heating the milk to at least 161 F for about 15 seconds between metal plates that are heated on the outside by hot water pipes. Ultra-pasteurized processing holds the milk at a temperature of 250 °F for a fraction of a second. Of the 3 processes, this extremely high temperature leaves the milk with the least amount of its natural goodness.
Of all in attendance, I believe Max was the happiest of all with the product selection:
With the help of Anne and Rick's gloriously-blue Kitchen Aid mixer, we whipped up a batch of Creme Chantilly in about 15 seconds...
And then got down to the very serious business of making butter. It didn't take long with the stand mixer, and the results were downright delicious! Roughly, the instructions were easy: Whip the cream until it breaks.

We added two pints of cream to the mixer...
And got to mixing...
We had passed the point of whipped cream but weren't quite to the butter stage yet...
Finally, it "broke" - our first clue was being spattered by the liquid buttermilk/whey/whatever it is...
A closer look...
We dumped the whole soggy shebang into a colander over some cheesecloth...
And commenced to squeezing out the liquid...
Two pints of cream yielded about 2 cups of liquid, and perhaps 3/4-lb or a pound of butter.

Anne packed the butter into a ramekin and sprinkled it with a pink Himalayan salt - beautiful, and oh-so-tasty!
Buttermilk!
Butter was made, bread was baking, stew was simmering...Dinner was nearly ready! We all took a load off, and Henry suggested a sort of massage chain, like a touch-therapy conga line of sorts. He started things off here with Elli, who had recently returned from Colombia:

It was a very successful venture - In fact, Fernando felt so good after his massage that he danced around as he organized the dining table...
We prepared a teensy kale braise before serving everything....
Anne and Elli valiantly followed their programmed cleanse diet of all raw fruits and vegetables...They made a tasty massaged-kale salad and a carrot salad, dressed simply with a gorgeous olive oil...
The bread finally emerged from the oven, golden and beautiful...
We had time for a couple of huge-belly-related antics before dinner...


Then, as suddenly as it all began, it was time to eat. Irish Stew!!
Everything looks prettier with a little kale on top...
And, the breads. The one on the left was the more traditional of the two, with caraway seeds and raisins. It was the night's winning creation. All the other stuff we made was pretty good, but this particular bread was a-freakin'-mazing. So delicious!
Here's the other bacon and Irish cheddar soda bread...
Pretty nice work, wouldn't you say?
We chilled and digested after dinner, while Rick prepared the Guinness floats.
We seemed pretty evenly split - some of us really enjoyed this combination, and some of us really disliked it. I found a blog post shortly after we met about this very dessert, in addition to other beer-based dessert delights, which you can read here if you were among the former.
 
It was a lovely evening, and we all felt full and happy by the time we cleaned up and left.Poor Max, after his unexpected feast of Bavarian Meats bacon crumbles and fresh cream, he could barely keep his eyes open!
Sooooo....there you go! Irish yummies at Anne and Rick's place, courtesy of Rick and (sort-of) Shawn.

Now, mark your calendars! We've kept the third-Saturday-of-the-month format, and have the next few months' hosts planned, below. In May or June we will figure out who is on for the summer/fall.

UPCOMING KTC SCHEDULE:
  • April 7: Optional Mini-KTC @ Meg's
  • May 19: Fernando and Jessica (Originally April 7, rescheduled due to conflicts)
  • June 16: Meg and Frank (originally planned for May 19)
  • July 21: ??
  • August 18: ??
  • Sept 15: ??
  • Oct 20: ??
Ciao, Kissers!

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