St. Patrick's Day and our Corned Beef dinner

The St. Patrick's Day menu of corned beef and cabbage is an American traditional meal like the Turkey Dinner of Thanksgiving Day, the grilled hot dogs and hamburgers of Forth of July and the barbecue with potato salad lemonade and watermelon on Labor Day. There are also other regional or national ethnic festivals like Cinco de Mayo with tacos and margarita, Columbus Day with Spaghetti and meat balls, in Chicago and the Midwest you have von Stueben Day with bratwust and Beer and Pulaski Day with kilbasa and beer, in Texas you have June Teen with big day long family barbecues and soul food, and Puerto Rico’s national day with the big parade and pork sandwiches in New York. There are of course many many other local or regional ethnic festivals like the sequence of Holy Ghost Festivals in small towns in central California with boiled beef dinners and other dishes brought from Portugal’s Açores Islands, the annual Lutefisk Dinners in Minnesota’s Scandinavian Parish Halls, Crab Feeds in San Francisco, Shrimp Boils in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, Lobster Boils in New England and cedar planked salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Like the Turkey Dinner, the Corn Beef and Cabbage dinner is American. While identified with the Irish and Jews, neither group ever ate the stuff in the “old country.” In Ireland a dinner of cured pork shoulder was the tradition while corned beef didn’t exist at all in Poland’s Jewish communities. However, both adopted this American product when they got here. Both today consider it their favorite party meat. The only significant difference is that Jews often add cloves of garlic to the cooking water for an extra bite. The Irish don’t add garlic.

As close cousin of the Corned Beef & Cabbage is New England Boiled Dinner. Not much seen here in California, in this meal corned beef is replaced with a pork shoulder ham often called Picnic Ham. Otherwise the dish is much the same with potatoes and a number of root vegetables, onions and cabbage. My Grandfather Mellow preferred this to corned beef, he didn’t like because it got stringy and got caught in his teeth. My Grandmother made this often in winter. Although born in California herself, her parents were born in New England and brought this recipe with them.

We had a St. Patrick's Day dinner the saturday before and followed the tradition with one exception, one of the couples are great fan’s of my late wife’s home fried potatoes which we made instead of boiling them root vegetables. The other California change to the menu was a big green salad served with pencil thin asparagus which had just come into season and was a real delight. In my family we always preferred the thin fresh asparagus to the thicker stalks restaurants seem to prefer. The thin ones are more tender and more vibrant in flavor.

In the next post are cooking tips and recipe’s for our version of the St. Patrick's Day meal. And so until next year, ERIN GO BRAGH -- Ireland forever in the Gaelic. That is one of the two Gaelic phrases most American Irishmen know, the other is Pos’ ma hone! -- kiss my ass.