so it's almost saint patrick's day and i wanted to find a specific Irish dish that was 18th century
this is a good one colcannon thanks for joining
us today as we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century
so most of the cookbooks we look into are English cookbooks that's most of what's being printed in
our time period there are some french cookbooks of course German cookbooks I have never run into
an Irish cookbook from this time period so if we want to find out what the recipes were or what
they were like we have to read into other things so here's a reference from the dictionary the
vulgar tongue this is 1785 and it says colcannon potatoes cabbage pounded together in a mortar
and stewed with butter it's an Irish dish so we have a definition here all well this is definitely
Irish and then it's a sort of as a description that's simplified now the Irish and the time
period weren't known for their complex cooking right so um most of most of the dishes that
are being mentioned are for the lower class and cold cannon is like that this doesn't have any
meat in it it doesn't have anything complicated in it it's just potatoes and greens and butter
that's it and you know we have this kind of reference here it's an Irish dish sort
of what they're really saying is this is a simple dish this is an inexpensive dish
we can't find a recipe this is early 19th century from the cook's complete guide it says colcannon
boil potatoes and greens or spinach separately mash the potatoes squeeze the greens dry
chop them quite fine and mix them with the potatoes with a little butter pepper and salt
very very simple recipe so what we need to do is get these potatoes ready for boiling
do
our potatoes are boiled and mashed up greens the recipe calls for greens or spinach
I decided to use kale in this kale holds itself together really well it's got a great green color
and it's going to give us some texture won't just turn into mush so we have kale here we just
parboiled it just boiled it really quickly drained it off chopped it fine as the recipe called for
and now we've got salt and pepper and butter we're ready to put this together
do
here is our colcannon and tell you what it smells really good it's got this great
look with the green and the white i love it before i taste it let me read to you this
one little song by dibden in the early 19th century it says this is the very end of the
song the cold cannon went forward the pipes and the whiskey and we danced till the bridesmaids
were weary and now my dear jewel to Mrs o'frisky is transmogrified Mrs o'leary
so there's the song love that reference let's find out what this colcannon tastes like
very very good it's like probably the best mashed potatoes you ever had and these wonderful greens
in there add just a little texture i'm not getting a whole bunch of flavor from the kale
but well it's really really good mashed potatoes all by themselves it's not something you eat as
a dish right you always put something else with it you want meat with it you want maybe
gravy on top of it this doesn't need it all by itself this stands alone as a dish
and it's so very good i love this dish from an area that we don't normally cover sometimes we
get outside of our standard area so make sure to check out this episode it's a really good
one and i want to make sure you have a happy st patrick's day and thanks for watching