Saint Patrick's Day Corned Beef Dinner in Willows California

March 19, 2022

My St. Patrick's Day Dinner 2022

I always enjoy hosting St. Patrick's Day dinner at my Bedford, New York farm.

This year, it was a small intimate gathering for six - complete with my corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and of course, my own version of the traditional Irish soda bread. I brined the 10-pound brisket for five days and then boiled it for three and a half hours on the day of our feast. It was cooked with a variety of seasonal vegetables including potatoes, parsnips, turnips, carrots, broccoli, and celery. I also made a wonderful pea soup. And for dessert, refreshingly delicious grapefruit sections topped with pure grapefruit juice granita. It was an evening of good company and great food.

I hope you saw my photos on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48. Here are some more, enjoy.

Whenever I entertain indoors at my farm, it's usually in my Brown Room, a large dining room and sitting area. Flanking my fireplace are recently cut pussy willows from a grove I planted along the wetlands behind my main greenhouse.

Here I am the morning of my dinner juicing the grapefruits for our granita – a shaved ice dessert flavored with fruit juices.

I also made several loaves of my Irish Soda Bread with Rye and Currants. Click on this highlighted link for the recipe from MarthaStewart.com.

Fresh out of the oven, I just had to slice some up to taste.

Then, I cut up all the vegetables. This process is called mis en place meaning "set in place". It refers to having all the ingredients prepped and ready to go before cooking.

Here is the brisket fully covered in water and boiling with vegetables for three and a half hours. Click here for my recipe for Quick Brined Corned Beef and Vegetables from MarthaStewart.com. It is boiling in a WagnerWare Magnalite Dutch Oven I bought at a tag sale years ago.

Look at this head of broccoli. This is one of the first broccolis we've grown in the greenhouse. To grow broccoli successfully indoors, it must get at least six hours of direct sunlight per day or grow lights timed to provide the same amount of direct exposure. The entire crop looks so beautiful.

And here is one of the lettuces for our salad. I love using fresh, organic vegetables from my gardens. I always grow lots of varieties of lettuce, so I can enjoy them at dinners and share them with my family and friends.

Here are wedges of cabbage cooking in the beef broth.

All the vegetables are cooked separately until tender.

Here I am at the beautifully set table – in shades of green, of course.

Here is a closer look at one of the place settings. My housekeeper, Enma, and I, always work together to create the most inviting table settings. I also used some plants from my greenhouse for the centerpiece. This is a potted selaginella, sometimes referred to as a spike moss or arborvitae fern.

Here's a closer look. This plant is the sole genus of vascular plants in the family Selaginellaceae. It has creeping foliage and simple, scale-like leaves on branching stems.

If you follow my blog regularly, you may be familiar with this plant. It is one of my Chinese money plants, Pilea peperomioides. The Pilea peperomioides has attractive coin-shaped foliage. This perennial is native to southern China, growing naturally along the base of the Himalayan mountains. It is also known as coin plant, pancake plant, and UFO plant.

Dinner was scheduled for 7pm. Kevin took this photo as I was plating our sliced corned beef brisket and vegetables.

There was plenty for everyone. Everything was so beautiful, and delicious – the corned beef came out so tender and flavorful. The vegetables were also very tasty – fresh cabbage, turnips, parsnips, celery, potatoes, and cabbage.

The platters were brought into the dining room, so all my guests could help themselves. Every one of us went back for seconds, and even thirds. Here is a full platter before we all "dug in." In Ireland, beef was a meat reserved only for the wealthy. The Great Famine resulting from potato blight caused a mass migration of the Irish to the new world. In America, corned beef was readily available to Irish immigrants and became a favored comfort food.

Here are three of my soda bread loaves still warm and ready to serve. Legend has it that, in some areas of Ireland, a cross was cut on the top of the Irish soda bread with a knife to ward off the devil and protect the household. It also helps the bread cook evenly and thoroughly. Irish soda bread is a somewhat sweet white bread made with eggs and butter and studded with raisins and caraway seeds — the "soda" in the name comes from the baking soda, or "bread soda" in Ireland, used to leaven it instead of yeast and kneading.

Our greens salad was first – dressed with a light vinaigrette.

Here is my pea soup – the silky smooth texture of this soup is an elegant way to show off the subtle flavor of peas.

I served my delicious new wine, Martha's Chard – be sure to visit 19Crimes.com for a store near you. You will love it – so well balanced and flavorful.

And here are slices of grapefruit ready to be topped with grapefruit granita.

Look how beautiful this is – and so easy to make. It was so nice to gather with friends and share this wonderful meal. I hope you all had a great St. Patrick's Day.

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Source: https://www.themarthablog.com/2022/03/my-st-patricks-day-dinner-2022.html

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