Other than stew, you probably can’t
get a more Irish dinner than potatoes, cabbage and bacon. That’s why I decided
to do an Easy Meals’ version in the form of Roasted new potatoes, buttered cabbage and bacon. Well, I had to
put meat in somewhere! I could only imagine Dear Husband’s face if I handed him
a plate of veg and no meat! :)
So, to make the roasted new potatoes,
I boiled them for 5 minutes and drained them. The recipe said to take a fork to
them and press down on them which I tried but it was turning into a bit of a
task so I took the potato masher instead and just lightly pressed down on them.
They were then ready to go into the oven. I already had a roasting dish with
rapeseed oil in it heating for about 10 minutes so I tumbled the potatoes in
(this is the part where you have to be careful not to burn yourself and is
highly recommended that you keep the saucepan and roasting dish at arms’
length). I also added in a tablespoon of semolina and seasoning. Into the oven they went for 40 minutes.
Next, it was the turn of the cabbage.
Now, the recipe said to use savoy cabbage but when I went to get cabbage, I
could get white cabbage, York cabbage and kale but no savoy. I even got Dear
Husband to check shops on his way home from work but to no avail. Therefore, I
settled on the white cabbage which I quartered, cored and finely sliced
sideways. Into the frying pan it went on top of some melted butter, two
tablespoons of water and seasoning. I popped the lid on and cooked it for about
5 minutes.
For the bacon, I simply fried it
seeing as the oven was already in operation and I don’t have a fancy oven
whereby the grill and oven are separate. When everything was ready, I served
up.
The verdict…
Dear Husband gave the recipe 8 marks
out of 10. I am furthermore convinced that you can’t go wrong with traditional
Irish cooking of potatoes, meat and two veg. Indeed, on my way home from work
yesterday, I called in to my parents’ house and Dear Mother was making the
dinner so, she’s a bit like me, and no one can leave the house without getting
fed so I was only too happy to oblige. I sure love it when someone makes me
dinner and especially if it’s my Dear Mother’s cooking. She was making her own
traditional dinner of potatoes, turnip and bacon so I had potatoes and turnip
and she’s such a fantastic cook that even with two simple vegetables, my dinner
tasted gorgeous. It’s just something about the way she cooks them. Of course,
she was scolding Dear Father about putting bacon gravy on top of his turnip
but, sure, some things never change and it does him no harm. Yes, remember how I
said he eats butter like wedges of cheese?! I ate the roasted potatoes and cabbage and I must say how tasty they were. I must say that the semolina made a difference to the roast potatoes - in a nice way of course. I'd seen Nigella Lawson before on one of her programmes make roasted potatoes at Christmas with semolina and it was something that I had always intended to do but never got round to doing. With this recipe, I had the perfect opportunity. I would give my dinner 7 marks out of 10.
Overall, this was a very simple
recipe to make. The biggest problem was getting savoy cabbage which is strange
to think. I will most definitely make this again and I suppose if you were to
start making recipes from the Easy Meals book, this would be a recipe which I would
highly recommend as it’s very traditional and not much can go wrong. Enjoy this
one!
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