Belated St Patty's Day Not-entirely-Random Meat Offering

This, of course, is corned beef with cabbage, potatoes and carrots. It is supposed to be the epitome of Irish cuisine.  I, for what it's worth, love the way boiled cabbage, potatoes, and carrots come out in a dish like this, where the ingredients can be cooked ensemble in a crock pot or in a large stew pot on the stove top.  The flavor of the corned beef enhances the vegetables and makes them very brothy and agreeable.

The sticking point for me is the corned beef. It's boiled beef and it's pink. I've cooked meat in ways that I would considered bad--I braised a great big turkey leg in wine until it had the basic consistency of Happy Fun Ball.  I've broiled strip steaks for a period > 8 minutes. (No, don't hate me. I was young, I didn't know. The crispy bits were really reminiscent of well-done beef bacon, so it wasn't all bad. No, they weren't an inch thick, even. Thus, the crispage. In future, I will always do these in a pan w/butter and close attention!)  But boiled beef just feels wrong to me.

Don't get me wrong. My mom has made pot roast,  even crock-pot beef, that has been tender and not without flavor, but when I'm presented with a roast cut, my first instinct is to roast. And when I see pink meat, I am either looking at ham or the inside of my rare skirt-steak--I just don't get corned beef (except as a luncheon meat, in which case it is truly delicious and ridiculously good with cole slaw or sauerkraut on a nice rye bread.).

I prepared corned beef with potatoes and cabbage all of once. My first husband was full-blooded Irish and very proud of his heritage, so I wanted to make a meal for St. Pat's that expressed my appreciation of a heritage I share (like, I think 25%? mixed with sundry other things).   It wasn't the worst meal I ever made (That was the braised turkey.) It wasn't even bad. It needed, perhaps, a story to go along with it, about the history of Ireland and why this dish was part of our culture. As it was, we had leftovers that went to the back of the fridge for a bit. They went blue, not green after several weeks at the back of the fridge, and we didn't even save the plastic container.  It may be the dish wasn't all it could be because I'd never had good corned beef and potatoes, so I didn't know how it ought to taste, and maybe somewhere a great plate of these can be found.

Knowing now that salt pork was the original meat at the center of the cuisine makes a difference to me, though. I've long appreciated the flavors that pork fat imparts in vegetables from doing greens or lima bean in pork hocks; I think I may want to revisit this dish to see if it can be done in a more flavorful, and authentic way. Although, thanks to my current, Italian-American spouse, my answer to this dish is going to look like pan-fried prosciutto with fennel in the place of cabbage and the spuds will also be fried, unless I decide to serve my fennel and prosciutto over potato gnocchi. Yummmmm. Irish/Italian fusion doesn't sound so bad, right? Or, to get down to the boil and the cabbage, start with a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrot, and then dump in minced savoy cabbage, and have them simmered with pork hocks that were already roasted so they were ready to yield the best of their gelatinous flavor and  a couple quarts of vegetable or chicken stock. Simple, peasant-style eats, but done, you know, with intensity.

No Prell-tasting green food colored beer. Just the kind of food my Irish ancestors would have found an affordable bounty.