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Sometimes at my house, the United Nations roams the rooms. I hear the crafty laughter of the French; the lingering slides of the Italian; the staccato tap dance of the Mexican. But mostly I hear Irish. Mostly I hear the cunning baritone boom, the lilting collision of hope and despair. The voice belongs to my sweetheart, but the contagion has spread to family and to friends who share our space when the Irishman emerges. Larger than life, the Irishman sings the music of pure melody. It’s Molly Malone and haunting sea shanties. It’s dancing love songs and tumbling drinking songs. And yes, it’s drinking and eating and St. Patrick’s Day, which means a slug of Irish and a plateful of corned beef and cabbage. Now I know that corned beef is an Irish-American tradition, born of thriftiness at the turn of the century in New York’s Lower East Side when corned beef was more available and cheaper than Irish bacon, but culinary thrift has led to more than one good recipe, and I am Irish-American. |
In the Old Country, where St. Paddy’s Day has a wee bit more spiritual side to it, the good folk consume poundies, bangers, boxties, colcannon, coddle, crubeens, boiled dinner and Irish stew. That’s all well and good, but new traditions are born with circumstance, and St. Patrick, captured as a slave at 15, was actually the son of Roman parents who named him Maewyn. Ireland was the land of his captors. Patrick adapted.
So have I. I love corned beef, which falls apart at the touch of a fork, its spices slipping through the satiny folds of braised cabbage, surrounded by tiny red-skinned new potatoes. A friend of mine, one Pat Murphy, taught me to slide sweet leeks into the mix and the tender green of halved baby artichokes. We may not be in the Old Country, but the hills are greening, and the morning mist lies silver in the valley, while the March wind plays penny whistle in the trees. Plate up a steaming slab of corned beef and cabbage. Wear the green. There’s a little bit of Irish in all of us! |
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