Cooking: Corned Beef, Cabbage, Carrots and Colcannon and Clay Play

Earlier this week was St. Patrick’s Day, and luckily I remembered to take out the brisket from the freezer before leaving for work.       

I never thought I'd be one to boil dinner, but I once watched my dad make corned beef and cabbage and remember liking it. However, unlike my dad, I don't throw the potatoes into my boiled dinner and I don't like all the color leached out of my vegetables. While the brisket boiled for a good two and half to three hours, I waited a half hour before dinner to cook the potatoes, carrots and cabbage. I laid the quartered cabbage and carrots atop the boiling beef and decided to mash the potatoes with lots of butter, cream and green onion and chives to make Colcannon.

The cabbage might have been a little too limp for my liking, but at least the carrots were bright orange.

And with all the mustards set out, I feel like March is United Kingdom cooking month, having served Shepherd's Pie, Madras chicken curry, a smoky halibut chowder, and baked a Guinness stout cake.

I had served during the week leftover Madras chicken curry and finally got to making a green curry. I visited our garden plot with the dog and harvested a lot of mint. Add to my Vitamix blender to that mint, cilantro, ground ginger, smashed garlic cloves, jalapenos that I de-seeded and removed the membrane, cumin powder, coriander powder, lime juice, palm sugar, tamarind paste.

Game changer! Hubs even liked and said it enhanced the flavor of the curry. I added a little yogurt hoping to lighten the color, but no go. It doesn't really emulsify, but luckily I didn't add too much to ruin the appearance. I plan on cooking a tandoori chicken with that yogurt and biriyani minus the raisins and nuts and serve this mint cilantro chutney with it. It's so delicious and can freeze for later.

And then it was Saturyay! A day for clay play. First stop, Clay Planet where I bought two bottles of clear glaze and two bags of clay for a friend. For myself, I bought this jar of crackle glaze to make some bonsai pots for the hubs and bag of speckled buff clay. I'll be making my way next through a bag of frost porcelain. I'm pondering making a dinnerware set of four coupe plates--no foot, but a slight rim on the edge. I was telling my clay mates yesterday that I had bought a plate from Haand which was too big for my cupboard, but which I love and will keep as a serving platter. And so my handmade plates will be mimic and complement that North Carolina porcelain platter. 

And I can't stop making bud vases. I made a bottle vase with a quote from Corita Kent: "Flowers grow out of dark moments." I've a number of flower quotes that I want to add to vases. I'm leaning toward minimalist forms with of course, the wabi sabi of my imperfect making. I just could not for the life of me get the spout of my bottle vase made with some of the last of my Electric Brown clay perfectly round. It's wonky as all heck. 

And aargh, I threw away the paper templates of the other bud vases I've made and decided they're forms I like. More templates to locate and cut out on Monday. I remember how much I love the contrast of glossy white stripes on the speckled buff and am wanting to make frost porcelain vases with marine blue stripes like in the picture below. Their shapes are gorgeous too.

And decal work too! That's another surface decoration that excites me too.

I would love to make some more of the Greek amphora vases with the frost porcelain and adhere some commercial decals on to them.