For Saint Patrick’s Day Green or Irish

My husband teases me about being a Mick. He tells people that’s why I like potatoes so much. And whiskey (with an ‘e’ thank you very much). He also says that’s why I sometimes stretch the truth a little bit, which is absolutely not true. Not like some people in my family. I’m really only part Irish (I’ll leave it to you to guess which part), but my family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in a big way.

When I was growing up, my mom would dress me in green for St. Patrick’s Day. I’d also wear a white and green pin with a four leaf clover on it that said “Kiss me I’m Irish.” Was I really such a big dork? On March 17th, my mother would usually make corned beef and cabbage for dinner. She’d make a cake with green frosting until I got old enough to make cake. Then I’d make a cake with green frosting. It was the same as our regular cake recipe, but with green dye added to the butter cream. I found out recently that when my mother was growing up, the oldest daughter living at home with her family had to make two sheet cakes every day for their dinner. One yellow cake with vanilla butter cream frosting and one chocolate cake with a coconut brown sugar topping. My mom said she was happy when she got to be the oldest girl at home, because making cake was more fun than the other jobs like peeling 10 lbs of potatoes. My grandparents had 13 children (that lived!), there were also two cousins and some other random people so there were always about 20 people at their house for dinner, so they needed two big cakes and a whole sack of potatoes. You see how Irish I am? Luckily, my parents were not so prolific; there are only four of us. So, on Saint Patrick’s Day, our mother even dyed our milk green, no joke. One time she even dyed the mashed potatoes green, but that only happened once, we must not have taken too well to green mashed potatoes.

I thought about making corned beef from scratch this year, but then I would have had to invite people over to eat it with us. Everyone we know is just too busy right now for that. Besides, we have this running joke about giving up buying meat for lent. We started it right after Mardi Gras when we realized how many things we had in our freezer. We’ve already gone through a pork roast, 2 pork tenderloins, some chicken breast, a sirloin steak, a meatloaf, some meatballs, a package of calamari, 8 sweet Italian sausages. We’ve still got a whole chicken, 2 more pork tenderloins, enough boeuf bourguignon for 4 people, and at least 12 individually packaged servings of leftovers from various meals, those are for our lunches during the week. There are also frozen raspberries, strawberries and blueberries, some green beans, peas and chopped onion, a couple of quarts of fish stock, chicken stock and some soups of various colors. Oh, and we have our house for sale and all that stuff needs to get eaten because we’re not going to move it. And it’s about to be spring and we won’t want to roast a chicken or eat boeuf bourgignon once it gets warm outside. We also just had the mother of all snowstorms, so there’s no way we’re going to the grocery store. Out of all the possibilities, I settled on lamb shanks. Not Irish enough for you? I’ve added some Guinness to up the Irish quotient. And we’re having it with mashed potatoes. I’ll just sprinkle them with parsley for the green bit and leave the dye for the frosting on the cake.

Lamb shanks with Guinness

• 4 lamb shanks, about 2-2 1/2 lbs. total
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 can Guinness draught beer
• 4 carrots
• 1 large onion chopped, or 1 cup pearl onions, peeled
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 3 T flour
• 1 cup beef broth, chicken broth or water, warmed
• 24-26 oz. stewed tomatoes (make sure that the only ingredient listed on the can or box is tomatoes, we like Pom?)
• 1 bouquet garni - 3 stems parsley, several stems fresh thyme, 1 bay leaf, tied with string
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 3 T chopped parsley

Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Place oil in Dutch oven over high heat. Add lamb shanks. Let them get brown and unstuck from the pan before turning to brown them on another side. When they are brown all over, remove them to a bowl. Turn heat down to medium and add onions. Cook onions stirring frequently for about 4-6 minutes. If using pearl onions, let them get some brown spots in a couple of places. Add garlic and carrots and cook for another couple of minutes. Lower heat to medium low. Add flour and stir to coat everything. Cook for about 4 minutes until flour has turned slightly golden in color. Slowly add broth or water, stirring with a whisk to make sure no lumps form, warming the broth or water beforehand will also help with this. Add reserved lamb shanks and any juices that are in the bowl along with Guinness, tomatoes and bouquet garni. Add about 1 teaspoon salt and more pepper. Turn heat to high and bring liquid just to a boil. Turn heat to a very low simmer, place the lid on the pot and cook for about 3 hours, stirring occasionally, until lamb shanks are tender. If the liquid isn’t thick enough at this point, you can fish out the lamb shanks and boil it down a little and then add the lamb back to the pot to reheat a bit. You can serve this with mashed potatoes, polenta, pasta, rice or just with some good bread. Garnish individual servings with chopped parsley. I always try to make this a day ahead of time because it really is better the next day, and I can also remove any fat from the top of the sauce before reheating it.

Serves 4.