Luck of the Irish

St. Patrick's Day may not be until Tuesday, but Ben and I started celebrating this weekend. And by celebrating, I mean eating food that I consider to be Irish in nature. Like the corned beef and root veggies I made on Saturday.

I hadn't necessarily planned to make my own St. Patty's Day meal, but when I did my grocery shopping this week, I was feeling particularly Irish, an emotion that may have been induced by a deli case of steeply discounted corned beef.

The corned beef was very good, as were the carrots and onions cooked along with it, but the real stars of the show were the roasted red potatoes, made with a vinegar-mustard dressing. You can find the exact recipe here, but I just eyeballed the measurements. Cut up small red potatoes, toss with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast in a 400-degree oven until tender. Throw a few cloves of garlic (unpeeled) in with the potatoes. While the potatoes are roasting, whisk together a little more oil, a little bit of vinegar and Dijon mustard, some chives and more salt and pepper. When the roasting is through, squeeze the garlic from the skins into the dressing. Whisk. Add potatoes, toss to coat, eat, delight in the potatoey goodness.

This recipe is great for a few reasons. One, it requires no potato peeling. Two, it is filled with garlic. Three, it is filled with garlic. I give it the Kiefer Kitchen Seal of Approval.

On Sunday, Ben and I continued our Irish-tivities with a trip to The Hibernian, Cary's best (and perhaps only) Irish restaurant. It's our favorite cold-weather eatery.

We appreciate The Hibernian not only for the great eats, but for the Irish atmosphere. (And I consider myself something of an expert on this topic -- I've seen "Far and Away" like six times.) A roaring fire, Celtic music, and more pictures of famous Irish people than you can shake a stick at. Also, I've heard at least one authentic Irish accent while we've been in there.

Ben and I have different approaches to our meals at The Hibernian. He generally opts for a ginormous sandwich while I go for a small cup of soup and leave room for dessert. I do this because the raspberry bread pudding is excellent and worth skipping the corned beef sandwich for. Sunday, I discovered that the orange-chocolate cake is also excellent. For visual proof, please see the "before" and "after" photos.

Before


After


Notice that I did leave the orange slice, the mint leaf and at least half of the powered sugar that was dusted around the rim of the plate.

I was kind enough to share my dessert with Ben, who selected a battered cod sandwich for his meal this time around. (I went with the Irish stew and a slice of Irish bread, which New Englanders know as Boston brown bread.) I let him have his own spoon and everything. I guess I was just all caught up in the St. Patty's Day spirit.

Even though I love the raspberry bread pudding and I'm not usually a big fan of chocolate cake, this little confectionery wonder has made a fan of me. Éirinn go brách and pass the cake, please.

Taking 'Cues

Ben and I have become barbecue enthusiasts. The time-honored Southern tradition of roasting an entire pig over a wood fire has become very dear to the hearts of these two Yankees.

For those of you unfamiliar with barbecue, or for those readers who think of barbecue as an event held on the Fourth of July or similar occasions, let me point you to the wisdom of Rhett and Link, North Carolina's favorite musical comedy duo:

People not from the South think barbecue means cookout.
And that’s something they’re wrong about.
Barbecue’s not a verb.
Barbecue’s not a grill.
Barbecue is meat prepared in a very special way, which varies depending on where you are.

And when you're in Eastern North Carolina barbecue territory, like we are, barbecue is pork prepared with vinegar-based sauce. And that's it.

I'll spare you details on the Eastern-style/Western-style drama, only saying that most folks around here like Eastern-style and Ben and I are with them on that.

Our favorite barbecue spot in Bill's in Wilson. There are a lot of good things about Bill's. First -- and most important -- the food is excellent. Second, there's a lot of it. Third, it's pretty cheap. Fourth, the ambiance and decor are such that you don't feel bad if you drop a little of your barbecue on the table. Or the floor.

I usually go for the barbecue (pork -- but that goes without saying in the Tar Heel State), chicken and dumplings, hush puppies, sweet potatoes and biscuits. And peach cobbler. The photo at the top is my most recent Bill's meal. Notice the half-eaten biscuit. That's where I started.

Ben skips the dessert and does double barbecue and biscuits. He's also a sweet potato fan, likes the fried chicken and hush puppies, and has been known to try fatback but reports it isn't his favorite menu item.



I think this picture of Ben really captures our barbecue experience. See how he's savoring the moment? Or just happened to blink as I took the picture?

If you're in the neighborhood, stop in at Bill's. Tell them we sent you. But I'd recommend skipping the fatback.

Lunch Box

So if you ever find yourself in North Raleigh looking for a place to have lunch, let me offer a suggestion: Seoul Garden, my new favorite Korean barbecue and tofu place.

There are plenty of reasons to like Seoul Garden. Here are a few:

• The rice is extra sticky (and the rest of the food is great, too).
  
• The waiters are very friendly.
• The service is speedy.
• The prices are reasonable.
  

But here's my primary reason for going: If you order the lunch box, you get your food . . . wait for it . . . in a compartmentalized box! (You classy types will know them as bento boxes.)

There is something so satisfying about having little portions of food separated into little spaces in the lunch box in front of you. Orderly. Cheerful. Every lunch should be this compartmental.

The food: The Seoul Garden lunch box
The verdict: Hand me my chopsticks, please

Good? Berry.

I've always been a Dairy Queen girl (the Nixon women are very fond of the Blizzard-as-lunch meal) but last night Ben and I decided to try a Triangle tradition: Goodberry's Frozen Custard. Everyone else in the Triangle had the same idea, however, and we had visit two locations before we found a place to park.

This was my first-ever custard. Like ice cream but made with eggs in addition to sugar and cream, custard is -- as you can imagine -- very rich. Goodberry's specialty is the Carolina Concrete. You can choose vanilla, chocolate or the flavor-of-the-day custard and then whatever mix-ins tickle your fancy. I went with peanut butter fudge. Ben chose mocha.

We've already marked our calendars for two Saturdays from now, when the flavor of the day is key lime. I will be adding pineapple and coconut. And maybe playing Jimmy Buffett tunes as I eat, to celebrate the tropic nature of my dessert.

My only complaint? On their website, the fine folks at Goodberry's say their Concretes are so thick, the servers tip them upside down before they give them to you (to demonstrate viscosity, no doubt). Neither one of our Concretes were inverted prior to serving. I was disappointed. Let's have some truth in advertising, people.

Blizzards are still number one in my heart, but Concretes are a close second.

The food: Mini Carolina Concrete (vanilla with peanut butter fudge)
The verdict: 100 times tastier than actual concrete

Frosting that Takes the Cake

Last year for my birthday, Ben bought me a cherry cheesecake from Once in a Blue Moon Bakery in downtown Cary. The good news was that it was a wonderful cheesecake. The bad news was that I gained at least 17 cream-cheese-induced pounds because I lack restraint when it comes to cheesecake and with only two of us to eat it, I had about 14 slices.

So this year, we returned to Blue Moon but decided to go with a few goodies instead of an entire cake: a raspberry brownie, a marble brownie, a lemon bar and a slice of "Orange Creamsicle" cake.

The brownies were great. The lemon bar was great. But the cake was amazing. Buttery, tender yellow cake with an orange frosting, with orange preserves between layers, topped with shaved white chocolate. I wish I had a picture for you, but as with the Starbucks cookie, I ate it before I could photograph it.

What really made the cake special was the frosting. Rich, but not that sweet, with a very true, intense orange flavor. The consistency was perfect -- lighter and fluffier than a typical buttercream-type frosting. And none of that chemically aftertaste that I think comes on ready-made cakes from supermarket bakeries.

Does anyone have any ideas about how I could recreate a fluffy, rich, orange-flavored, not-too-sweet frosting? I'm desperate to recreate this masterpiece o' cake.

The food: Once in a Blue Moon Bakery's Orange Creamsicle layer cake
The verdict: A birthday wish come true