Poland and Ireland on a Plate

I think that winter is made for eating a sleeping. Since I am not allowed to hibernate through the winter, it is only logical that I spend way more time eating than I probably should. I did a mental tally of the cookbooks that I still have to utilize before June 30^th for this Cookbook Challenge, and I am still behind. It doesn’t matter that I may have acquired several for the Christmas holiday, I should still be further ahead than I am. It also doesn’t help that when I walk into a book store, I am drawn like a magnet to a lodestone to the cookbook section.

In an attempt to make some head way on the books that I already have, I have started to use multiple cookbooks at one time for a meal.  This has mixed results. Not bad results, but mixed, because some where I forget to take a picture of something and then debate on if it is esthetically pleasing to take pictures of food glopped together on my dinner plate.   In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter because it is all going to end up in my stomach in the end. (Insert evil cackle here.)

The Bermingham House

Every Wednesday we have was I dubbed as “Nerd Night” at my house. This is where my husband a long with a motley assortment of friends and family come over and eat food, watch a really bad movie and discuss a variety of off the wall topics. My part of this is has to do with the “eat food”. I prepare the food, which makes them the perfect subjects for experimental recipes in this challenge. This past Wednesday they had the pleasure of a mixed culture faire, where Poland met Ireland on the dinner plate and no potatoes were harmed in the process.  Literally there were no potatoes harmed in the process.

Scanning the cooks books I found a lovely stuffed tomato recipe called Mushroom stuffed Tomatoes in my Best of Polish Cooking compiled by Karen West that seemed like it was meant to be a natural side dish for Bermingham Chicken out of my Irish Countryhouse Cooking by Rosie Tinne. I am pretty sure that there is no such thing as a normal recipe. As I scanned the ingredients for the chicken disk, I realized that two slices of ham is a lot of ham. I am not sure if the slices they are talking about in the recipe are the inch thick slices that I picked up at the grocery store or if they were talking about sandwich thin slices. I decided to face it and to use just one large ham slice and cube it instead of two slices and lay them flat at the bottom of my fireproof dish. (The recipe was very specific that I used a fireproof dish, I am going to assume that all of my bake ware if fire proof, because why else would it be able to go in the oven?) Other than the slight confusion with the ham, the overall result of the dish was somewhat like an inside out Chicken Cordon Bleu.  Ham and Chicken are meant to be meaty friends in a cheese sauce. 

The Stuffed Tomatoes were not trouble free as I had hoped they would be.  I thought that I would have issues with coring a tomato and filling it.  That was actually easy.  If anything out of this whole challenge I am building some culinary skills and am a lot more confident wielding knives.  The trouble that I had with the tomatoes was the ingredients that were not listed.  There came a spot in the instructions where it told me to add onion and sauté.  I had no problem adding onion, if the onions were listed in the ingredients to begin with. I ended up scrambling to dice an onion to add to the mix.  Then at the end of the instructions it said to add spices.  I had already added salt and pepper and there were no other spices listed, so I wasn’t sure if this is where I was to get funky with the tomato or not. I just settled for more salt and pepper and hopped that it turned out well. 

Overall both recipes did not cause bodily harm to any of the tasters.  Some suggestions of adding rice to either dish came about, but if that was the only thing I would consider this a success and can cross both of the cookbooks off of my list. It is often amazing how it doesn't matter where food is from, that when it is done well it doesn't matter what is paired with what. It is a wonderful medley in the mouth.