Corned Beef and Cabbage *

We have never done much to celebrate the birthday of ol' St. Pat around here, so this time we decided to put some corned beef and cabbage on the table. It was a first for us, so a few errors were probably made, but we thought the meal was good. The recipe said to cut the meat in 1/2 inch slices, but when I checked out a few other sites, afterwards, it looks like they could have been sliced more thinly. The cabbage was sauteed a couple of hours prior to the meat being done; so once the cabbage was done, it was transferred into a non-stick skillet and set on low heat. As a result, it came out much darker than anticipated, but the taste was excellent, so we didn't think to much about it.

Ingredients:

Corned Beef (baked)

2 lbs corned beef (packaged)
8-10 cloves
1/4 cup hot sweeet honey mustard
1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar

Cabbage (sauteed)

Olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 large head of cabbage, sliced into approximately 1/2 inch slices
Salt

Method - Corned Beef:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Drain the corned beef from the pacage and discard the spice packet. Lay corned beef, fat side up, on a large piece of wide, heavy duty, aluminum foil wide enough to wrap the entire piece of meat. Spread the top with the mustard, insert the cloves into the top of the slab (evenly spaced). Sprinkle brown sugar over the top.

2. Wrap with the foil leaving a little space between the meat the foil on the top. Place the foil-wrappede corned beef in a shallow roating pan and bake for 2 hours.

3. Open the foil wrapping, spread more honey mustard over the top of the slab and broil it for 2 - 3 minutes, until the top is bubbly and lightly browned. Let rest for 5 to 10 minutes, the slice on the diagonal, across the grain, into 1/2 inch, or less, slices.

Serve immediately.

Serves 3.

Method - Cabbage (Sauteed):

1. Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil on medium high to high heat in a large, wide pot or large, high-sided pan. Add chopped onions, cook for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic.

2. Add a third of the cabbage, sprinkle with a little salt and stir to coat with oil and mix with onions. Spread out the cabbage evenly over the bottom of the pan and do not stir until it starts to brown. If the heat is high enough, this should happen quicly. The trick is to have the burner hot enough to easily brown the cabbage, but not hot enough that it easily burns. When the bottom of the cabbage is nicely browned, use a metal spatula to lift it up and flip it, scraping the browned bits as you go.l

3. Once the cabbage in the pan has browned on a couple of flips, add another third of the cabbage to the pan. Mix well, then spread out the cabbae and repeat. You may need to add abit more olive oil to the pan to help with the browning, and to keep the cabbage from sticking too much to the pan. Once this batch has cooked down a bit and browned, add the remaining third of the cabbage and repeat.

Serve with the corned beef. Served with boiled new potatoes. Can be made ahead and reheated.

Serves 3 - 5.

* Recipe adapted from Simply Recipes.