Culinary Smackdown - Cabbage

There's an Irish Song that goes like this:

Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?"

The chorus:
Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry.
Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.

Yeah, I never heard of it either.

Anyway, Grumpy Granny is hostessing this month's Culinary Smackdown and she has named the theme - Cabbage!   These smackdowns encourage experimentation and the trying new recipes.  So I'm going for the latter because experimentation with cabbage just sounds wrong.  When I think of cabbage, I think sauerkraut or cole slaw, both of which I have made numerous times.  And of course, being close to St. Patty's Day, there is corned beef and cabbage.  And that jogged my memory on a recipe I came across several years ago while looking for something to make on St. Patty's - Colcannon.  Although it's a pretty simple recipe, I've never made it before, so it satisfies he challenge as far as I'm concerned. 

I looked at several recipes on Allrecipe.com and found this Colcannon recipe.  The actual name of the recipe is called "Diane's Colcannon" which I thought was a play on Dyan Cannon who I loved in The Last of Sheila.  Anyone? Bueller? She was hot back in the 70s and at one time was married to Cary Grant - but I digress.  Turns out the recipe was submitted by Diane F., go figure.

Anyway, here are the ingredients I used.  I bought shredded cabbage (because I just happened to see it at the store) and I had leftover bacon from Sunday breakfast (did he say leftover bacon? - yeah, I know but I had cooked up 1/2 lb for 2 of us). 

The Ingredients.  I cut corners using shredded cabbage and leftover bacon.

The potatoes are boiling and the mis en place - are in place

Because I didn't have any bacon grease, I used butter instead.  After I cooked the cabbage and onion for about 10 minutes, I added in the bacon to heat it up and get some of that flavor into the cabbage.  My mom use to keep a jar of bacon grease for this kind of cooking.  She used it a lot in her tomato sauce.  I need to start doing that.

Cabbage and onion are cooking in butter and I diced the bacon.

Colcannon in the pot, 1 minute old.

Here's dinner.  Yeah, big deal, but it's all I had time to do.  I actually had intended to do a ham steak, but we were out because someone left it off the shopping list.

Monday dinner.

The Verdict:  The Pudge and I thought this was really good.  You definitely get the cabbage and bacon flavor.  The onion not so much. And I don't know if green cabbage would have been better than red, but it would have fit the song better.  And like most of my smackdown food, I always have leftovers for lunch.  I will tell you that after a couple of days in the fridge, the Colcannon started to take on a bluish/purplish hue.  Not the most appetising thing to look at, but it still tasted good.

The Mrs. (who claims to be Irish) said it was just OK.  In fact, she never even heard of it before.  She offered a criticism that the bacon needed to be chopped finer than it was.  And I agree with her.

My office is going to have a potluck lunch for St. Patty's Day and I've already rogered up to make this.  We'll see how that goes.