Chocolate-Guinness Cake

Continuing the Guinness theme, I made a chocolate cake with it for St. Patrick's Day. The cake was rich and moist but light at the same time. The frosting, not the one paired with the cake recipe, was incredibly dark and chocolatey. I actually added a bit more sugar because it was too dark at first. And because I didn't have a pot of gold handy, I caramelized some hazelnuts and added them as a simple decoration around the base of the cake.





Dinner was more like brunch, and it wasn't overwhelmingly Irish. It was good, though: baked tomatoes with breadcrumbs and herbs, soft scrambled eggs, and asparagus. 



Mushrooms sautéed in Guinness


Cheesy baked hash browns

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Jook

There are many names for this dish, but at it's most basic, this is a rice stew or soup. But it's not just rice stew ... it's creamy rice cooked in a mixture of chicken broth and water with earthy mushrooms, spicy ginger, and pretty much anything else you want to add. I used what we had in the fridge--roast chicken, ham, carrots, and green peas--along with a few shrimp I picked up at the store today. The flavors all cooked together with a little Thai fish sauce and black soy sauce, and the result was perfectly warm and comforting and soothing on my sore throat. I based my recipe on one from David Lebovitz.

Soft Polenta with Chanterelles

This is grown up comfort food: creamy polenta topped with chanterelle mushrooms. Somehow we happened to have chanterelles left over from Thanksgiving, so I sauteed them in a little olive oil, butter and thyme. I cooked the polenta in a mixture of chicken broth and milk, added a little chopped up ham and grated parmesan, and spooned the mushrooms over the top.