December 21, 2008
-
O’Brien County Colcannon
Colcannon: A Genetic Craving for One Irish American
Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream…
Oh, wasn’t it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot?
from an Irish folk song
My mother’s Irish family cooked so much colcannon on their O’Brien County farm that Mom resolved to never eat it again as an adult. However, when I tasted it, at age 40, it triggered inexplicable feelings of love and comfort so long forgotten it took two of Mom’s older sisters to explain them to me.
My aunts recalled that colcannon had been my first solid food and that my great grandmother spoon fed it to me in her rocker while I sat on her lap, a mere infant. Somehow, in the smithy of my tongue, she had forged a Celtic awe for potatoes and cabbages, butter and cream that could be lovingly summoned four decades later, by the taste of this most Irish of casseroles.
Great Grandma Kelly is long gone, as are all her children and all her grandchildren, but her colcannon is my touchstone to the underworld of my ancestors. Too humble for modern times, this dish has been forgotten by most Irish-Americans. I want my grandchildren to love it, but how can anyone get excited about the potatoes and cabbages they find in supermarkets today? The varieties of these foods have been limited to a boring few, usually the most cost efficient to a single purpose. Most potatoes are grown only to make reliable frozen French fries. Most American cabbages are bred for cole slaw that will be overwhelmed with imitation mayonnaise.
Slowly, like the repopulation of Ireland, these things are changing, as gardeners discover new worlds of possibility in potatoes and cabbages. Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah now has 650 varieties of potato in its collection, ranging from All Blues to creamy Yellow Carola’s and Cranberry Reds. They sell Early Jersey Wakefield cabbages that have been farmed in America since 1840, grow 15 inches tall and weigh four pounds. Their Mammoth Red Rocks have only been here 115 years, but they often weigh 7 pounds.
Every man in Iowa is an immigrant’s son who carries some inexplicable genetic craving for a lost taste his great grandmother hauled across oceans and mountains. In many cases, the particularity of their seeds were lost for a generation or two, but thanks to the seed savers of the world, and to distinct cravings that skip generations, they are retrievable.
With this in mind, I wandered the roads of Iowa the last two years looking for ingredients similar to what my ancestors might have found in Ireland, to prepare a colcannon that could make grandchildren smile. In Fairfield, I bought milk from Francis Thicke’s organic Radiance Dairy, where the cows graze outdoors all year, in tall grass and clover, and the milk is never homogenized. In Woodward, I found butter made at Pickett Fence Creamery, from cows that grazed all summer.
Erik Sessions, who farms organically north of Decorah, supplies many of that food-conscious town’s fine restaurants, plus the Oneonta Food Co-Op. We bought some of his fall cabbages and marveled at both their flavor and their storage value. Since Sessions is a neighbor of Seed Savers, we assumed his cabbages were heirlooms.
“Actually, with cabbage, I have found that the F1 hybrids are more uniform in performance, something that matters to my customers. The thing about cabbage flavor is luck and seasonal. The most flavorful cabbages are the ones that have experienced a couple of frosts in the Fall. The next best are the early Spring ones that have not experienced any hot weather.
Sessions told us that the cabbages that turned our head were a storage #4, which he plants for late harvest in the fall, and which will keep in the refrigerator all winter. His other favorite cabbages are the small conical “Arrowheads,” which are best in Spring, the Savoy Kilosas, and Super Red 80’s, which do well Spring through Fall.
Sessions starts his cabbage indoors in flats and advises at least 1 inch cells. He suggests heavy feeder, either compost of fertilizer, at the seed stage and again at transplant.
“At that time, flea beetles are the biggest problem for organic cabbage, so I put down hoops and lay floating row covers over them until the hot weather drives the beetles away. Then the white butterflies are laying eggs, so you need to watch for them, hand wipe them off before they become caterpillars or use a Bt spray, which is organic and targets the caterpillars.
Potatoes, the essence of colcannon, were the hardest thing to find. Seed Savers Exchange founder Diane Whealy told us, “We have a huge potato patch 25 to 30 varieties. I know there is a perfect potato for lefse, because the Norwegian population of Decorah has found it. It needs to be extremely dry. But I am not sure about Irish potatoes.”
We experimented with everything from fingerlings to Yukon golds and Inca blues, but nothing performed like nineteenth century Irish potatoes were supposed to — mashing effortlessly when steamed until their jackets crack.
Then we met Penny Brown Huber of Ankeny who grows an Irish heirloom potato first planted in America in 1917. Kerr’s Pink (available from Ronniger’s: (208) 267-7938;
www.ronnigers.com) have snow white flesh despite their name. The texture is very fine-grained with round, light pink skin and delicate little red eyes. The Irish call this potato “floury,” referring to the performance we sought.
“I really like the yield of these potatoes,” Huber told us, adding that she tills her soil three times, the third time running a trench through the seed, which she then hills up.
“We always plant Easter weekend, no matter when Easter falls. That is an old farm tale I inherited. We usually take potatoes out in June and you can harvest these before the plant dies. People often think the plant has to die first, but that isn’t the case, especially if you want to harvest smaller potatoes,” she said.
A Brief History of Potatoes and Cabbage
Most closely related to tobacco and tomatoes, potatoes are weird. They have been cultivated, particularly in altitudes too high for corn, for over 4000 years. In France, they were shunned until Louis XVI began wearing potato flowers and encouraging his court to eat them. Before then, the French thought they caused leprosy. The Irish, British and Russians were more worried about starvation than leprosy, so they embraced potatoes like long lost kin.
Irish immigrants brought potatoes to New England in 1719. Though they grew wild from the southern part of the USA to the tip of Chile, they did not become a commercial crop here until recently.
Cabbage comes from a family that includes: kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and broccoli. The original wild cabbages came from the Mediterranean seaboard, a sunny, salty, rocky clime not unlike a desert. Hence the plant developed cactus-like qualities, learning to retain water in its leaves. Its waxy cuticles and thick leaves became Darwinian success stories.
After Romans brought cabbage to Britain, they proved to be as adaptable to cold climates as to hot, rocky ones. They thrived in Europe’s Middle Ages, when a head could keep a family alive for weeks. In China, two popular species developed: the oblong Chinese cabbage and the non-heading bok choy. When the Mongol hordes taught Europeans how to pickle it, sauerkraut was born and sausage found its soul mate.
Why It’s Eaten on St. Patrick’s Day
Romans brought cabbage to Ireland as if summoned by modern St. Patrick’s Day revelers. Cato wrote this about it:
“If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar before dinner, and likewise after dinner some half dozen leaves. It will make you feel as if you had not eaten and you can then drink as much as you like.”
O’Brien County Colcannon
Serves 8
Originally called kale-cannon, this 400 year old dish is the highest form of potato worship in the Irish kitchen. It mixes potato and cabbage with copious amounts of fresh butter and cream. Ham and scallions are usually added.
1 head green cabbage, chopped
4 pounds potatoes suitable for mashing
1 cup cream, or whole milk
A quarter pound unsalted butter
Half pound of ham, or corned beef
4 scallions, chopped finely
Sea salt and fresh cracked pepper
Wash potatoes and cover in a pot of cold salted water. Bring to a boil. Then tip off two thirds of the water and allow potatoes to steam till the skins break. Mash (peeled or not) with butter and cream, plus sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.
Steam cabbage separately, draining when it gets soft. Stir cabbage, scallions and meat into potatoes. Make a well in center and add more butter
