THE NIBBLE » St. Patrick’s Day

TIP OF THE DAY: Irish Cream Icing

Nibble Editors — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:20:28 +0000

Make a white chocolate frosting with Irish cream liqueur. Photo courtesy of Equinox Maple Flakes.

Celebrate the 17th with Irish Cream Icing. You can bake or buy brownies or a loaf cake and add this tasty homemade topping. Take 1/3 cup Irish cream liqueur (such as Bailey’s) and 8 ounces of top-quality white chocolate. Buy a good chocolate bar instead of baking chips, which can be vegetable oil instead of real chocolate. You can buy Green & Black’s, one of our favorites (it’s organic, too), readily available at Whole Foods Markets and elsewhere. In a small pan, bring the liqueur to a slow boil; then remove from the heat and whisk in the chopped white chocolate until it’s completely melted and the icing is smooth. Refrigerate until it becomes thick enough to spread, stirring occasionally. Spread the icing over the brownies or cake. Keep refrigerated until 30 minutes before serving.

- Make Irish Coffee to go with your dessert.
- Find more cake recipes in the Gourmet Cakes Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.

TIP OF THE DAY: St. Patrick’s Day Eggs

Nibble Editors — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:41:15 +0000

You don’t have to hunt for green bagels for St. Patrick’s Day breakfast. Start your day with a nutritious green breakfast by adding pesto sauce to the eggs beaten for scrambled eggs, omelets, a frittata or quiche. Mix in one teaspoon per egg. Decorate the plate with fresh basil or spinach leaves, and you’ll start the day in a holiday mood. You’d think pesto would be a pretty simple proposition: basil (or other green, like spinach or arugula), oil (usually olive, sometimes walnut or other oil), Parmesan and nuts (usually pine, nuts, but walnut pestos and other recipes are pretty fine). Yet, we tasted more than 100 pesto sauces from around the world and found only six brands to recommend to you, two of which were from recent Top Pick Of The Week sauce maker, Sauces ‘n Love. Read about our favorite pestos, the history of pesto and a recipe for making great pesto at home. When you realize how easy it is, you’ll become a pesto-making maverick.		Use pesto sauce to make green eggs on St. Patrick’s Day. Ham is optional with your green eggs, but you can enter our Gourmet Giveaway to win a great one this week. Photo by Val Lyashov \| SXC.
Read about more of our favorite sauces in the Pasta & Sauces Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.

TIP OF THE DAY: Bake Shamrock Cookies For St. Patrick’s Day

Nibble Editors — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:06:03 +0000

Bite me, I’m Irish.		You’ve got plenty of time to find a shamrock cookie cutter before the St. Patrick’s Day festivities begin. Then, bake up a batch of delicious butter cookies. (If you don’t have a shamrock cookie cutter, you can always make regular shapes with green décor.) Use your own favorite recipe, or try this recipe from Land O’ Lakes. Unless you need to use margarine for dietary reasons, always use butter—fresh butter, not a bar that’s been sitting in the refrigerator for a month, picking up flavors from other foods. You can also use the shamrock cookie cutter to make shamrock toasts for hors d’oeuvres, shamrock pancakes and even vegetable cut-outs.
If you don’t want to bake, treat yourself to these hand-decorated cookies from Eleni’s, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week (read our review). - See more of our favorite cookies in the Cookies & Brownies Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.

RECIPE: “Dublin Delight” St. Patrick’s Day Cocktail

Nibble Editors — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:36:35 +0000

Skip the green beer, have a green Grey Goose cocktail, the “Dublin Delight.”

Don’t color the beer green at your St. Patrick’s Day party. Let the beer drinkers enjoy fine craft beer in the golden color it should be. Those who want a vodka cocktail can go green with a Dublin Delight from Grey Goose Vodka. It was specially created to abet drinkin ‘o the green by master mixologist, Nick Mautone, author of Raising the Bar (“Better Drinks, Better Entertaining”). Starting with Grey Goose Vodka’s popular Le Citron lemon-flavored vodka, the ingredients include kiwi, simple syrup, a sprig of mint, a small piece of vanilla pod and a splash of club soda.

It’s not as simple as pouring tonic water into the gin, but once you make up a pitcher, it’s smooth sailing—and you have something memorable for your guests.

- Read the full Dublin Delight recipe.

- Find more seasonal cocktails in the Cocktails Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.

PRODUCT ALERT: Leprechaun Bombs For St. Patrick’s Day

Nibble Editors — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:08:58 +0000

You don’t need the luck of the Irish to enjoy Leprechaun Bombs from Cosmic Chocolate. You just have to read THE NIBBLE (or else, live in Oakland, California and wander into this boutique chocolate shop). Part of the shop’s “Cosmic Bomb” series, these bonbons are the bomb: beautifully hand-painted chocolate shells, dappled with edible glitter. The Leprechaun Bombs are filled with a ganache that is infused with Bailey’s mint liqueur, Irish whiskey and Green Chartreuse, an ancient herb liqueur of more than 130 medicinal and aromatic herbs, flowers and other plants (who can even name that many?). Taken from an old alchemical recipe for an “elixir of life,” it was first made in the 1600s by monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the Chartreuse Mountains of eastern France, intended as a medicine.		You don’t have to be Irish to deserve a set or two of Leprechaun Bombs from the Cosmic Chocolate Shop.
The recipe was enhanced and became popular as a beverage. It’s green in color, hence appropriate to the Leprechaun Bombs. A second Chartreuse liqueur, colored with saffron and milder and sweeter than the original, is called Yellow Chartreuse. The yellow color with the greenish tinge known as chartreuse takes its name from the Yellow Chartreuse liqueur. But back to the chocolate. You can purchase four bonbons for $8.00 in a transparent box, allowing the cosmic glow of the Emerald Isle to shine through (well, not really—but the candy looks great) at CosmicChocolateShop.com—and you can see the other Cosmic Bombs as well. We haven’t tasted the Leprechaun Bombs, but we’ve enjoyed every other Cosmic Bomb that has crossed our lips, so our money is on the Leprechauns. When you order, please tell the Cosmic Chocolate folks that it’s St. Paddy, not St. Patty (you’ll note that error in their website description). No one likes his name spelled wrong, not even the patron saint of Ireland. When your name gets spelled like a girl’s name, even a saint has his limits. - See our other favorite St. Patrick’s Day chocolate, candy, cookies and more.

PRODUCT REVIEW: St. Patrick’s Day Sweets

Nibble Editors — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:37:02 +0000

St. Patrick’s Day will be celebrated on Monday, March 17, 2008, honoring the feast day and date of death of the priest and patron saint of Ireland, who died on March 17th around 460 C.E. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade actually took place in New York City on March 17, 1762 and continues today, with kilted bagpipers and drum corps drawing enormous crowds (a few years ago, we joined them to see both a kilted Sean Connery and a suited Mayor Bloomberg march). These days the holiday is celebrated not just by people of Irish descent, but people of all backgrounds, in the United States, Canada, and Australia—and even in countries where there is no Irish population, such as Japan, Russia and Singapore. In Ireland, it was traditionally a religious holiday (pubs closed). But in 1995, the government decided to use St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to drive tourism. It is now a multi-day celebration featuring parades, concerts, fireworks and other attractions.		Order some shamrock cookies for a St. Patrick’s Day treat.
Our own NIBBLE celebration focuses on food and drink, starting with a selection of sweets you can order for gifts, a St. Patrick’s Day party, or just to treat yourself and your family. Take a nibble at our recommendations.