Monday, February 3, 2014

Imbolc: Colcannon Cakes

We don't celebrate the sabbats as we used to, but often I still like to have a small celebration on or around the time of a sabbat. Usually we do this by cooking a meal that fits the sabbat and sometimes a small extra activity on the day. Yesterday it was Imbolc, but instead of making pancakes like we often do, I choose something different this year. I went for a traditional Irish recipe called colcannon. Basically an Irish mashpot, that has butter and milk, two ingredients associated with Imbolc. In the old days, butter and buttermilk were handed out to the poor on Imbolc in Ireland. These days, this recipe is mainly eaten with St. Patricks day. But I thought it would be fun to make this, to get an old piece of history back. The funny thing is, that this isn't all that different from our Dutch mashpot. All though I never made cakes from that before.


The cakes are crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside, so not really like burgers, but more like latkes. You see there are so many different names and histories for roughly the same dishes. It is fun to do some exploring :)

Because the original recipe is already in English, there is no need to translate it and we stayed very close to the original, so just visit Simply Recipes, to see how to make these cakes :) We made it with spinach this time. It is a great recipe to use your leftover mashpot :)
If you do feel like pancakes around Imbolc, please check out the blinis we made last year :)


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