Corned beef and cabbage

Every week, I attend a clinical Pilates to keep mind and body together.  When I mention "mind", I have been lucky enough to fall in with a terrific bunch of girls in my class, and each week we chat about all manner of things during the class.  A regular topic is "what are you having for dinner?" A couple of weeks back, Alison said she was having corned beef.  Now I love corned beef but I had never cooked it myself before, so I was inspired by Alison to give it a go.

I had to look up a recipe for cooking corned beef, and after some unsuccessful searches thorugh my recipe books, I chanced upon this Donna Hay recipe on the Internet.  I left out the onions and carots, but otherwise cooked the corned beef as instructed.  The end result was magnificent - just like mother used to make, even though mother did not put all the extras in  she just adds a splash of vinegar, apparently.  My corned beef is topped with some chutney out of the jar - perfect!

 I had also never cooked cabbage before, and was wary of all the bad cabbage stories that I had heard.   Initially, I intended to boil the cabbage, but another trusty Internet search yielded a forum thread with a method for sauteeing shredded cabbage on the stovetop in oil, all purpose seasoning, salt (added last to avoid drying out the cabbage) and soy sauce.  This cabbage tasted pretty good, and stayed crispy rather than turning soggy.

Chuffed, I served my corned beef and cabbage with a jacket potato, cooked simply in the microwave and sprinkled with salt and all purpose seasoning, with a dash of low fat cream.  This was a dinner of champions! 

Even better, I have leftover corned beef for corned beef sandwiches for my lunch - solving the difficult question of what to have for lunch this week.  Corned beef, pickles and tomato on crusty bread is a winning lunchtime dish.

I hope that if, like me, you are a corned beef and cabbage novice, you find this post useful.