OK, I’m a little late getting around to posting St. Patrick’s Day food, but let’s just say we were busy eating.

While my family tends to identify mostly with the small ostensibly Italian fragment of our ethnicity, mostly thanks to the way most of us look, and our attachment to Italian foods, we’re actually far more Irish than we are Italian. So it’s probably unfair to ignore that part of our background entirely.

I’m not a beer guy, so there was no green beer for us, and for various reasons which I’ll explain at some other point, Hiromi’s not drinking. So, just for me, I went with a traditional recipe of Irish whiskey (on ice since it was just Bushmill’s), much like this guy.

I’m also not a meat eater, so the conventional Irish American corned beef and cabbage was out.

But there are a few semi-Irish things I can eat.

I had a lentil soup leftover from a previous dinner, so I figured I’d just use that as a protein and make an Irish soda bread and something resembling colcannon.

We didn’t have much in the way of kale or cabbage, and I’m not much of a purist when it comes to unplanned attempts at ambiguously Irish themed meals, so I took advantage of what I did have on hand: mizuna greens, scallions, and bok choy. Mizuna doesn’t love being cooked to death, so I chose to break with tradition and just work the greens into the hot mashed potatoes, rather than precooking the greens. I also threw in a bit of garlic because I didn’t have quite enough scallions around to fully flavor the dish.

I did want to give the greens some heat, though, so I let the mixture bake, covered, in a hot oven for about 15 minutes, after adding suitably heart-challenging amounts of butter and cream.

The greens maintained a bit of crunch, which is certainly very different than the standard versions of this dish, but provided a nicely refreshing contrast

The Irish soda bread was more conventional: butter, buttermilk, flour, baking soda, salt, maybe a touch of sugar.

I may have baked it just a tad too long, but it still had a great aroma and it looked quite nice upon slicing.

We served the bread with a nice Tickler cheddar and some good Vermont Butter, the soda bread was crusty with a pleasingly tender crumb.

The lentil soup could perhaps pass for Irish, but it’s probably a bit of a stretch since it involved fair amounts of an orange peel and tarragon blend and a bit of smoky chilies.

The downside is that this was a fairly heavy meal for a weeknight, and fairly heavy on the carbohydrates. But I guess that’s authentic enough: When I visited Ireland on a business trip many years ago, I overheard the staff at the company cafeteria asking people if they wanted “chips with that” no matter what they ordered. Including pasta. And in one case, a baked potato. So yeah, we were Irish like that.

We had a nice dinner tonight, but it wasn’t terribly heavy, and I was craving something sweet to finish the evening.

I was thinking a thin cookie would do the trick, so I remembered the basic tuile ratio, which is roughly 2 fat : 2 flour : 1 sugar : 1 egg white. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any skinny almonds around, but I did have some almond butter handy, and I had a surplus of egg whites left over after making hollandaise sauce a few nights ago. I decided to use a blend of butter and almond butter so that I’d have a touch more flavor than if I skipped using nuts entirely. I also added a touch of vanilla and a bit of salt.

The best thing about these is how quickly they come together. They just need to be spread out as evenly as possible on a non-stick, flexible surface… A Silpat-style mat or baking paper would do the trick.

At the last possible second before baking, I realized I had some hulled pumpkin seeds (pepitas) in the freezer, so I sprinkled a few on top before baking in the oven at 425F (400F in convection mode) for somewhere around 8-10 minutes, basically stopping when the edges were nicely browned.

For a little drama, I bent them around a rolling pin just after pulling them off the baking sheet.

They made a nice little treat. Give them a try! There’s a lot of room for variation. One of my favorites incorporates black sesame seeds, somewhat in the same vein as these financiers. I’ve also made an aniseed version that works great as an ice cream cup; just spread them out as rounds and pinch over a small teacup. They’re great with tea or coffee, too.

I recently mentioned my weakness for the seductive smokiness of Spanish paprika. It turns out that, in my kitchen, precious little of my supply ever makes it into anything remotely resembling proper Spanish cuisine. But there are occasional exceptions.

While seasoned chickpea and tomato dishes are rather common in pretty much every country that’s ever seen both ingredients, one of my favorite preparations is a Moorish-style preparation full of Spanish paprika.

Even within that realm, I’m sure there are a ton of variants. Some are garlicky, some are mostly seasoned with onions, and a few of them incorporate additional greens like spinach. I like them all. If it’s on a tapas menu, I’m a guaranteed sucker for it… We’ve ordered versions at Txori in Seattle, at Jaleo on a recent trip to DC, and probably anywhere else we’ve seen it.

Granted, it’s a humble dish, and maybe a bit homely, but it’s a fantastic way of adding a bit of protein to a cuisine which isn’t heavy on purely vegetarian protein options, aside from Spanish tortillas and various cheeses.

I did this version sans garlic and perhaps overemphasized the tomatoes. Thanks to Jaleo’s menu I stumbled on to the brilliant suggestion of topping it with a sunny-side-up egg. I cleverly forgot to butter the egg ring, so it’s not quite as pretty as it might be.

Thanks to the pressure cooker we picked up this winter, the dish comes together rather quickly. Precook the chickpeas to the point that they are soft, but not mushy. If you want garlic, toast a clove or two in olive oil gently until the garlic is just slightly browned. I then add plenty of chopped onions to the pan and cook them until transparent. Once the onions are nice and soft, I throw in a little splash of wine and add chopped or pureed tomatoes, a serious pinch of Spanish paprika (don’t waste your money on the not-at-all-similar Hungarian style paprika for this dish), salt and pepper, and the mostly-cooked chickpeas. Simmer until you’re ready to eat them, but not less than 15 minutes.

For something more verde, add blanched spinach just a minute or two before serving.

Someone may eventually convince me otherwise, but I’m pretty sure that most wild Northwest mushrooms benefit the most from a minimalist treatment.

I’ve found no better confirmation of this than the chanterelle, and the similar, but slightly homelier hedgehog mushroom.

The most reliably pleasing treatment of these mushrooms, for me, requires only four ingredients and a little attention to detail. I mince a shallot, coarsely chop the hedgehog (or chanterelle) mushrooms, and stick these straight into a small, hot cast-iron skillet. In just seconds, you see an unlikely amount of water emerge from nowhere.

After the water cooks off, add life-endangering quantities of good butter, and some nice salt. I love to use alderwood smoked salt that I pick up at World Spice Merchants below the market in Seattle, but this time I used a fennel salt that I prepared myself. Fennel salt is exactly what it sounds like: equal portions fennel seeds and coarse salt, ground in a spice grinder until the fennel turns into little specks. If you want something fancier, give this one from Ritrovo a try; it’s got fennel pollen, whatever that is, and a few other herbs and spices, and it’s very good, but it’s also $15 or so a jar. Fennel and most of the herbs in that mix are not usually more than $3 an ounce.

You may want to add a little pepper, and maybe a touch of freshly ground nutmeg. If you don’t have fennel around, it can’t hurt to use a bit of fresh thyme.

Cook the mushrooms until they’re slightly caramelized, and serve.

Hedgehog mushrooms and chanterelles are picky about how they are cooked. If you make the mistake of adding the butter to the pan before adding the mushrooms, you’ll find that the moisture never quite disappears and you waste crazy amounts of money buying wild mushrooms only to end up with a rubbery mess. If you wait to add the fat until they’re slightly dry, you get magic. Personally, I prefer magic.