I can’t believe I’ve actually written those words in the title of our meal. I am not fond of cabbage (and neither is mom), and boiled brisket sounds odd and outdated. Sorry if I’m offending anyone reading this, but this week’s meal didn’t sound appealing to me at first.

Last week mom recommended we have a brisket – they were on sale at Acme. I love brisket, so I started researching Texas and Jewish briskets. This is when I learned mom and I clearly had different thoughts on the brisket. Loretta and Carolyn convinced her that the Irish brisket was the way to go with cabbage, carrots and potatoes. Especially since Saint Paddy’s day on Wednesday. Then she talked to Steve Jusko, who was making this dish, boiling the brisket, ON Wednesday. Got his recipe, and declared this is what we’re doing. Bye bye Texas brisket.

I arrived at mom’s house at 11:30-ish. Expecting the brisket to be well on its way to being cooked, hoping that I would be able to spend time outside this afternoon doing yardwork. So much for my afternoon outside. Mom just put the brisket in the water, and instead of it being 3 pounds it was actually 4 pounds which means it will take 3 1/2 hours to cook.

While waiting for it to cook, I ran a few errands to the Giant and Lowe’s. Then mom made me do some of her yard work. On my way home I drove by our old neighborhood on Whitemarsh and Cedarbrook to see the houses Erika and I grew up in. Ah the memories. After three hours the weird pink meat was almost done. We added potatoes, carrots and then the cabbage. The water looks like corn beef stew, and the meat shrunk to almost half the size.

Once again we over estimated the number of potatoes needed. So we have mashed potatoes for a few days. But the best part about the potatoes was when we added milk, butter, scallions and the cabbage. Otherwise known as Irish Colcannon potatoes. I got this recipe from Jen Toy; the Toy and Juscko families have been a lot of help this week. Surprisingly everything was delicious. The corn beef was tender and flavorful. It was quite good. Steve was right. We had cabbage and carrots as a side dish, but it was a little bland. Since neither of us had it before, we didn’t know how it supposed to taste.

For dessert we had potatoes, the sweet kind of Irish potatoes. They’re always available in grocery stores this time of year, but mom never had them before. They are tasty, fun and very sweet.

Would you make it again? Yes we would. However mom stressed out this week and is now saying she will never recommend a dish again. I think she’s being overly dramatic. It worked out fine, and she did a good job, but prefers to be the sous chef. Next time we make a brisket it’s going to be a Texas brisket.

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