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Corned Beef and Spinach
Place a three-pound piece naval corned beef in a saucepan with two carrots, an onion having two cloves stuck in it, two leeks, two branches celery, a sprig thyme, one bay leaf, and pour in cold water to twice the height of the beef. Season with a teaspoon pepper, cover pan, let come to a boil over a brisk fire, shift pan to a corner of range and let simmer three hours. Thirty-five minutes before expiration of the three hours add six unpeeled, well-washed raw potatoes. Dress a spinach on a large hot dish, cut beef in thin slices and arrange over it. Remove and peel potatoes, arrange around dish and serve.
A plain boiled dinner from a book that assumes you already know how to cook spinach and have a coal range with cool corners. Two terms need translating before you start.
- "Naval" corned beefThis is the navel cut — the fatty end of the beef plate, next to the brisket. It is rarely labelled that way now; ask for corned beef brisket, point cut for preference, since the flat is leaner and drier. Three pounds is right for the timing given.
- "Dress a spinach"The book means a separately cooked dish of spinach, which in this style would be blanched, squeezed very dry, chopped, and finished in butter with salt and pepper. Allow 2-3 lb of raw leaf spinach; it collapses to almost nothing, and wet spinach under sliced beef turns the platter into soup.
- The corner of the rangeBring to a boil, then hold at a bare simmer — surface barely moving, around 180F. Corned beef boiled hard squeezes out its moisture and shreds into strings. On a gas or electric hob this is the lowest setting with the lid ajar.
- Salt and the cooking waterThe teaspoon of pepper is worth keeping; do not add salt. Modern corned beef is heavily brined, and the vegetables and liquid will take up plenty. If the meat seems very salty, rinse it and start with fresh cold water.
- TimingThree hours is a guide, not a rule. Cured brisket is done when a skewer slides in with no resistance, which at this weight can take anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours depending on the cut.
- Potatoes unpeeledSkins on keeps them from disintegrating in the broth; you peel them hot afterward. Use medium waxy potatoes and give them 35-40 minutes, testing rather than trusting the clock.
- SlicingSlice thinly across the grain. Corned beef cut along the grain is stringy no matter how well it was simmered. Let the meat rest a few minutes out of the pot so it firms up enough to cut cleanly.
- YieldThree pounds of brisket, six potatoes and a large dish of spinach serves five or six. The strained cooking liquid makes a good base for soup the next day, though it will be salty.
Corned beef and greens is the boiled-dinner tradition of northern Europe and the Atlantic ports, brought into a book like this as a workaday one-pot rather than a national specialty. "Corned" refers to the coarse grains — corns — of salt used to cure the meat, a preservation method that made beef plate and navel cuts a staple of ships' provisions and cheap urban butchery long before refrigeration. The navel cut called for here was among the least expensive parts of the animal, which is precisely why it was brined in bulk. What marks the recipe as belonging to its period is the aromatic bundle of carrot, leek, celery, clove-stuck onion, thyme and bay: this is French kitchen practice applied to an Anglo-Irish dish, and the instruction to shift the pan to a corner of the range dates it firmly to the era of the coal-fired stove, where heat was managed by moving the pot rather than turning a dial.