Wednesday - Out to dinner at Santasiero's

So, M and I have been wanting to try some of Buffalo's red sauce Italian restaurants for a long time. There's a lot of buzz about Santasiero's and so it seemed a good start. The place is an institution - same menu for 88 years, cash only, plastic tablecloths, and notes to customers on the walls. We were expecting a treat. It turned out that we weren't particularly thrilled. The soup and salad were both good, but everything else was only so so. The famous red sauce was pretty flavorless and the ravioli were obviously frozen (and overcooked to boot). Michael's eggplant parmesan was fine, but only fine. Lucky for us, Buffalo has a LOT of red sauce Italian options. I'm sure we'll find a favorite soon.

Tuesday

Irish beef hand pies (recipe in the comments)
Peas with thyme

Hot cocoa
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So this is the long-awaited end to our St. Patrick's Day season - a new recipe. I saw this before St. Patrick's and filed it away, thinking it sounded just like us. Sadly the end product wasn't as impressive as we hoped. The actual problem was that it was a bit too much like the stereotype of Irish cooking: bland. We tried to jazz it up a bit after I made the filling, but it still ended up a bit boring. Especially given that this was a pretty long and involved recipe, I think we're disinclined to reproduce it. However, it was not so tragic that I'm unwilling to post the recipe. I have annotated it with our "jazzed" version.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Moderate
Chopping: Cabbage, potato
Time: 35 minutes to prep, 1 hour or so to cool, 15 more minutes prep, 10-15 minutes to bake
Make ahead: Yes, in fact the recipe has instructions for freezing the pies

Reaction
J: "Not worth the trouble."
M: "Only ok."