Hash Wednesday

21 March
Lynne and Tom came over to celebrate the Vernal Equinox and help us use up the last of the St. Paddy's Day corned beef. So once again, we all made a hash of it.
We already laid out the Theory of Hash back in December:
Corned beef is a classic hashing material, not just tasty but easy to cut into very tiny, perfect cubes. We also hand-chopped the onion, because running it through the Robot-Coupe often results in watery glop. The red-skinned potatoes, however, would have taken too long to steam if they were in cubes, so we processed them into shreds.
Barbara is the head Hashemite in this kingdom, so she presided over the mixing and cooking. She got out our biggest pan, the fourteen-incher, and gave the onions a brief fry in oil. The chopped potatoes then went in for a couple of minutes dry-fry, then 8 or 9 veal-stock cubes and cover the pan, to steam them and get them soft. In the meantime, we munched on bread, cheese, and olives. It takes quite a while to get those little red taters tender. Once they were, she sprinkled in minced fresh parsley and dried thyme, added the corned beef, stirred it up, and tasted it before salting and peppering. Then she patted it down and ran the pan under the broiler until it was brown. Results: perfect hash, if hash can be perfect.
Dessert was perfect too: Holt made apple crêpes with whipped cream. The basic crêpe (see below for UTOP-ia) recipe is
1 cup flour
2/3 cup milk
2/3 cup water
3 eggs
Whisk the liquids into the flour (not the other way around) and let the batter sit for at least half an hour.
Then 1/4-1/3 cup in a small non-stick pan filmed with oil. The first pancake is always a trial run.
You can roll 'em, or get all Frenchified and fold 'em in quarters, then dust with powered sugar. We topped with chopped apples sautéed in butter with brown sugar and a shot or two of bourbon. Flambéed the sauce just for the hell of it. Then schlag-obers. So Franco-Austrio-American. Sounds about right.