Cheesy Soda Bread

Cheesy Sodabread

As promised weeks ago, I give you Cheesy Soda Bread! Who doesn't like the sound of that?!

This recipe is largely Rachel Allen's from her "Food for Living" book. However, unlike traditional scones or most wheaten bread recipes, these contain no butter. The small amount of cheese is not worth worrying about, particularly if you use a very strong cheddar which will yield lots of great flavor for a small sprinkling. Finally, I subbed in whole wheat pastry flour for half of the regular flour to up the wholegrain ante. You could just as easily sub regular whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour if you cant get whole wheat pastry.

All in all, you can feel good about your waistline while you tuck into these babies. As I explained in my last post, I served these with eggs poached in home made tomato sauce and they were just the ticket to sop up the sauce. Who doesn't love a bit of cheese with their eggs too? Obviously these are suitable for endless occasions. Rachel recommends a number of changes to the basic recipe; chopped chives, or other herbs, or go the sweet route with raisins or chocolate. Amazingly I haven't tried the chocolate option yet but it's just a question of time. It would be really delicious.

Cheesy Sodabread

Ingredients

1/2 lb/ 1 3/4 cups regular flour

1/2 lb 1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or whatever ww flour you have on hand)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

400 ml/ 1 3/4 cups buttermilk

3 oz grated strong cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 475°F or 250°C. If you have a pizza stone put it in the middle of the oven
2. Place the dry ingredients on a bowl and mix well using a whisk
3. Make a well in the center and pour in the buttermilk 
4. Stir in a circular motion using your hands until just mixed 
5. The dough will be soft but not so sticky that you cannot work with it.
6. Place the dough on a floured board and shape it into a large flat round approx 3/4 in deep.
7. Cut out the scones using a cutter of your choice or cut them into shapes (see above for my random ones!)
8. Sprinkle and press a little cheese on the top of each scone
9. Place the scones on a floured baking tray and into the oven. If you're using a pizza stone, slide the scones off a floured pizza paddle onto the pizza stone already in the oven
10. Bake for 10-20 mins depending on the size of your scones.The scones will be done when they look golden and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Master this most basic of recipes and take it in 10 different directions. Chocolate chips are next on my list of add ins!

Enjoy!

Real Food for St. Patrick's Day

I have something to get off my chest about St. Patrick's Day in America. We Irish people do not eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patricks Day, or any other day for that matter. Nor was it a tradition to do so in years gone by. One of the most traditional meals eaten is "bacon and cabbage" but the corned beef was substituted when the Irish emigrated to America and (like me) could not readily locate or afford back bacon.

And another thing; the soda bread masquerading in your local Supermarket as Irish, is nothing like real soda bread. To me it tastes like a huge, stale, oversweetened scone. Eucchh! Real soda bread is not sweet and rarely has raisins in it. It's a simple bread made of flour, baking soda, buttermilk and salt. Thats it!  There, I feel better now!

So, in honor of these facts, I am offering a few alternatives that really are Irish. I have been poring over Darina Allen's book, Irish Traditional Cooking and Malachi McCormick's, Irish Country cooking.  Straight bacon and cabbage is just not my favorite, but if you want a good authentic recipe here's a great link to the Winner of the Best Irish Food Blog 2010; Donal Skehan and his version of the classic:

http://www.donalskehan.com/beta/2010/03/good-auld-bacon-and-cabbage/

I also would encourage you to refer to my posts on Iris's Wheaten Bread or Irish Lasagna .

As usual my obsession with baking got the better of me, so my contribution to your St. Patrick's Day, is a Brown Soda Bread recipe. I just couldn't bring myself to use all white flour or all purpose flour so I made the wholegrain or brown soda bread. I should add though, that the brown soda bread is equally authentic. I also learned from Darina Allen, that traditionally the bread would have been cooked in a pot oven, called a bastible, beside an open fire.

I realise, after researching the food of Ireland a little more, that my love of simple, unpretentious food is in my genes. I hadn't thought of it this way before, but Irish food relies on good quality, fresh ingredients. Historically, however, there was not a huge variety of ingredients available. Sometimes too, basics were scarce; even flour at times was scarce. Hence the love of the versatile potato; making it into breads, soups and everything in between.

Anyway, this bread is a prime example of simplicity. 4 ingredients and 10 minutes are all that is needed to get a tasty wholesome bread in the oven. Be warned, do not over handle this dough; it needs a light hand and as soon as it pulls together, get it in the oven. Overworking it will surely give you a tough bread.

Brown Soda Bread

adapted from Darina Allen's book Irish Traditional Cooking

random note: notice our snow is finally almost gone!!! It's been over 2 months since we've seen grass here. This week, the girls and I have been searching the garden, for evidence of the Spring fairy, in vain yet.

The recipe yields 2 loaves as seen.

Ingredients

4 cups wholewheat flour
4 cups all purpose flour
3 heaping teaspoons salt
2 heaping teaspoons baking soda
3- 3 1/4 cups sour milk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F
2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
3. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
4. Make a well in the center and add most of the buttermilk.
5. With clean hands, mix the dough together, starting from the center.
6. Add more milk as needed to achieve a dough that is soft but not sticky.
7. On a floured board or using cleaned, then floured hands, form the dough into 2 flattened discs about 2" thick. Don't be too concerned if it's not completely mixed together; if you overhandle it the result will be tough bread. Just blob it together and plop on the cookie sheet.
8. Place the dough on the cookie sheet with a little space between them for growing
9. Take a large knife and cut a cross almost through to the bottom of the dough
10. Place in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes then reduce the heat to 400°F for a further 25 minutes or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
11. Enjoy this bread warm with butter and jam; ours was gobbled up at snacktime today by 2 hungry monsters and their parents.



A couple of notes:

• This is a very flexible recipe; traditional wholewheat flour in Ireland is coarser than ours in the US so feel free to add a bit more fiber; perhaps wheat germ, bran, oat bran, or ground flax seed.
• You could also make these into scones by simply patting the discs to 1" and cutting out wedges. Bake for less time.

Enjoy!





Iris's Wheaten Bread



I seem to be on an Irish theme. Musing on my mum's fridge yesterday and reading "kiss my spatula's" latest post on dippy eggs and toast prompted a nostalgic train of thought for the food of my homeland.

I have strong childhood memories of every Saturday lunchtime; BBC radio 2, "Stupot" was the soundtrack to wheaten bread, soda farls, butter, cheese, jam and soup. Our local bakery in Portstewart, Northern Ireland was The Griddle and usually the breads were from there, but still warm....ahhh. I'm sure my family will call me out on a romantic version of our Saturday mornings; there was probably a fair amount of family discord too.

So what is wheaten bread? Basically very rustic wholewheat bread leavened with baking soda rather than endless yeast risings. It can be in the oven in 15 minutes. That's my type of bread!

When I was 12, my Mum made a new friend, Iris McMaster, who made great wheaten bread. She was nice enough to share the recipe and that simple recipe became a firm family favorite. By this time we had moved to Belfast and our beloved griddle breads were 70 miles away.

Even in my early twenties, I continued the tradition on a Saturday morning, making bread for my cousin and anyone else who popped in. It's a go to bread for taking to a friends house for lunch; wrap it up in a dishtowel while still warm, and deliver with pride and maybe some raspberry jam.

The recipe is quick, simple and very therapeutic to make; i.e. you get your hands in. The smell of wheaten bread baking, is like bottled up Saturday feeling for me.

Some notes about the recipe:

Wholewheat flour; get the coarsest flour you can buy for reasonable money. Our supermarket does sell Irish wheatmeal flour but it's $10 a bag!!! So I buy regular wholewheat flour and when I can get to the natural food store I stock up on the coarser version.

The original recipe called for more sugar but, as a rule, in any baked recipe, I cut it down.

I have included the British measurements but also converted to US measurements. Please note a British pint has more volume than a US one.

Wheaten bread freezes very nicely. I always triple wrap in plastic wrap to prevent freezer burn.

Wheaten Bread

Ingredients

5 1/2 cups (1 1/2 lb) course wholegrain flour

2 1/2 cups (12 oz) unbleached all purpose flour

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) (2oz) cold unsalted butter

1/4 cup sugar (2oz) sugar

2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons baking soda

3 1/3 cups (1 1/2 British pints) buttermilk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F or 185°C.
2. Butter and lightly flour two 9x5" loaf tins.
3. Measure the flours into a very large bowl , whisk together to incorporate.
4. Then cut the cold butter into small pieces and add to the flour.
5. Get your hands in a rub the butter into the flour, until there are no big lumps left. This is the therapeutic part!
6. Add the sugar, salt, baking soda and stir in to incorporate.
7. Finally stir in the buttermilk until just incorporated. Don't worry if there are still some lumps in the dough (see picture) that's normal and overmixing needs to be avoided as it will create a tough bread.
8. Divide the dough in 2 and press lightly into the corners of the loaf tins.
9. Put both tins in the middle of the oven for 50-60 minutes. It will be ready when a tester comes out clean and it has a golden top.





Wheaten bread is totally delicious, cut into slices while still warm, spread with butter and your favorite jam. Raspberry jam is a traditional and especially good combination but whatever you fancy! It'll toast up nicely for the next few days if you dont eat it all on the first day.

Enjoy!







A little bit of Irish comfort

"There are always cabbage and onions in your fridge", I tease my my Mum each time we go home to Northern Ireland. And while its true, there are many other delicious items squished inside the tiny (compared to our embarrassingly enormous American model) fridge. Most exciting is the proper back bacon ...none of this streaky stuff. The back bacon has a fraction of the fat but all the flavor; very appealing to someone trying to take the healthy route in life. I've wondered many times, in my 11 years living here in the US, where does the "back bacon" part of the pig go to?

Ireland gets bad rap in the US for a lack of good food and here's an opportunity for me to contest that. Certainly I've has some bad food there, but Ireland seemed to embrace the locavore culture long before it was trendy, and therein lies tasty food. Think beautiful fresh fish, amazing breads, artisinal cheeses, mouth watering chutneys. Maybe you need a link to the Northern Irish Tourist Board? http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/

Anyway, I guess I've been craving a little comfort food; my husband has been away on business all week, my 2 year old has croup and we've had 2 snow days, a holiday and a sick day off school. A lot of cooped up time.

Time to bring on, what I call, Irish Lasagna. How better to lift everyone's mood, than to fry up some bacon, add onions and cabbage, layer the whole thing with potatoes and cheese, then bake. Essentially that's the recipe but I suppose more detail might be helpful.

Irish Lasagna

Makes 1 large 3 quart lasagna dish (enough for 4)

Ingredients

1 lb bacon (I use the low sodium variety)

1 onion (any color), finely chopped

1 savoy cabbage (any size), sliced roughly

2-3 tablespoons broth (chicken or veg)

2 1/2 lbs of potatoes, sliced thinly

8 oz sharp cheddar, grated

salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Heat a large deep skillet on medium high (I use my trusty cast iron dutch oven). Using scissors, snip the bacon into small pieces over the pan and fry until crispy and a lot of the fat has rendered out.
3. Remove the bacon from the pan and drain off all the fat except for approx 1 tablespoon. Add another tablespoon of olive oil and fry up the onions for 2 minutes.
4. Add the cabbage and broth, stir and put the lid on. Stir every now and again for about 10 minutes until the cabbage has wilted and becomes a little caramelized (my mouth is watering).
5. Meanwhile grate the cheddar and slice the potatoes.
6. Grease the lasagna dish
7. Take the cabbage off the heat and stir the bacon back in.
8. Place a layer of the potatoes on the bottom of the dish, overlapping a little
9. Cover with half the cabbage mixture, then another layer of potatoes, one more of cabbage and finally one last layer of potatoes.
10. Sprinkle the cheese generously on top.
11. Bake at 400 for 45-50 minutes until the potatoes are fork tender.
12. Present to your family and watch them ask for seconds





Job well done

A few side notes: feel free to substitute leeks or shallots for the onions, any other green for the cabbage, and more or less potatoes or cheese to taste. I only used cheese on the top as a nod to a healthier meal (ha ha who am I kidding?), however it would be delicious rich and decadent if cheese were sprinkled on top of each cabbage layer. I'm just saying.

Enjoy!