I had my DNA done several years ago and discovered that I am 27% Irish. I was really excited about that. I had not expected that at all.
I have been celebrating Saint Patrick's Day with even more meaning ever since! (They do say that everyone has a little bit of Irish in them!)
You might be tempted to think that this bread has a history that goes back hundred and hundreds of years. It does not.
It, at best, only goes back to the mid 1800's when baking soda was introduced to the people of Ireland.
It is a traditional recipe having started in a very poor country. Most of the best recipes are, I think. Simple ingredients put together in fabulously tasty ways!
Leave it to the Irish to create a fabulous bread from simple ingredients like flour, soda, salt, sour milk or buttermilk and a tiny bit of butter.
The salt and the soda work together with the buttermilk to give a beautiful rise to this very simple bread.
The cross cut in the top was originally done to ward off evil spirits or the devil and protect the household. The Irish are very superstitious people. Its all a part of their wonderful charm.
Traditionally it would have been baked on a griddle or in an iron pot over a fire in an open hearth. One can imagine the warmth and love of family being deeply associated with this bread. It speaks to my heart.
It goes together very quickly and can be baked and on the table in about 45 minutes, which makes it the perfect throw-together bread for when you have un-expected company pop by.
This is a small batch recipe, designed for the smaller family. With there only being two of us, it just makes sense.
I like to break it apart into quarters at the cross . . .
Here you can see the wonderful texture of it . . . . don't be tempted to use too many raisins.
Today we enjoyed it warm with some jam and butter. It went down a real treat! Boy there are times when my heart longs for a nice big sweet mug of milky builder's tea. Instead I had it with apple spice tea.
Yield: Makes one small loaf
Small Batch Irish Soda Bread
prep time: 15 minscook time: 35 minstotal time: 50 mins
Quick, easy and delicious! A down sized recipe for the smaller family.
ingredients:
- 140g plain flour (1 cup)
- 1 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 TBS cold butter
- 35g raisins (1/4 cup)
- 1 large free range egg yolk
- 120ml buttermilk (1/2 cup)
instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 220*C/425*F/ gas mark 7. Line a small baking tray with baking paper. Dust the baking paper with some flour. Set aside.
- Whisk the flour, sugar, salt and soda together in a bowl. Cut the cold butter into bits and drop it into the flour mixture. Rub it into the flour with a snapping motion using your fingertips. Mix until it resembles coarse bread crumbs. Stir in the raisins. Whisk together the egg yolk and the buttermilk. Add all at once to the dry mixture and quickly stir together with a fork, just until combined. Tip out onto a floured board and knead gently. (It may be quite sticky, just add a bit more flour if necessary.) Don't over-knead. Shape into a 4 inch round and pop onto the flour dusted baking tray. Cut a deep cross into the top using a sharp knife without cutting all the way through. Only cut about half way down.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes until golden brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
- Serve warm or at room temperature.
NOTES:
If you think it is browning too quickly, cover lightly with foil.
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This bread is tender and dense, with a lovely crisp crust. It will keep for several days, but you won't have it around that long. Trust me on this! If you are looking for a full sized Irish Soda bread, you can find my recipe for a large plain loaf (sans raisins) here.
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The recipe I am sharing today is one which I have been eyeballing for a long time. Its fresh and exciting, yet uses very simple ingredients.
We are in the process of down-sizing. (Which is taking ever so long to do.) as a part of that process, I am going through all my books, trying to decide which to keep and which not to keep. One Good Dish, by david tanis, is one of the books I have been trying to make up my mind about. Although I had lots of pages marked with slips of paper as recipes I wanted to try, I really had not tried any.
This is one of the recipes I had marked as wanting to try. I just never seemed to have all the ingredients in the house at the same time . . .
The main ingredient are these small sweet cucumbers. I get mine at Costco. I kept forgetting to pick them up when I went. Finally I remembered. I love these cucumbers. You can peel or not as you wish. For this recipe I peeled.
Once you have them peeled, you will want to cut them lengthwise into halves or quarters as you wish. A really good knife set makes short work of this. I like to use these lovely knives from the MyKtchn Premium Black Ceramic Kitchen Knife Set.
They're lovely and sharp, and not really heavy. I've been using them for a while now and have been really impressed with their performance.
Once you have the cucumbers peeled and quartered, you just toss them in a bowl along with some salt and pepper to season, and shaved garlic. I use the vegetable peeled from the above set of knives to shave it. Or you could try cutting it really thin with a sharp knife.
The fact is you do want it very thin. It adds some sharpness and of course flavour, but since it is used raw, you really don't want big chunks of garlic. Thin works best.
It will pickle a bit in the vinegar and lime juice . . .
The recipe uses white wine vinegar. I confess I only had Rice Wine Vinegar and so that is what I used and it worked fine. I thought them quite tasty.
It also makes use of some fresh herbs. Tender earthy thyme leaves and chopped fresh dill.
Don't be tempted to over-do the herbs. They should each only give a subtle flavour. Thyme can be very over-powering. Dill not so much . . . if you are not fond of dill, you can use fresh flat leaf parsley or tarragon. I love tarragon.
Finally the use of red pepper flakes gives a bit of heat to the dish. If you don't like things too hot or spicy, you might want to cut back on these. Altogether however, these flavours all work very well together and you end up with one very tasty dish indeed!
Yield: 4 - 6
Dilled Cucumber Spears
Proof positive that tasty needn't be complicated, difficult or take a long time to execute. These are quite simply delicious.
ingredients:
- 1 1/2 pounds small cucumbers (Kirby's or Persians)
- fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and shaved
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
- 2 TBS white wine vinegar
- 1 TBS chopped dill, tarragon or parsley
- the juice of 1 lime
instructions:
- Peel the cucumbers. Quarter them, lengthwise. Put them into a bowl and season generously with the salt and black pepper. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme and vinegar. Toss together well. Leave to marinate for at least one hour. Add the chopped dill and lime juice just prior to serving, tossing again.
- These will keep in the refrigerator for a couple days, but not much longer if you want them really crisp.
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I still haven't made up my mind if I am going to keep this book or not. I have a few more recipes flagged, but unless I think it is a book I will refer to often, I think it is destined for the charity bin. We will see. The jury is still out. Happy Tuesday!
For the past couple of weeks I have been dreaming of cake. While my oven wasn't working properly I was a bit loathe to bake anything like a cake in it because I was afraid of it not turning out and wasting ingredients.
I love having a cake in the house to enjoy with my morning cuppa. I did pick up some Twinkies at Costco the other day, but they just didn't cut it.
This is a cookbook that I have had for quite a while now. Published in 2011, I have made quite a few things from it.
All week I kept looking at that cake on its cover. If a recipe is good enough to put on the cover of a book, I contend that it must be a really good recipe!
The engineer came and replaced the computer panel in our oven yesterday and so today I wasted no time in getting into my kitchen and baking that cake that had been tantalising me all week.
I am a person who really loved basic plain cakes most of all.
My mother always used to make me a plain cake when I was a child, I have a copy of her recipe that she called Alice's Plain Cake. (My family always called me Alice, which is my second name. Too many Mary's and Marie's.)
Mom always came from the school of thought that children's stomach's couldn't handle too much in the way of flavour and spice and that simple was best.
I don't know if that is correct or not, but I do know that I appreciate always the extra attention my mother gave towards making sure we were well cared for.
The original recipe, as per the book was for a very simple vanilla butter cake, with a chocolate variation included.
My husband is not fond of chocolate cakes, but I did want to charge it up a tiny bit . . .
So I added some ground cardamom to the cake itself. Cardamom and vanilla go very well together. I didn't add a lot, just 1/2 tsp. The flavour is there but it doesn't smack you in the face.
Its very subtle, but you can certainly add more if you want more of a hit.
I also added some cardamom along with grated orange zest and orange juice to the creamy icing which tops the finished cake.
Its a lovely cake with a beautiful texture The recipe says it takes 45 minutes to bake, but mine took an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
When I tested it at 45, it was still very wet in the middle, although it did look baked from the outside.
It has a beautiful crumb . . . and went down very well with a hot cuppa . . . the icing was beautiful as well . . .
A bit of sweet without being too much . . .
I have cake tin liners that I use. They look like big cupcake papers. I have them in two sizes. 8 inch and 7 inch.
They make it very easy to life the cake out when done. Personally I like them.
They do leave a funny pattern around the edge however that some people might not like to see.
Personally it never bothers me in the least. A good cake is quite simply a good cake.
Yield: 8
Vanilla & Cardamom Cake
prep time: 15 minscook time: 45 minstotal time: 60 mins
A simple, light and fluffy cake, flavoured with vanilla and ground cardamom with an orange icing. Perfect for enjoying with a hot cuppa or a scoop of vanilla ice cream!
ingredients:
- 200g butter, softened (7 ounces or 1 cup less 2 1/2 TBS)
- 170g caster sugar (14 TBS)
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- 3 large free range eggs, beaten lightly
- 185g self raising flour (1 1/2 cups)
- 110g plain flour (3/4 cup)
- 125ml milk (generous 1/2 cup)
For the frosting:
- 155g icing sugar (scant 1 1/4 cups) sifted
- 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- the finely grated zest of one orange
- 1 1/2 TBS butter, softened
- milk or orange juice as needed (1 TBS or more)
Chocolate Variation:
- Add 4 TBS sifted cocoa powder with the flour and increase the milk by a TBS
instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 1808C/ 350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a deep 8 inch round cake tin and line with baking paper. Set aside.
- Beat the butter, vanilla, cardamom and sugar together until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs, a bit at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift both flours together. Fold the flour in alternately with the milk until well combined.
- Spoon into the prepared cake tin, smoothing over the top. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly touched. (Mine took closer to 55 minutes.)
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before lifting out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl along with the other ingredients, only adding enough orange juice or milk to give you a thick but spreadable icing. Spread over the top of the cake.
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Oh I am one very happy camper now, seeing as my oven is sorted and back to working as it should. I hope it lasts me another 8 years before I have to have it fixed again! Happy Sunday!
Just as Friday nights are synonymous with Fish & Chip suppers here in the UK, you will find that Saturday nights are takeaway nights, where you will find lots of families treating themselves to an Indian or a Chinese meal!
In fact, a lot of the Fish & Chip shops, or chippies will also offer curries and Chinese dishes. You also find plenty of Takeaway shops that are dedicated to one or the other, and of course no end to Chinese or Indian restaurants.
Our local chippy does Chinese meals, but after trying them once, I found myself feeling highly suspicious of just what we were eating. I know . . . it was probably all in my mind, but hey, it is what it is.
That reminds of of a story told me once upon a time by one of my long time friend's husbands. He used to work in a Chinese Takeaway/restaurant when he was younger, washing dishes. He also had a boat.
He was always afraid of someone stealing his outboard motor for his boat, and he used to take it into the kitchen with him while he was working. One night he discovered after several hours that his engine had been leaking motor oil into the gravy bucket.
It would appear that the customers had been getting a little bit extra in their gravy that night!
True story or exaggeration? I dunno . . . but I have worked in enough restaurant kitchens to know that I don't discount anything.
The stories I could tell you would make your hair curl. (And I did not work in dives.) This is one of the reasons we don't eat out a lot. I like to see the kitchen and I like to see the cook. Anyways, I digress . . .
Sticky Pineapple Chicken. This is fabulous!
If you slice all your vegetables ahead of time, and cube your chicken, stir together the sauce ingredients ready to go . . .
It is a dish that you can have on the table in not much more than 15 minutes, which is less time than it would take for you to get in the car and go to your local takeaway shops!
Deliciously stick, with just the right amount of sweet, sour and spice . . . and you know that there is nothing suspicious in it. Nothing suspicious at all!
Just a few simple ingredients put together in a quick and delicious way!
Yield: 4
Sticky Pineapple Chicken
prep time: cook time: total time:
Chicken, pineapple and peppers stir fried and combined in a sweet, sticky, lightly spiced sauce. Quick, easy and delicious. Any leftovers reheat well.
ingredients:
Stir Fry Ingredients:
- 1 TBS light olive oil
- 1 1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 each small red, yellow and green pepper
- 2 spring onions
Sauce Ingredients:
- 1 567g tin pineapple chunks in juice (20-oz tin) (Juice only, reserve the fruit)
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder (not salt)
- 2 TBS cornflour (cornstarch)
- 1 TBS rice wine vinegar
- 1 TBS soy sauce
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 3 TBS soft light brown sugar
- Sriracha chili sauce to taste (depending on how spicy you want it)
You will also need:
- Cooked rice to serve
instructions:
- Whisk all of the sauce ingredients together. I use about 1 TBS of the chili paste because I don't like really spicy things. I find that about right. Set aside until you need it.
- Cut your chicken into bite sized pieces. Trim your peppers, discarding stems, ribs and seeds. Cut the peppers into thin strips. You should have about 2 cups altogether. Slice the spring onions thinly on the diagonal.
- Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the chicken and spread it out into one layer. Sprinkle with salt. Cook on one side until golden brown, flip over and cook for a few minutes longer. Add the peppers. Stir fry and cook for a couple of minutes, until slightly softened. Pour the sauce ingredients into the pan. Cook, stirring constantly until the mixture bubbles and thickens. Stir in the pineapple chunks. Cook for a further 6 minutes or so, until the sauce is sticky and everything is well coated. Stir in the spring onions and serve immediately.
NOTES:
Note - your pineapple juice should equal 180ml/3/4 cup. If it doesn't you can add some orange juice to make up the amount, or water.
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I know you must get tired of me saying this, but its true . . . this is quick, easy & delicious. The leftovers also reheat well, which is why I always cook us the full recipe so that we can enjoy the leftovers for lunch the next day. Yummy scrummy!
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