Irish Brown Bread

As I mentioned before in my Irish soda bread post, brown soda bread is actually much more common in Ireland, both today and historically.  It's essentially the same recipe as white soda bread, only made with  whole grain flour, which was traditionally cheaper than white flour.  I've seen other recipes for brown soda bread including things like oats and molasses, but as usual, I've started with the simplest version of the recipe, though I may try and post one of the molasses ones later.



Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• approximately 2 cups buttermilk*

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450F.  Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center and pour in the milk.  Stir briefly, and add a little more milk if needed, but the dough should be quite dry.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and form into a ball.  Place the dough on a lightly floured baking sheet, cut a deep cross in the top of the bread, at least half way through, and prick each of the four sections with a sharp knife.  Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 400 and continue baking for 20 minutes.  Turn the bread upside down and continue baking approximately 15 minutes, until the bottom makes a hollow sound when tapped.  Allow to cool slightly before serving.



This bread is best within 24 hours of baking.  It's great toasted with breakfast, topped with smoked salmon, or alongside a soup. Or just by itself with lots of butter, for that matter.  If you're looking for an authentic addition to your St Patrick's Day feast, look no further!

* Thrifty Scotswoman's Tip: if you don't have buttermilk in the house and don't want to buy some for just one recipe, you can use regular milk with an acid like lemon juice or vinegar added.  I used 2% milk with about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar per cup, and it worked really well.

Potato Leek Soup

Now that Lent has arrived, many of us will be avoiding meat on Fridays and some will have given up sweets.  To that end, I shall be posting some good fish and veggie dishes between now and Easter to help those who need a few ideas about what to make for dinner on Fridays for the next month and a half.  Given the winter weather that's returned to Colorado this week, I thought this soup would be a good place to start.

This soup is listed here as traditionally Irish, but other similar recipes exist elsewhere in the British Isles- it's also often considered a national dish of Wales- and in Europe, like the French Vichyssoise.  It's a very simple dish, using cheap ingredients common in the British Isles, and has probably been around in some form for centuries, or at least since the introduction of the potato in the 16th century (leeks are said to have been introduced to Britain by the Romans more than a thousand years before that).  Whatever its origins, this soup is a wonderful comfort food when served with soda bread on a cold winter evening, and can be made vegetarian!  Just pair it with smoked salmon and cream cheese for a fancy and meat-free Friday dinner, or if you're not trying to avoid meat, top it with crumbled bacon!

Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 medium to large red potatoes

• 3 medium leeks

• 1 yellow onion

• 3 1/2 cups vegetable broth

• 4 tablespoons butter

• salt and white pepper, to taste

• heavy cream (optional, for drizzling)

Instructions:
Clean, peel, and 1" dice the potatoes.  Clean and coarsely chop the onion and leeks.  Melt the butter in a large saucepan or stock pot over medium heat.  Add the vegetables and simmer until they begin to soften, 2-4 minutes.

Add the broth and bring to a boil.  reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Allow to cool slightly, then blend until fairly smooth with an imersion blender, or in batches in the blender or food processor.

Re-heat the soup on low, and add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve lightly drizzled with heavy cream.

Scottish Shortbread

Shortbread is one of the simplest types of cookie you can possibly make.  There are just 4 ingredients- butter, flour, sugar, salt- and the result is a wonderfully tender, crumbly, not too sweet cookie with a subtle, buttery flavour.  Because of its simplicity, you can really add pretty much anything you want to it.  In my research, I've seen variations ranging from thumbprint cookies with strawberry or apricot jam to salted caramel shortbread squares to shortbread cookies with rosemary and thyme, and while some of these look interesting, I'm generally of the opinion that simpler is better when it comes to food.

While I'll probably try (and post) some fancy shortbreads eventually, this recipe is an attempt at recreating a family recipe handed down from a Scottish great-grandmother that I think my mom has, but I can't find in her messy kitchen.  I definitely remember my mom making these at Christmas when I was little and letting my and my brothers cut out and decorate Santas and Christmas trees.  She called them "butter cookies" at the time, so I didn't realize that they were shortbread, rather than some variation of sugar cookie, until much later.

The recipe I've come up with through much experimentation is a combination of Joy of Baking, Martha Stewart, a couple of online resources, several of them Scottish, and what my mom remembers about the recipe that's buried in a cookbook somewhere (probably).  After much research, I decided to go with a very simple formula: 1 part butter: 1/2 part sugar: 1 1/2 part flour, with a pinch of salt because I use unsalted butter.  I decided not to mix the AP flour with rice flour or corn starch like some of the Scottish recipes do because my mother certainly never added corn starch, and I can't picture my great-grandmother even knowing where to buy rice flour.  Anyway, I can't imagine rice having been readily available in 15th or 16th century Scotland, when buttered shortbread was first popularized (Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have been a fan).  I've omitted the vanilla extract common in American recipes for similar reasons: no one in my family uses it in shortbread, and vanilla isn't exactly native to northern Europe.  Besides, simpler is usually better.  I've also decided to use granulated rather than powdered sugar because that's what my grandmother's recipe called for.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• pinch of salt

Instructions: 

pre-heat oven to 350F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Cream together butter, sugar, and salt in a medium mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.  Add flour 1 cup at a time, mixing well.  Once all flour has been added, the dough should be fairly grainy.  Gently press the dough into a 1/2 inch thick rectangle on the baking sheet, cut into bars, and prick the top with a fork, preferably in a decorative pattern.  Alternately, roll out dough on a floured surface and cut shapes with a cookie cutter. Bake in the preheated oven approximately 25 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown.  Let cool.


Note on butter:

Did you know that European butter is 85% fat, while American butter is only 75%?  While this sounds great to those Americans who count calories and watch their fat consumption, it can cause some difficulties when baking, especially if the recipe uses a lot of butter, as in the case of croissants or (more relevantly) shortbread.  The lower fat American variety of butter will still result in a good product, and it will be slightly lower calorie, but using a European butter will result in more tender baked goods.  I once made two batches of shortbread side-by-side, one with Kerrygold unsalted butter and the other with a Trader Joe's brand, and I was staggered by the difference in both texture and flavour.  I definitely recommend not worrying too much about the calories and using Kerrygold or another European style butter.

Irish Soda Bread (Traditional)

If you've grown up like I did with the version of this bread that's available in all American bakeries and grocery stores in the week or so before St Patrick's Day, with raisins and sugar, this recipe will be nothing like what you're imagining.  You see, like most American St Patrick's day traditions- corned beef and cabbage, green beer, and the utterly inexplicable wearing of kilts, often in Scottish tartans- the soda bread you see in the shops is an Irish American invention.  The traditional Irish version is much simpler, and not a sweet bread.  

What it is, really, is just a simple white or brown quick bread.  It dates from the early 19th century, when most homes did not have ovens.  Breads were baked on the hearth instead, or else in a large cast-iron pot that could be placed directly in the fire- hence the bread's round shape.  The introduction of baking soda around this time made baking a loaf of bread daily much quicker and easier- no waiting around for the bread to rise- which made at-home baking possible even for farm families who all worked the fields all day.  Soda bread in it's simplest form is made from just four ingredients: flour, baking soda, buttermilk, and salt.  Brown (whole grain, less finely milled) flour was cheaper, and so was used for everyday, while the finer white flour, and maybe sometimes some dried fruit, sugar, or an egg for special occasions.  Here follows the basic recipe, using white all-purpose flour because I didn't have whole grain on hand:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup buttermilk

• 1 tsp baking soda

• pinch of salt 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 and sprinkle a cookie sheet with flour. Combine dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Add buttermilk a little at a time, mixing with a wooden spoon after each addition. When the mixture forms a crumbly dough, form into a ball. Place the dough on the prepared cookie sheet and cut a deep cross in the top (at least half way through the dough). DO NOT skip this step, as the bread will not bake evenly otherwise (or the fairies won't be able to get out, if we're being superstitious). Bake in the preheated oven 30-45 minutes, or until the outside is golden brown, the loaf has at least doubled in size, and the bread makes a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom. Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.

It's really that simple.  While I was researching this recipe, I found everything from the common American quick bread with raisins to a few yeast breads labeled as Irish Soda Bread.  Many of these breads looked almost like deserts, and sounded like they took a lot of work to produce.  This, on the other hand, is so simple that I have no trouble baking it before breakfast on a Saturday morning.  It's great toasted or fresh out of the oven, smeared with butter and jam.  

Failte!

Welcome!

Those who are already vaguely familiar with Celtic cuisine, here defined as the national cuisines of Ireland and Scotland, plus assorted regional cuisines from elsewhere in Great Britain (e.g. Wales and Cornwall), as well as a few regions in France and Spain, may well question the need for a Celtic-themed food blog. While there is a romantic quality to rugged landscapes, Irish ballads, kilts, bagpipes, and pretty much every story ever told about Robert the Bruce, travel guides would seem to suggest that the cuisine of the British Isles does not share in this mystique.  It can range from the innocuous (boiled vegetables; what's a steamer?) to the mildly distasteful (how many Americans have actually eaten blood pudding?) to the truly bizarre (jellied eels: as if we needed further proof that the English are actually insane).  What, you might reasonably ask yourselves, do I actually intend to blog about?

  Those of you who are a little better acquainted with Celtic food may already have an answer.  Just think about a plate of nice, hot, crispy fish and chips.  Or smoked salmon on toast with cream cheese, dill, and capers.  Or perhaps a steaming hot bowl of hearty beef stew.  Fresh baked shortbread for those with a sweet tooth.  Getting hungry yet?  In short, it's comfort food: simple ingredients, prepared simply, to create a delicious and nourishing meal.  What could be better?

You see, what the guidebook for Britain doesn't mention is that Ireland has been at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement for years (centuries, really- some parts of the country seem to have skipped straight from traditional, non-mechanized agriculture to 21st century organic farming).  With some of the best fresh produce, dairy, and seafood in the world so easily available, how could they not be?  And while most traditional dishes are very simple, that's usually the best way to showcase great ingredients anyway.

Granted, Scotland is still the land of the deep-fried Mars bar and other culinary oddities, but to each his own, variety is the spice of life, and so on.  And the Scots have been making some of the very best whisky in the world since the middle ages, besides which Scotland is well-known for game and fish.  Even the Dubiously Famous Haggis may make its way onto the blog eventually, if i'm feeling particularly adventurous.

As the title suggests, this blog is intended as a home for my ever-growing collection of Irish, Scottish, and Otherwise British recipes (some traditional, others not so much).  Whether it be a simple stew, an elegant seafood dish, a hearty full breakfast, or a decadent trifle, the cuisine of the British isles really does offer something for almost every palate.  I hope you enjoy exploring this vastly underrated culinary tradition with me, and maybe even discover a few new favorites along the way.  Recipes will be coming soon, but in the meantime, why not get into the spirit of things with a dram or an (imperial, obviously) pint?

Slainte!