What Am I Cooking?: Happy St. Patrick's Day & Irish Soda Bread

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day & Irish Soda Bread

I put this tasty bread into the oven this morning and the house smelled like St. Patrick's Day. No, no corned beef or cabbage, but a lovely traditional Irish Soda Bread. Warm, mildly sweet with currants and (not today) caraway seeds.

Irish Soda Bread

Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Use 2 Tablespoons of butter to season the skillet (or pan)
Whisk together:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup currants

Add, mixed:

1 3/4 cups buttermilk
2 eggs well beaten

Put the bread in the skillet, pan or dish. Dot with 2 Tablespoons butter. Bake for 1 hour.
Cool and turn out or serve from the pan.

It will be served with strawberries.

How are you celebrating?

Later tonight, we'll enjoy this roast. Which spent the night soaking in herbs and Guinness!

More on that later.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you.

3 comments:

KerryMarch 17, 2011 at 12:13 PM
Yum! I am celebrating with homemade pizza... what?
Well, we are a corned beef and cabbage or colcannon household but the Mr. has left us for March Madness this (long) weekend. He'll be witnessing the green Chicago river and general craziness that is St. Pat's Day in Chicago along with all the basketball. We'll have our corned beef next week. So tonight it will be pizza with green toppings at our house. Pesto, green peppers, olives, arugula, spinach... a whole lot to choose from! Green milk for the kiddos and a Harp for Mama!
That bread looks so very lovely!
ReplyDelete
Replies
MamaJemmaMarch 17, 2011 at 2:31 PM
I feel so Irish just looking at the delightful soda bread in your cast iron skillet! xo
ReplyDelete
Replies
VickiMarch 17, 2011 at 3:39 PM
Important safety tip. If you bake it in the skillet, flip it out to cool. A cast iron skillet retains heat and will continue to cook your lovely bread into dark dryness. Ask me how I know...
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Well, what are you having for dinner?

Before the pandemic and Staying-Around-the-House became a thing for so many of us, we found ourselves often wondering at 4:00, 5:00 or 6:00 pm, (dare I say 7:00?) what we're for dinner. When it gets too late, we end up ordering something or driving thru someplace and handing someone a wad of cash - sometimes for food we're not enthused over.

Lately I found myself tired of my own ideas. (And, I love to cook.) So we had a sushi night, a Thai night and some other delivery night when the challenge became both real and fun. I want to continue to.be enthused about the joy of the kitchen.

To be excited about dinner, we need inspiration, ideas -- a plan. So, here we are, together, talking about the big question: What are you cooking?

Thoughts?

Henri Nouwen's said:

The table is one of the most intimate places in our lives. It is there that we give ourselves to one another. When we say, "Take some more, let me serve you another plate, let me pour you another glass, don't be shy, enjoy it," we say a lot more than our words express. We invite our friends to become part of our lives. We want them to be nurtured by the same food and drink that nurture us. We desire communion. That is why a refusal to eat and drink what a host offers is so offensive. It feels like a rejection of an invitation to intimacy.

Strange as it may sound, the table is the place where we want to become food for one another. Every breakfast, lunch, or dinner can become a time of growing communion with one another.

Pages

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day & Irish Soda Bread

3 comments: