Seeded Brown Irish Soda Bread

While at work, my husband has the privilege of being cooked for and cleaned up after. There is a lovely Irish girl who keeps him from withering away. Her name is Janine.

From time to time, the girls and I are lucky enough to share the privilege with him. Janine puts up with my children under foot and the forty-six questions that get fired at her about exactly what ingredients are going where and why the stove moves and why the fridge doors are so heavy and why the galley is called the galley and how come she has to cook for the boys and why the bread needs to cook for an hour and why she chose to paint her toenails that colour and if she is going to wear a pretty dress later on and well, you get the idea. She not only puts up with them, she does so patiently and calmly and sweetly in moments when I would have lost any shred of cool I may possess by question four.

She made us some soda bread for lunch one day. Poppy and I decided we would try and reproduce her delicious loaf. We tried and it was good but I am thinking it may need an Irish hand to be as delicious as hers was. For the rest of us this will do just fine to be sure.

I toasted the sesame seeds and pine nuts and cooled them before adding because they taste even better that way.  The seed/nut combination is up to you. You could add pumpkin seeds or chopped nuts or whatever you feel like.

Don’t forget to cut a cross in the top which is not a religious symbol - I had thought it was. Janine says it just helps it rise evenly.

Seeded Brown Irish Soda Bread (adapted from Janine’s adaptation of Rachel Allen’s Brown Soda Bread in Bake)

225 grams (8 ounces) whole wheat flour

225 grams (8 ounces) all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

100 grams mixed seeds (I used sunflower, poppy, pine nuts and sesame seeds)

25 grams (1 ounce) butter

1 egg beaten

375-400 mL buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425º (220ºc). 

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Rub the butter in to the dry ingredients. Make a well in the center.

Whisk the egg and buttermilk together and pour most of the liquid into the dry ingredients. Using your hand like a scoop, bring the flour and liquid together, adding more liquid if necessary. The dough should be soft an not too sticky.

Turn out and bring dough into a round on a parchment lined baking sheet.

Cut a deep cross in the top of round.

Bake for 15 minutes. Turn heat down to about 390º (200ºc) and bake for another 30 minutes. The loaf will sound hollow when it is done.

Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Rainbow Bread Pudding (almost)

The other day, over at sweet salty, Kate said I was all rainbowy. Well, not me exactly, but my house. And, I am pretty sure she was referring to what we eat and not how we decorate. At least I hope that is what she was saying. 

Well, just as she was saying that, I went and posted this. Then I read what she said and felt all embarrassed and immediately wanted to post something cleaner and brighter, more orange and green, good for the body as well as the stuck in the depths of February soul.

Problem was, we were in no fit state for contact with the general public. We were at the stage of the cold when trying to wipe away the green nasal discharge (am I really talking about this in a post about food? Yes, but I am going to blame it on the fever.) creates shrieking one could easily associate with murder by chainsaw. That and the fact that I could not bring myself to put pants, and by pants I mean trousers, on let alone shoes, jacket, find the car keys (yes, I know the supermarket in less than a block away), load two children into their car seats, etc, etc. This meant that we were cooking with what we had.

We get squash in our CSA, and while I don’t dislike the lovely little orbs, I don’t love them either. It takes a bit of motivation for me to get excited about cooking them up into something good. Luckily, Kate had asked for orange, and since I had a few of these little pumpkin cousins sitting around here, I could do orange.

I could do green, well I guess it is greeny white but greenish anyway. I had some leeks and green onions. I had a slightly stale loaf of bread that hadn’t become the sandwiches it was meant to because preschool and picnics had been called off. While the bread is not very rainbowy, it would have to do for all of the reasons mentioned above.

A one dish, casserole kind of supper was pretty appealing. I couldn’t think to manage getting more than one thing on the table at the same time. Throwing all of my found, and by found I mean rescued from the depths of the refrigerator, ingredients together seemed like the best thing to do. Adding eggs and cheese, I had a Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding, fodder for the Februariest of souls.

The kabocha can be replaced by any squash you like or have to hand. I chose this one from our ever-amassing collection because it is so niftily neat and easy to peel. I used some myzithra cheese here but, on a higher energy day, when I felt like leaving the house to get some, I may just have chucked it full of little blobs of goat cheese. You could easily substitute some feta as well.

All of this to say that despite feeling like a small person is sanding away at the inside of my throat, I am now challenged to be as colourful as I can be, in the kitchen anyway. So, thank you Kate for the kick in the pants. Unless, of course, you really were speaking of our decorating aesthetic. In which case, please disregard the above.

Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding (this should handily feed 8)

4 cups peeled, seeded and cubed squash

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 large leeks washed and sliced (about 2 cups)

1 large onion chopped

3 cloves garlic

2 teaspoons olive oil

5 cups cubed french bread (a round boule, a couple of days old is perfect)

4 green onions chopped

1 cup cream

1 1/2 cup milk

6 eggs

1/2 cup myzithra cheese grated

1/2 teaspoon salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Butter a large baking dish.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Sauté the squash in the first two teaspoons of olive oil over low heat until it is tender. It is packed full of natural sugars, so make sure it doesn’t burn. Browned is okay, burnt is not. Remove from heat.

Sauté the leeks, onions and garlic in the second two teaspoons of olive oil until soft. Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, eggs and salt and pepper.

In the baking dish, mix together the bread, squash, leek mixture, green onions, cheese and egg mixture. Press the bread down a bit to make sure everything is soaked with the egg mixture.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Enjoy with some sautéed greens or salad or, if you must, some bacon.

Man Bread

A while back we were passing through our local market one Sunday morning, trying desperately not to eat everything in sight. There was a woman promoting her new book and handing out recipe cards, which Poppy needed to have.

The card got filed in with the shopping. When we got home it got removed from the market bag, a little damp from something or other. I put the card in a catch everything basket on the counter. It stayed there for a couple weeks. Then, in a flurry of tidying up, it got put in a drawer.

I remembered the card and started a little search for it which turned into a frustrating and exhaustive tidy up and sort out of the drawer. There it was, finally, nestled between some cookie cutters and cupcake wrappers right up against the last six weeks worth of supermarket receipts and an empty package of throat lozenges.

It was a recipe aimed at men to promote a book aimed at men, insinuating that men need to eat different things than women, or at least cook different things. I am not sure. Regardless, it looked like this recipe could turn out well so Tilly and I made it.

The whole time, I thought about the man recipe thing and my thoughts turned to this. I realized that, at our house, the man drawer is mine. It is in the kitchen, it isn’t full of lightbulbs and batteries. It is full of piping tips that haven’t made it back into the case, clips and closures, thread and pens, chokey bits of toy hastily hidden from a curious baby and lots of random notes, recipes and clippings and it is full to spilling out. The kind of spilling out that takes a hip to shut it while you smooth the top layer down while carefully trying to extract your hands before you scrape your knuckles.

The man area at our house is very well ordered. Sure, there are some useless bits of junk and some empty wrappers but it is all tucked away in a quite carefully organised corner of the basement, so far from the bottom of the stairs that I only venture down there in the direst of cases. Safe from the clutter and mess of the rest of the house. A dark and peaceful little haven.

So, I did what I do and we made this man recipe an little trickier, if sautéing onions is tricky. And, I lightened it up using a lighter beer than it called for - the original called for a stout and I used Stone Levitation Ale, a hoppy little local number. I foofooed it up with the tiniest bit of oregano, dried because I can’t stomach fresh in any quantity. If my children weren’t eating it, I would have chucked it full of something spicy too.

The result was a loaf worth accompanying even the ladiest of winter pots. It is quick enough to make after a day out to go with whatever has been in your slow cooker all day. It is tasty enough to want to make more than once. It is really gorgeous toasted and would be pretty damn fine with some eggs and mushrooms.

Technically, it isn’t Man Bread, it is Anybody Bread. Unfortunately, this means you’ll have more competition getting a slice.

Cheddar Onion Beer Bread adapted from a recipe by Susan C. Russo

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup grated cheddar cheese, I used a 2 year old number

1 cup sautéed onions, cooled

A few grinds of fresh ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

12 ounce (350 mL) flavourful ale of your choice

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Butter an 8-inch x 4-inch loaf pan.

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir in cheese. Stir in onions.

Pour beer in and mix all ingredients until combined.

Pour into prepared tin.

Bake for around 40 minutes. When a tester comes out clean, it is done.

Cool for a few minutes before slicing.

Enjoy.