A Saint Patrick's Day Feast

Sunday, my brother, sister-in-law, niece and I had a little pre-St.Patrick's Day Celebration, a fairly good approximation of a authentic Irish meal, that I though I would share with you. It will be followed by my secret Irish brown bread recipe, you lucky devils.

We started with some shrimp. Now usually, when this is served in Ireland, they use wee, little shrimp, but like this, served on a bed of lettuce with salad dressing, what we would call thousand island dressing. That was followed by some vegetable

soup. When we traveled in Ireland, it became a bit of a joke. You go into a place for lunch and they will say there is a 'soup of the day'. You ask what it is and the answer always is "vegetable" soup. What veggie that is is rarely mentioned. Sometimes the soup will be orange, so lots of carrots, sometimes it might be green, sometimes white, all depending on the dominate vegetable. But it is always a pureed veggie soup and it is almost always very good.
As was mine, of course.

Then, the main course. Ham, corned beef, boiled potatoes, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. A word now about corned beef. There is NOTHING...ok, very, very little...Irish about corned beef. It is almost totally unknown in Ireland and you will never see it on a menu or in a store. What they do eat is when then boil something and serve it with cabbage and potatoes and a variety of vegetables like cabbage, rutabagas, turnips, carrots, sprouts, is ham or a 'bacon' joint. Not corned beef. So, we had both, ham and corned beef..because we are, of course Irish-American.

For dessert, I baked my attempt at an Irish style apple tart. According to my brother, our Aunt Maure makes the perfect Apple Tart and while mine was close it was not perfect. Unlike our apple pie, their tart is quite thin, not terribly sweet and very subtly spiced. Served with a dollop of barely whipped, slightly sweetened heavy cream.
I will keep trying.
The niece also made some nice "Irish Potatoes", again, unknown in Ireland and some 5 Minute Key Lime Tarts...which were green.

And finally, there is the bread. Brown bread, a whole wheat quick, that is non-yeast, bread is, to me, the quintessential Irish bread. One that I have worked on recreating as perfectly as I could. One problem is that Irish whole wheat flour in not the same as American flour. Ours is made from a hard wheat, theirs from a soft wheat. For years, I would sneak a few 5 lb bags home in my suitcase...not sure that is legal...but then, happily, I found that King Arthur Flour carries a very acceptable substitute, so I buy a couple of bags and freeze them until I need them. Then there is our buttermilk, which I thing lacks some of the tang of the Irish version. So I added plain yougurt as part of the 'liquid'.

When my cousin Catherine and her husband Paul came over to the USA, she tasted bread made according to my recipe and pronounced it very good, so I think I have succeeded.

Brown Bread

3 cups Irish style whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 cup raw Irish oatmeal
1 tsp. baking power
1 tsp. baking soda
1 TBS. wheat germ
1/2 tsp. salt
1 TBS. sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup plain yogurt
1 cup buttermilk, plus enough to moisten

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining three, wet ingredients. Mix the wet into the dry and then add enough additional buttermilk to make a rather wet dough. With moistened hands, quickly form into round loaf, handling as little as possible, and put on a baking sheet to bake free form or into a 2 qt, round Pyrex bowl , if you like a perfect round loaf, to bake.
Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce to 400 for remaining 45 minutes. Cover with foil if it starts to brown too quickly.
When done, it will sound hollow if you tap the bottom.
Wrap in a tea towel to cool.

This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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