Emeral Isle Redux

"A Few More From My Recent Trip to Ireland...

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...and as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, 
check these out.

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I Reappear...in The "Emerald Isle"

Wow, I have been gone so long I forgot how to create a post.
Almost a year exactly.
Really...What is my sign on?

Just dipping my toe in, posting a few pics from a recent trip to Co. Cork, Ireland where I, the Bro and Sil and the Niece and her Hubbie attended the wedding of my cousin Katherine's Son, Donogh a few weeks ago.

Assuming I can remember how to post a photo...oh my...help....

The Cliffs of Moher

Adare Manor, where we stayed two nights..very, very GRAND!

Gardens at Longueville House, where the wedding was held

Sheep on Longueville's lawn.

The wedding couple, Claire and Donogh.

Paul, are you reading this? LOL 

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...and as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, 
check these out.

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Weekend Cooking...Dark Sticky Gingerbread

The week before last, I believe it was, that I post a review of Irish Family Food by Rachel Allen. I am of the opinion that is a very nice cookbook with a large number of recipes that I really need to make and try out.
So in the interest of research, for you my dear readers, I will take up the burden!
So what to make?
Well, how about a sweet?

There are a number of choices available. Fluffy Lemon Pudding..very spring sounding. Or how about  an Irish Apple Cake..or a simple Ginger Cookie...or a fancy sounding Irish Coffee Meringue Roulade?
So many choices...so I picked something that sounds warm and cozy, nice for the still cool (or downright chilly, with the snow we had this week) weather...Gingerbread. Dark and sticky, with a syrup you pour over the warm cake and an optional icing that I think must be added.
Don't you?

"This classic teatime cake can be served warm with cream as a dessert or cold, sliced and buttered at any time.  The flavor is quite intense, and it's the kind of treat that is immensely satisfying. It stays deliciously moist and has a lovely mixture of different spices so will keep very well. Divine with a  cup of coffee."
Makes 1 loaf 

 Dark Sticky Gingerbread

• 60g (5 Tbs.) butter 
• 75g (1/4 cup) golden syrup (or dark corn syrup)
• 50g (2  Tbs. plus 1 tsp.) molasses or black treacle 
• 110g (3/4 cup) plain flour 
• 25g (4 Tbs.) self-raising flour 
• 1 level tsp. bicarbonate of soda 
• 1 heaped tsp. ground ginger 
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon 
• 1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg 
• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 
• 100g (1/2 cup) sugar 
• Pinch of salt 
• 120ml (1/2 cup) milk 
• 1 egg, beaten 
• 50g (2oz) crystallised ginger, finely chopped 

For the syrup

• 80g (6 1/2 Tbs.) sugar 
• 80ml (1/3 cup) water 
• 1 tsp finely grated root ginger 

For the topping (optional)

• 200g (1 2/3 cups) confectioners sugar, sifted 
• Juice of 1⁄2 lemon 

You will need  13 x 23cm (5 x 9in) loaf tin
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F), Gas mark 3. Line the loaf tin with parchment paper.
2. Melt the butter, golden syrup and molasses or treacle in a small saucepan over a low heat. Set aside.
3. Sift the flours, bicarbonate of soda, spices and pepper into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and salt, then add the milk and egg and mix until smooth. Gradually add the melted butter mixture, stirring until well incorporated, then fold in the chopped crystallised ginger. The mixture will be runny.
4. Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the oven for 50-55 minutes or until risen and firm to the touch and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Do not open the oven to test before the bread has cooked for at least 45 minutes. 
 5. Place all the ingredients for the syrup in a small saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes. Prick the hot cake all over with a fine skewer, pour over the syrup and leave to cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely on the rack.

6. If you wish, mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together in a small bowl until thick, then spread carefully over the top of the cake with a palette knife or a table knife, allowing some icing to drip over the edges. 

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I think it had me at 'divine with coffee', since I gave up coffee..and milk and soda and almost every beverage except water for Lent and am thinking this will indeed be divine when I can have a cuppa java come Easter Day.

Although this has a fairly large number of ingredients, once you have them gathered, it is quick and easy to put together. I got everything prepped and measured and ready to go before I started,  something I would really recommend with this recipe.
as to those ingredients...
I had no self rising flour, so I looked online and found a 'recipe'. 4 TBS is 1/4 cup, then add about 1/3 tsp. of baking power and you should be good to go. And I had no golden syrup..even though I have seen it in my supermarket...so I used corn syrup. Three forms of ginger are used..fresh, powered and crystallized..and I got my hands on all of them.
BTW, I also lined the loaf pan with parchment paper before I poured in the batter. All that talk of 'sticky' had me concerned about, well, sticking.

Adding the icing is up to you. I went with, not least of all because I though the touch of lemon would be nice. Have I mentioned I love lemon? But to tell ya the truth, next time I would make the icing, but half the amount and leave out the lemon juice, maybe using milk instead, with a dash of vanilla..or a touch of cinnamon. The lemon conflicted rather than complimented in my opinion.
But it was still very good.

And very cozy.

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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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Weekend Cooking...Review of "Rachel's Irish Family Food" [23]

 
Rachel's Irish Family Food: 120 classic recipes from my home to yours by Rachel Allen 
Collins ISBN 978-0007462582
February 19, 2013, 256 pages

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I am of two minds about corned beef.
We had it when I was a kid, and not just at St. Patrick's Day but it's mistaken identity as a common Irish dish just sets me on edge. Like green beer and drunken leprechauns and calling the saint St. Patty.
What we should be having is pork, bacon..which as Rachel Allen defines it in this lovely cookbook is back bacon or cured and smoked pork loin.
Good luck finding that in your typical American supermarket.
I need a butcher...a really good butcher!
So I went with a pork butt, a smoked pork shoulder butt, something we also had frequently on the dinner table when I was a kid.

So, where did this connection of Irish Americans and corned beef come from?
Well, believe it or not, scholarly articles have been written about it, like this one,
Irish Corned Beef: A Culinary History by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

"It is considered by most Americans to be the ultimate Irish dish, so much so that Allen (2010) notes ‘I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to emphasize that we don’t just live on corned beef, potatoes and cabbage in Ireland.’ However, corned beef and cabbage is seldom eaten in modern day Ireland. It is widely reported that Irish immigrants replaced their beloved bacon and cabbage with corned beef and cabbage when they arrived in America, drawing on the corned beef supplied by their neighbouring Jewish butchers...

From ancient times in Ireland, cattle were highly prized as a sign of wealth....
This paper identifies that corned beef has always been an aristocratic food in Ireland and particularly a festive dish eaten at Christmas, Easter and St. Patrick’s Day. It suggests that the most probable reason for the popularity of corned beef among the Irish Americans was not the lack of availability of bacon, as sometimes argued, but that corned beef was widely available at a reasonable price. Irish immigrants aspired to better themselves in America and part of this betterment was the consumption of foodstuff they might not have been able to afford at home."

So, enough with the research, and back to the cookbook, Rachel's Irish Family Food by Rachel Allen.
I am not familiar with Rachel Allen, but I am quite familiar with her mother-in-law, the well known chef and cookbook writer Darina Allen, who started a famous cooking school at Ballymaloe House in Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland...and her mother-in-law, Myrtle Allen, she who started the now famous hotel and restaurant in Ballymaloe. It is quite an accomplished cooking family. So when I saw a review of Rachel's latest book..she has written 8 or 9 cookbooks..I thought it would make a nice gift to myself.
And I was right!


It is a very attractive book, full of many beautiful pictures of the completed recipes, some lovely ones of the Irish countryside and a few of Rachel and her handsome family. There is a nice variety of dishes, soups, everyday dishes, ones for special occasions, vegetables and side dishes, breads, desserts, cakes and cookies, many with a unique Irish feel. There are 120 recipes in total, many marked as being vegetarian, but a nice selection of meat and seafood dishes as well.
I must say, the number of recipes I am looking forward to making after paging through this book is long. Kale and Bean Stew..Sticky Cumin and Apricot Roast Carrots and Parsnips...Pork and Mushroom Pie...Dark Sticky Gingerbread..to name just a few.

Every recipes includes a little introduction by Rachel, telling the place of this dish in Irish culture, such as Ballymaloe's recipe for spiced beef, or in her own family history, like her father's favorite Ginger Cookies.
I have a number of Irish cookbooks and yet found many new ideas in this one. Still, for those not familiar with Irish cooking, beyond that corned beef and cabbage, this would make a wonderful introduction.

I will leave you with a recipe...or two..
a sauce to serve with your bacon, or ham, or corned beef
and a different way to cook your cabbage, both from Rachel's Irish Family Food.

Parsley Sauce

For the basic white sauce...

1 ¼ cups whole milk

few slices carrots
few slices of onion
1 sprig parsley
1 sprig thyme
3 peppercorns
2 Tbs. Flour
2 Tbs. Butter 
Salt and pepper to taste

Pour the milk in a small saucepan and add the carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, decrease the heat and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and allow to infuse for about 10 minutes.

 While the milk infuses, make the roux. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low to medium heat ad add the flour. Allow to cook for 2 minutes, stirring regularly. Set aside. Strain the milk through a sieve placed over a small saucepan and bring the milk to a boil. Whisk in the roux, a little at a time, until well blended and allow to simmer gently 4 to 5 minutes or until thicken to the desired consistency.

For the Parsley Sauce...add

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
7 Tbs. Finely chopped fresh parsley 
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Sliced pork butt, steamed red potatoes and carrots and buttered cabbage with parsley sauce

Buttered cabbage 

1 pound Savoy or other dark cabbage 
2 Tbs. Butter 
2 Tbs. Water 
Salt and fresh ground black pepper 

This is the way we prepare cabbage here at Ballymaloe Cookery School. The cabbage isn't boiled, but cooked in butter with only a splash of water. This way the water doesn't leach out any flavor or nutrition. 

Remove the tough outer leaves from the cabbage. Cut the head of cabbage into four from top to bottom. Cut out the core, then slice the cabbage crossways into fine shreds, about ¼ inch thick. Combine the water and butter in a wide saucepan over medium heat and allow the butter to melt. Toss in the cabbage and season with salt and pepper. Cover with a lid and cook 2 to 3 minutes, until just softened; do not allow the cabbage to burn. 
Taste for seasoning and serve. 

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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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Weekend Cooking...Pate Maison

OK, this one will have the vegans and vegetarians around here running.
Today I am making Pate Maison...or Chicken Liver Pate.
I will admit, I am not a fan of liver per se.
In fact, I have never eaten plain liver, liver and onions and such.

I blame it on an early childhood experience. I was just a wee Caite, staying at my grandparents apartment in Atlantic City. My dear grandfather, jokester that he was, gave wee Caite a bit of liver (he was a fan) and told the sweet child that it was steak.
I took one bite, spit it out, threw it at him and yelled "Bad steak!!"

Or so I am told.

Still, I do like chicken liver pate.
And it is so reasonable priced to make. Look at that. Less than a dollar for a pound of livers, twice what I need!

There used to be a store nearby that sold a very nice one, but while the store is there, no lovely pate anymore.

But years ago, I was in Ireland, at my cousin Anne's house in Dublin having dinner and as an appetizer she served a homemade Pate Maison. Excellent!

Or so I was told.

See, her husband Pat took it upon himself to educate me in the venerable beverage of Port...he had a large number of bottles on hand...and the whole evening is just a little blurry in my mind. But I did get the recipe.
And it is here...somewhere...I think.

OK, I lost it.

So, I went on line and found this one, which is now my go-to recipe. It is from Ballymaloe House, a lovely country house hotel and restaurant in the southwest of Ireland. Ballymaloe is the home of Myrtle Allen, the author of a number of cookbooks and her daughter in law Darina Allen, also the author of many cookbooks and sort of the cooking Martha Stewart of Irish food

Ballymaloe Chicken Liver Pate 
Serves 10-12 depending on how it is served.

This recipe has certainly stood the test of time; it has been our pâté maison at Ballymaloe since the opening of the restaurant in 1965.  It is served in many different ways: its success depends upon being generous with good Irish butter.

• 225g (8oz) fresh organic chicken livers
• 1 large clove garlic,crushed 
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons sherry or brandy 
• 200-300g (8-10 oz) butter (depending on how strong the chicken livers are) 
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves 
• freshly ground pepper 
• clarified butter to seal the top

Wash the livers and remove any membrane or green tinged bits. Melt a little butter in a frying pan; when the butter foams, add in the onions and arlic and cook a minute, then add in the livers and cook over a gentle heat about 3-4 minutes.  Be careful not to overcook them or the outsides will get crusty; all trace of pink should be gone.   Put the livers through a sieve or into a food processor.  De-glaze the pan with brandy, allow to flame, add the crushed garlic and thyme leaves and then scrape off with a spatula and add to the livers.  Puree for a few seconds.  Allow to cool.
Add 225g (8oz) butter and fresh thyme leaves. Puree until smooth.  Season carefully, taste and add more butter, cut into cubes if necessary.

This pate should taste fairly mild and be quite smooth in texture. Put into pots or into one large terrine. Knock out any air bubbles.
Clarify some butter and run a little over the top of the pate to seal.
Serve with hot toast or crusty bread.   This pate will keep for 4 or 5 days in a refrigerator. It is essential to cover chicken liver pate with a layer of clarified or even just melted butter, otherwise the pate will oxidize and become bitter in taste and grey in colour.
 

Grey food, not so good. No.
Now, as usual, my changes.
I did not have the Irish butter, although we can get it in the supermarkets here, so I use regular butter. And I used less butter than she did, more like 6 Tbs. But that is a matter of taste. I was also not going to clarify any butter, so again I just used regular melted butter.
I added the onions. And 2 cloves of garlic instead of her one.
And I add sherry, instead of the brandy she uses. I personally like the little sweetness the sweet sherry adds.
Perhaps not to everyone taste, but me and mine , or at least me and my sister-in-law, will be enjoying it this holiday season!

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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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Weekend Cooking...Maura's Christmas Cake

My creation from a few years ago

Thanksgiving has past, and as usual, I am late in making my Christmas Cake. “But” you say, “you have weeks.”

No, because the cake must age. It must mature. It must be soaked in whiskey! I must get to work at once.

A Christmas Cake, in the Irish tradition, is a fruitcake. Not the nasty, candied fruit 'fruitcakes' you often find in the US, but a dense, fruity, nutty, rich cake, topped with a thick layer of marzipan and royal icing, to be eaten in small pieces, ideally with a nice cuppa tea. Or maybe something a bit stronger.

The best Christmas Cakes that I have ever tasted were the ones baked by my Aunt Maura. Now Maura was a force, a true force. My father, as I may have mentioned, was born in Ireland, one of a number of brothers and Maura was the wife of one of his brothers. A widow, the mother of two daughters, a dairy and then cattle farmer, she lived in the house she was born in, a very old house with a thatched roof. The house was at the Cross, the intersection of the road that goes to the market town of Mitchelstown and the road that does down to the 'town' of Ballindangen. A road she took her bike down, or walked, every day, past her fields, well into her eightys to go to daily Mass.

She played the fiddle, had taught it at one point, and, at the age of eighty, took up the concertina. She knew personally, it seemed, every musician in Ireland, a country known for it love of music and respect for musicians. The main room of her house, anchored on one end by the open fire that was the house's only source of heat (except for, in her later years, an electric heater in her bedroom), and on the other by the cupboard that contained all her dishes and cookware, was living room, kitchen and dining room. And on the very long, very dark, Irish winter nights, often the home to a gathering of her fellow musicians from the area for a 'session'. You could be there late into the evening any day and hear a knock on the door, someone just dropping in to see Maura. She always seemed to know everything that was going on...and was usually involved in it.

And oh, could she bake. When we would arrive for a visit from “the States”, she would have one of her apple tarts in the tiny oven waiting for our “tea”. I watched her make one on many occasions, a handful of this, a teacup of that, tried to copy down the ingredients and instructions, but have never been able to get it just right. But on her Christmas Cake, I really tried to pin her down, and with a figurative gun to her head, actually got her to write out the recipe. One funny point. As a girl, Maura had taken “The Pledge”, a promise not to drink alcohol and would proudly tell you she had never had a drink in her life. And yet, she always kept a bottle of Irish whiskey in the front parlour closet...”for the Christmas Cake, of course!”

As we would leave, every time, she would come to the door and hug us goodbye and get teary, saying that, “God willing”, she would still be alive to see us when we next visited. Sadly, it is not to be, as God called her home this year. I am not one to presume, at all, that everyone who dies goes to heaven, but surely Maura is there.

And I hope they have fruitcake...and great music and a good peat fire going in the fireplace in heaven and Maura will be right at home.

In her own words..

Maura's Christmas Cake

21 oz. mixed fruit 

2 1/2 oz. cherries

2 1/2 oz. almonds, ground

2 1/2 oz. mixed peel

2 'good' tbs. whiskey

7 oz. flour

1 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. mixed spice (an Irish mix of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice...)

2 oz. whole almonds

5 oz. butter

6 oz. demerara sugar

Rind and juice of a lemon and an orange

4 eggs

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, giving each egg 5 minutes beating into creamed sugar and butter. Add flour, sifted, and then fruit, seasoning etc and last, the whiskey.

Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Put mixture in oven at that heat for 30 minutes. Lower temperature to 275 and bake for 3-3 1/2 hours. Leave in the oven to cool and then take out and sprinkle whiskey on top. 

I will admit I have made a few chances. For the mixed fruit, I use King Arthur's fruitcake blend and KAF cherries and some chopped dates. I add a grated apple or two, something I read in other recipes. I use more spice...a total of 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, fresh grated nutmeg, cloves, ginger, allspice. I soak the fruit in rum or whiskey overnight before I make the cake. Yes, I have been known to use rum instead of Irish whiskey. Recipes are living things and I think you can play with them a bit.

But in my mind, it will always be Maura's Christmas Cake.

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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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Weekend Cooking... A Full Irish Breakfast

If you have ever been to Ireland, especially if you stayed in a B&B, you are no doubt familiar with what is called a Full Irish Breakfast. You will be asked if you want the full version, or for the faint of heart, something a little less substantial. Often, especially in colder weather, you will be offered oatmeal to start, that very healthy steel cut oat version. Then will come the hot breakfast.

The Irish like their pork product and their dairy products, and both are on display at breakfast time. Typically, the Irish breakfast will start with a couple of pork sausages and a slice of Irish bacon. Now Irish bacon is a very different thing than our typical American bacon, more like ham or Canadian bacon. It is called back bacon and is made from the loin rather than fatty, belly meat like the American version.

Then there are the puddings, a slice of black and a slice of white typically. What is this black pudding? I remember being at breakfast in a B&B once and a couple at the next table asked the waiter what it was. He danced around the issue and never really said, because if he did they would not have tried it. It is a blood sausage, made with pork blood, barley or oatmeal and spices. It is sliced into rounds and fried crispy...which makes it turn black. White pudding is similar but without the blood. The Irish have been until recently, a very rural people and on a farm, no part of the pig goes to waste. The best black pudding is found in smaller butcher stores, while many of the commercial version, especially the ones you can buy in the US, are an inferior product. But beggers can't be choosy.

And then of course, there will be a farm fresh egg. If the kitchen is putting in a bit more effort, there will also be a grilled tomato and some grilled mushrooms. If you go up to the north, there will often be some baked beans as well. Sometimes, some sort of fried potatoes may make an appearance.
But there will always be an endless amount of strong, hot tea (oh, ok, coffee too) and a basket of brown bread and white soda bread with some wonderful Irish butter. If you are lucky, some homemade jam may be on the table too.

Now, I do wonder how many Irish eat anything like that for breakfast in their homes. Just as few in the US eat eggs and bacon for breakfast on a regular basis these days, I suspect many Irish are eating some cold cereal or a container of yogurt in the morning. But I know for a fact those same foods are still very popular other times of day in many an Irish home, for lunch or supper or a late night meal, and called a fry up.

Start your day with that and you will be fired up to face a full day of farm work..or a full day of touring the countryside!

Back on St. Patrick's Day, I shared my recipe for brown bread, made with Irish whole wheat flour, oatmeal and buttermilk and today I will share my recipe for soda bread, a quick, white, slightly sweet loaf. I don't put raisins in my soda bread, as many American versions have, but you could certainly add raisins or currents, or as the Niece suggest, craisins.

Irish Soda Bread

3 cups all purpose flour
3 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. baking power
1 tsp. baking soda
1 egg
1 to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, then combine the two. The dough will be rather wet and sticky. Dust your hands with flour and just knead a few turns to form a ball. You can bake it in a flat non-stick pan or, as I do, in a oiled and floured Pyrex bowl.
Bake in a pre-heated 375 degrees oven for about 40 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean and the loaf sound hollow if tapped on the bottom. Remove from the oven and wrap in a clean tea towel until cool.
At least a bit cooler...

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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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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The Quiet Man...Another Take on the Story

With St. Patrick's day just around the corner, it is time to look in the cabinet and find the DVD of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Quiet Man. A young, very handsome John Wayne, a young, very beautiful Maureen O'Hara, the beautiful Irish countryside, a fun, romantic story with perhaps the greatest fight scene of all time...and a great fun fight scene it is...what is not to like? There is nothing not to like I tell ye!

Fans of the movie will be happy to hear that, according to a story in the Irish Times, there is going to be a movie made, set in the village of Cong during the filming of the movie. The story will be about a fictional romance between a young woman from the village and one of director Ford's assistants.

Some very big and impressive names have signed on for the project, including former James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore, Aidan Quinn, Stacy Keach and Geraldine Chaplin. Sarah Bolger (In America) and Thomas Dekker (Sarah Connor Chronicles) will star as the love struck couple. And, of course there will be a starring role by the village of Cong and the beautiful countryside of the west of Ireland.

" In a statement issued by Fáilte Ireland, Moore said he was very excited to be part of a “delightful project”.

“ The Quiet Man was undoubtedly the best movie John Ford ever directed. It is also one of my all-time favourite films,” he said.

“The opportunity to revisit the time when Hollywood arrived in Ireland to shoot it was simply too delicious an opportunity to miss.”

Delightful indeed. As the article on Irish Fireside, who I also have to thanks for telling us about this, said, the only thing that could make this better would be a cameo appearance by the still lovely Maureen O'Hara herself in the film.

Wordless Wednesday- Sunset over Galway Bay

Sunset over Galway Bay, Cashel, Co. Galway, Ireland

...for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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a review of John the Revelator

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 978-0151014026)

John Devine...what a suitable moniker...was named after John the Evangelist, who, with his bother James, were called the sons of thunder. So fitting, since our young John was born in the midst of a terrible storm. Or so his mother always told him, as she recounted the story of his birth. Of course, we come to find out, that is not the whole truth, as we find out later in the book, as his mother, knowing her time with him is limited, tells him some things about his unnamed father. Actually, he was named after an old folk song, John the Revelator, a song his father had taught her and that she sang to put the crying baby to sleep. Since it worked, she called him John.
Like John the Evangelist, who recounts in the Book Of Revelation, "And I John saw these things, and heard them.", our narrator recounts his experiences growing up as a boy in a small Irish town, filled with his own signs and somewhat bizarre and disturbing dreams.

Young John is a bit of an odd fellow, a loner with no friends, obsessed with things like tapeworms and maggots. His mother, who works as a maid for a number of the more affluent residents of the town, worries about him, while not letting on how serious her own health issues are. Then, one day, John makes a friend, a new boy in town, the very cool Jamey Corboy. Jamey will become his guide and companion for a number of John's firsts; his first cigarette, his first bar and nightclub visit, his first drink, his first attempt to pick up a girl...and his first act of betrayal of a friend.

I had mixed feelings about this coming of age story, things I like and things I disliked. First, the minute you open the first page, you will see that this 250 page story is actually more of a novella, it's length padded with large type and large page margins. I am not saying that is a bad thing, to be shorter, but I just wonder why the publisher was just not direct about that.

Second, I choose this book, at least in part, because as the back cover says, it is set in southeastern Ireland. Now, my father was born in Ireland, I have relatives in Ireland and have been there many times, so that was of interest to me. But anyone looking for a description of the beautiful Irish countryside, or any Irish countryside for that matter, will not find it here. There is virtually no description of the setting, except a bit of the town and of the seaside, when John and his mother take a picnic to the beach one day. Murphy totally captures the feel of an Irish town, but I guess I hoped for more. Perhaps a beautiful countryside would have clashed with his often dark vision, filled with the flaps and crackles of old, black crows and dreams of nuclear destruction.

And then there is the issue of the plot, or lack of it. This is the type of books that the award givers love these days. Character heavy, plot light, but that, to me, is not a great thing.

All that being said, there was also a good bit I liked about this book. There are Jamey's short stories, which he shares with John and we read throughout the book. Also Murphy totally captures these characters and his dialogue is excellent, spot on. His portrayal of Jamey's and John's friendship, through it's ups and downs, is always realistic. Finally, there is the relationship between John and his chain smoking, Bible quoting mother, which I found very moving, not caught in cliches and the highlight of the book.

Fans of so-called literary fiction may love this one and it has gotten some great reviews in the press, but bottom line, I'll end where I started, with mixed feelings about this book.

My thanks to the Amazon Vine program for my copy of John the Revelator.

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