Irish Soda Bread & City Vistas

I may not have posted this in time for St. Paddy's Day, but I definitely made it and ate it in time for the holiday. 

 I love continually exploring the city in which I live. Last weekend we had some pretty, if a bit cool, weather so I trundled across the bridge to Fort Baker and took some photos as I strolled. 

I also love a good carrier for warm butter and jam so endeavored to make my first loaf of soda bread. I kind of merged two different recipes to make this, in an effort to use up a variety of ingredients that I have laying around (bread flour, currants, golden raisins). The bread was easy and tasty and I'm not usually one to say this, but it was almost nice when it got a little stale because it meant that I could slice it and toast it and bring it back to life with some butter and a nice dollop of homemade apricot preserves - mmmm.

 To make: Preheat the oven to 375 and line a baking sheet with parchment. Pour a cup of boiling water of 1 cup of raisins and/or currants, let sit. Combine 4 cups bread flour, 4 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt in a medium bowl. Cut in 1/2 stick chilled butter.In a separate bowl beat together 1 3/4 cups buttermilk, 1 large egg, and the zest of 1 orange. Slowly add the wet mixture into the dry, stirring until combined. Dough will be wet/sticky. Drain the currants and then add them into the dough. Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface and knead a few times. Shape into a round, place on the prepared baking sheet and cut a plus sign into the top of the dough. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the loaf is golden brown and has a hollow sound to it. Best eaten with lots of butter. P.S. I would have loved to put caraway seeds in this but I didn't have any and Trader Joe's doesn't carry them. . . and that's where my industriousness petered out.

 For Ina Garten's version of this recipe click here.

 

Breakfast Time - Cheddar Bacon Biscuits

I don't think this really makes it an excuse to call this breakfast, but football was on and I was in the mood for some sort of unhealthy 'game food' - so . . . carpe diem. Not only did I make bacon cheddar biscuits, but I ate mine with an egg on top of it. It was delicious. I plan on making something equally unhealthy and tasty for Super Bowl Sunday - thus emerges my love of football.

I adapted my recipe from Alton Brown's plain Southern Biscuit recipe. The biscuits were fluffy and buttery - perfect for eating as soon as they exited the oven.

A Spring-y Break Conclusion - Cinnamon Bun Bites

I will preface this by saying this was definitely not my most successful recipe to date - that being said I made it for Easter, I spent a lot of time on it, I don't have a refrigerator right now, it came out quite pretty, I over-baked it, and I don't want to talk about it. 

This recipe had all the right ingredients to be delicious - namely loads of butter and sugar, unfortunately I left it in the oven a wee bit too long (and/or over -worked the dough) and it came out a bit dry BUT I believe that with a few tweaks and some finesse it would be delicious, so I am reproducing it here so if you want to try it you can let me know if you are more successful than I.

A ridiculous amount of butter.

please mentally remove the 'e' from smooth

And Good Pesach!

My Favorite Meal - Bread and Butter

I didn't know what to cook, and was trying to think of something fun for the blog (or just fun to make), and ended up reverting back to my tried and true method–I asked myself the question, "what do I want to eat?" The answer: bread and butter. So I searched for an extremely simple, 'no-wait' bread recipe that I could make with what I had on hand (i.e. no milk and relatively little flour). I found this nice, simple recipe on 101 Cookbook's blog that was shared from Gran's Kitchen by Natalie Oldfield.

The yeast going to work

The bread was dense, hearty loaf but tasty and definitely well-suited to usher melty butter into hungry people.

Skillet Cornbread

Our friends were in town for their honeymoon (congrats Charlotte and Ciarán!), so, of course, I pulled out all the stops–I made chili (recipe to follow). What is the perfect compliment to chili you might ask? Tortillas? Maybe. Biscuits? Hrm... Cornbread? Ding ding ding! Meat and beans with some warm gritty cornbread–yes please. The added perks on this particular occasion included: 1.) the cold weather outside, 2.) having a nice group of friends to share the meal with and 3.) our English friends had never experienced cornbread before (one had never had peanut butter prior to a week ago either!! - another story unto itself, suffice it to say cornbread beat peanut butter).

 

I used a recipe from an older issue of Bon Appetit for their Sage and Honey Skillet Cornbread and just tweaked a few things–one thing I didn't change, the amount of butter . . . I did however add a chopped jalapeno–next time I might even add two. I love the flavor of jalapeno in my cornbread. I didn't really taste the sage, or the honey, but the cornbread was moist AND delicious with a nice added crunch.