After some gentle nudging from my social-media aware friends, here I am to embark upon a new project; the recording - and confessing - of my unhealthy, unrequited love (lust!) for food. And drink, mustn't forget drink. Hopefully the full flavour of this blog will develop with time when I get to grips with the logistics. The current plan is to write my intermittent musings on the food that I'm eating, cooking or thinking about eating and cooking. Maybe even the the food that other people are eating and cooking and I am jealously adoring. In short: 'TBC'.
This weekend snow has hit London. For most normal people this means donning layers of fleeced garments and heading out to pelt one other with snowballs or fly down hillsides at deathly speeds. For me, it's an excuse to make a huge pot of coffee, change from one pair of pajamas into another, and spend the morning poring through recipes looking for something to cook that evening. If I am really lucky, I can do all of this without actually having to leave the house, as I loathe the snow. I don't even own fleeced garments (no-one should). My flavour of the week is Irish soda bread.
I am not a great one for baking. I would love to be one those Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall types who advocate sweating over your own bread on a bi-weekly basis but frankly, I've got better things to do with my day. If it took less time and effort I would definitely be a home bread-baker: hence soda bread, which takes minimal time and almost no effort. In austere 18th Century Ireland bread was of course a staple, but yeast not readily available. Here comes the science bit; the combination of bicarbonate of soda (traditionally soda ash) and lactic acid from either buttermilk or yoghurt released carbon dioxide bubbles into the dough which leavens it into an attractive, cracked loaf fresh from the lanes of Limerick!
For a medium sized loaf...
170g self-raising wholemeal flour
170g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp sea salt
1 260g carton of buttermilk or natural yoghurt
1 tbsp porridge oats (optional)
Oven at 200C/Gas 6, please.
Combine the flours, bicarb and salt plus half the porridge oats in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the buttermilk. Bring together with a knife until forming a ball of dough, then use your hands to combine the ingredients until dry enough that it is not sticking to the side of the bowl. Tip on to a floured surface and give it a brief knock together for about 10 seconds, forming it into a round loaf. Line a baking tray with baking paper and sprinkle with flour, sit the loaf of on top along with another snowy sprinkling of flour. Cut a cross on the top with a sharp knife about 2/3rd of the way into the loaf. I must emphasis that this whole process takes less time than reading this paragraph - take that Hugh. Sprinkle the remaining oats on top then bake for 35-40 minutes until it has risen. If the base sounds hollow when tapped it's ready.
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| Look closely and you can see the cheese! |
With the splendid ease of making this dough, it's equally easy to tart it up with interesting flavours. Think outside the austere Irish box at this point as you may otherwise find yourself limited. Looking no further than what was already in my cupboard I added poppy seeds, some past-its best Christmas stilton (added at the dry ingredients stage) and a good tablespoon of treacle marbled through the dough after I had turned it out on to my worktop. The result: ...cheesy - I ate this dipped into some homemade sweet potato and peanut butter soup. It was also good toasted with a smear or marmite, but what isn't? Slightly heavy on the stilton if I'm honest but the moral of the story is that you can really add anything. The treacle looked nice laced through the dough, too.
