Soda Bread or The Luck of the Irish

I’ve gotten a little sidetracked by life these past few weeks.  Weekends arrive and I find myself sleeping in to hours I haven’t indulged in quite some time.  Or I have an hour or two of productivity before a marathon of Agatha Christie shows seems like a good way to pass the time.  

I did attempt a recipe last weekend for Oatmeal Crisps.  Problem is I tried to multi-task whilst I attempted this seemingly simple oatmeal cookie recipe.  My history in the kitchen should have been smart enough to note that so much butter and shortening would make for very fragile and thin cookies… and oozing all over baking surfaces… which turned into oozing onto the bottom of the oven and an oh so delectable scent of burnt sugar.

So I’ll come back to Oatmeal Crisps when I’m less frazzled.

This weekend I baked.  I baked my own recipe.  Okay, a recipe I got off the internet ten years ago and take out of my overly stuffed folder of computer printouts once a year to bake my offering to the Brennan St. Patrick’s Day feast.

I’m eating some now, to go with my Bailey’s flavored coffee. 

If you want to try it, it really is quite simple… and (in my humble opinion) ten times better than any store bought variety.

Irish Soda Bread
Ingredients:
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3 Tbsp. butter
¼ c. raisins (optional)
1 egg white, slightly beaten
¾ c. buttermilk
¼ tsp. salt

- 1.Mix together dry ingredients.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  (I do this with my hands.  It is pretty good stress relief.)  Stir in raisins if desired.  (I’ve often forgot to do this and end up adding them later… but it’s messier that way).  Make a well in center of mixture.

- 2.Combine egg white and buttermilk.  Add all at once to dry mixture.  Stir until moistened.

- 3.Knead dough until smooth.  Shape into 7 in round loaf.

- 4.Lightly grease baking sheet.  (I use my pizza stone).  Place dough on sheet.  With knife, make criss crossed slashes on top to form an ‘x’.  Brush with buttermilk

- 5.Bake about 30 minutes at 375° or until golden.  Serve warm if possible.

So while this isn’t one of Gram’s recipes, I can say it tastes fabulous with some of her jam.  Or alongside one of the many various interpretations of corned beef my uncles provide every year.  

I often joke how St. Patrick’s Day has become a second Christmas in my family.  While we don’t have all the Brennans in attendance, the house is certainly filled to the brim and requires multiple seating stations to eat a plate full of corned beef, green mold, and soda bread.  There is a lot of Irish whiskey.  A lot of silliness.  And a lot of green.

I’ve been cynical about St. Patrick’s Day.  How pretentious our sudden love of immigrant heritage is.  How ridiculous it is to honor the poverty and depressive alcoholic traditions of our Irish forbears.  How people who pooh pooh Mexicans try to pull out the 1/48^th Irish genetic component in their bloodstream to justify getting shitfaced and irresponsible on this one day a year.

This year… I didn’t care about that. Maybe it’s this blog.  Maybe it’s the fact I’ve really started to see my family differently after the birth of my nieces and the death of my grandmother.  Maybe it’s because I make a damn good soda bread and welcome the excuse to pull out this recipe once a year.  Whatever it is, whatever the ingredients and instructions, the fact is I saw the greatest recipe to come from the Brennan kitchen(s) isn’t the food on our tables but that innate ability to measure, blend, and serve happiness.  

My grandmother always used to reflect after these gatherings how lucky we are.  Maybe it’s the luck of the Irish.  Or maybe it’s because we are master chefs in that recipe of family.