Irish Life
Part of my article February 28, 2019 for Nashua Telegraph Encore Food and Fun Supplement.
Watercolor my cousin sent me from Ireland, saying view my mother would have had leaving Cork for England.
CÉAD MÍLE FÁILTE
A hundred thousand welcomes
For those of you who haven’t met me or seen me on ‘Cooks Corner’, I have a very British accent, so it always comes as a surprise when I tell people that both my parents were born and raised in Southern Ireland and only moved to London, England as Adults. But look at my name – Oonagh Gràinne. I have more family in Southern Ireland than anywhere and one of my uncles retired as an Irish Ambassador/Diplomat. My mother never made yeast raised bread, only soda bread. Baking powder was invented in the mid 1850’s so baking soda (bicarbonate of soda/bicarb in Irish/English recipes) raised bread was the way ordinary people in Ireland made bread. Baking soda has to be carefully measured otherwise you get a bitter, metallic flavor in your mouth, similar to when you get blood in your mouth from biting your tongue. You need far less baking soda in a recipe than baking powder. In London, it was possible to buy buttermilk at the local dairy for making the bread to give it the authentic flavor. I buy buttermilk ‘Kate’s Creamery, Maine’, at my local supermarket, the same real buttermilk made from fresh cream, farm made in Maine. Nowadays I also mix together sour cream or Greek yogurt and milk. They give the acid needed to help the baking soda rise. I also find one can buy an 8 oz carton of sour cream which is sufficient for the bread, but you can only buy liquid buttermilk in a 1 quart carton which is too much unless you make buttermilk pancakes or other dishes needing buttermilk.
On my aunts farm in Ireland we would make this bread fresh every day. We fed all the men breakfast after the early milking (you milk cows twice a day) and they would eat fresh bacon, eggs, Roscrea sausages, black and white pudding (blood pudding - boudin) and mushrooms picked fresh from the river field (the cow pasture) while the milking was going on. I recognize those mushrooms as the portabella mushrooms available here. And yes, my aunt knew what non poisonous mushrooms were so no chance of being poisoned. We would then mix the soda bread fresh for lunch, bake it in square biscuit (cookie) tin lids in the Aga stove and serve any leftovers to the farm dogs with table scraps and milk. While we made the bread fresh every day, I find it still tastes good nuked in the microwave the next day or toasted in toaster oven or bagel toaster and served with butter and marmalade for breakfast. For special occasions an egg would be added and perhaps some raisins but never caraway seeds.
We always called it either white or brown bread and referred to flour as white or brown flour. In America it’s all purpose flour and either whole meal or whole grain flour. I would never eat brown bread growing up so my mother would make white bread for me. Now I far prefer ‘brown bread’ soda bread. Also remember that ‘brown’ flour was the flour commonly available. Only the wealthy could afford the finer product of ‘white’ flour, which has far less nutritional value than ‘brown’ flour. I can still see the tea tables at local church fair in London, groaning under the hundreds of mini soda bread scones my mother made.
Make soda bread this way if you will use up the rest of the 1 quart of buttermilk, and if you are sure that your baking soda is fresh/new. If you try making this with old baking soda, it probably won’t work. Again measure the baking soda carefully and get bread straight into the oven. Anything raised with only baking soda has to immediately be baked. Baking soda reacts to the acid liquid (buttermilk or sour cream) to release the gas that helps bread rise. You see the batter or bread thickening and puffing in front of your eyes, but it will collapse if you don’t get it in the oven or into a skillet on top of the stove.
Cut halfway through the top of the soda bread loaf with a sharp knife, one way and then the other so that when bread is cooked it will be formed into four crusty quarters but still joined together. Making the sign of the cross - to keep the devil away. I’ve recently also heard ‘to let the fairies’ out by Darina Allen of Ballymaloe cooking school in Ireland.
We had soda bread at my wedding and at our son’s christening. With imported smoked salmon. My son driving back to university would take a sandwich of wholemeal bread, cream cheese and smoked salmon to keep him going.
Remember that it is very difficult to reproduce the tastes of these original dishes since they were prepared at a time when all food was extremely fresh. We had our own butter and milk, the flour came from a local mill, and your meat and vegetables were from your own land, particularly in the country. My cousin would dig fresh potatoes, carrots and onions from our kitchen garden. Potatoes were boiled in their jackets, split open and topped with butter. We used the cream that rose to top of milk churn for breakfast. My cousin would put the milk churns on the tractor and take them to the top of the drive for the local Dairy cooperative to collect them. I’d feed the young calves some of the milk and my cousins would squirt me with some of the milk while milking. Food that fresh from rich soil tastes wonderful, same as cooking freshly caught fish or meat from a hunter. I remember having some fresh lamb at the farm and it tasted so different from lamb sold in the butchers.
I was trying to remember some of the meals we used to eat on my aunt’s farm in Tipperary, Southern Ireland. Even though I spent many school vacation summers there, the mind plays tricks and I can only remember silly things. I remember picking the mushrooms fresh from the river field each day for breakfast, while the cows were being milked. You would try to remember the mushroom sites because they always grew back. I remember falling in the river (I was only 8 at the time) on top of the fish my cousin Raori was trying to land. He asked me for the net, but I managed to slide down the slippery, steep bank. I was not popular that day. Still, I made up for it when I took a huge can of sweet, milky tea and fresh soda bread out to the men who were harvesting. Then the fun of riding on the back of the tractor with the dogs running behind, the hay being stored in the barn and sliding down the entire wall of hay as if it were Geronimo at Water Country.
I was educated by the Sacred Heart Nuns at school in London. The convent (where the nuns lived) part of the school dated back to the 1600’s and we were told it had once been the Court of the Spanish Ambassador. Beautiful cloisters around a central garden with a chapel where we celebrated special Holy Days. We said the ‘Angelus’ in two parts every day at lunchtime at school. But it is quite something to stand still with everyone, in the middle of the butcher’s shop, in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary at midday and start reciting the ‘Angelus’ with the place split into two parts for the prayer. At least I didn’t embarrass my aunt by not knowing my prayers. Imagine the comments – “Well you know, they live in London!” I have to wonder what it is like nowadays in the countryside. I’m sure it doesn’t happen in Ireland in the cities.
Yes, I stitched this cross.
The water color painting is a view from family summer home in Cork looking out to sea. My cousin said it would have been the last view of home my mother saw sailing to England.
