Eat Like the Irish

I spent a good part of my 20s frequenting an Irish pub walking distance from my apartment building. When it was that lean time right before paydays, my neighbor Kathy and I would scavenge in coat pockets, raid our laundry funds and check the couch for spare change so we could walk down for a pint of Harp or Newcastle, some live music and a chat with some Irishmen. As a result, I have an affinity for all things Irish.

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up (which was the only day of the year my neighbors and I ever ventured to English pub across the street), I was happy to find a fine Irish recipe for soda bread in this month’s issue of Cooking Light. This is a real thick, dense bread delicious slathered with butter. It has great texture from the steel-cut oats and whole-wheat flour. (I used locally milled Bob’s Red Mill flours.) It’s the kind of bread I picture Frank McCourt drooling for in the book Angela’s Ashes.

And even better, the issue contains a recipe for a Ploughman’s Lunch Platter. This was on the menu back at Irelands 32. Admittedly, the only time I really ate at Irelands was when my friends and I could talk Kevin the bartender/cook into making us “chips” after the kitchen was closed. But seeing the recipe made me want to try it with my freshly baked Brown Soda Bread.

The Ploughman’s Platter ended up being an economical use of odds and ends in the fridge. The recipe called for homemade tomato chutney. I swapped it for some mango chutney I had. (Even if you don’t make a platter I highly recommend eating the soda bread with Cheddar and chutney. It’s unbelievably good.) We almost always have sharp Cheddar on hand as well as some salad greens and pickles. I happened to have some chicken sausage in the freezer. You could always use a couple of hard-boiled eggs instead. It was a tasy and filling lunch. I can see why Irish wives fed this to their hungry farmer husbands. It’s cheap, healthy and fortifying.

Links:

Brown Soda Bread

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1963985

Ploughman’s Lunch Platter

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1963986

Nostalgia on a Cookie Sheet

I grew up baking with my Aunt Esther in my grandmother’s kitchen. We’d hang up a sign on the kitchen door reading “Ye Olde Bake Shoppe” and make something delicious. So I was a baker long before I became a serious cook.

My Grandma Lupe didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, except for her favorite: peanut butter cookies. She’d magically appear right before the first batch came out of the oven and sneak one off the cookie rack as they were cooling.

Not surprisingly, peanut butter cookies became my specialty. I always entered a variety of my baked goods at the Ventura County Fair and I won many ribbons. But I earned blue ribbons for peanut butter cookies a total of five times. For three years in a row I was unbeaten.

I had the Betty Crocker recipe memorized for a long time. Of course, I did a few minor tweaks to it to make the cookies softer and sweeter.

When I was baking peanut butter cookies this afternoon, all these memories swirled up as my Kitchen-Aid beat the butter and peanut butter together. Unfortunately I don’t remember the recipe by heart anymore. I had to go by the Joy of Cooking’s recipe, which is not bad. But at least I do remember my tweaks.

So no produce from Persephone Farm in this recipe, but I did use locally ground flour from Bob’s Red Mill. Better go make a sign to show the Bake Shoppe is open.

Links:

The Joy of Cooking

http://www.thejoykitchen.com

Bob’s Red Mill Flour

http://www.bobsredmill.com

Moving On Up

Getting the keys to your first home is something to celebrate. With Champagne. And since most of our kitchen was packed into boxes, pizza was an easy prep meal. Not your run-of-the-mill pepperoni, but a Special Occasion pizza. Caramelized Onion and Fig Pizza with Havarti.

On a trip to San Francisco a couple of years ago I had the gustatory pleasure of being treated to meal at Greens in Fort Mason. I had a fresh, tasty sampler platter, but Trevor ordered the most delicious pizza with caramelized onions and fresh figs. As I tasted it I knew I’d have to try to recreate it at home.

Caramelizing onions is easy, if a little time consuming. But the result is so delicious. The onions cease to be oniony and take on a sweet flavor that's completely alien to raw onion flavor.

I usually make my own pizza dough in a bread machine, but my 12-year-old bread machine died when I got it out to make the dough. It served me well and couldn’t have gone at a better time. (I didn’t have to lug it to our new place only to have it die on me there.) RIP Oster bread machine. I ended up making pizza dough in my food processor and it worked OK, but I prefer the ease of putting all the ingredients into a bread machine and forgetting about it until I hear a triple beep.

Below are my recipes for pizza dough and our fig pizza. For this meal we used Persephone Farm onions. And we got our wonderful Havarti from another PSU Farmers’ Market vendor, the Willamette Valley Cheese Co.

And coming soon … your absolute best friend in a move: the slow cooker.

Pizza Dough

Makes 2 large thin-crust pizzas or 4 small thin-crust pizzas.

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 ½ cups stone-ground all-purpose flour, such as Bob’s Red Mill

½ cup stone-ground whole-wheat flour, such as Bob’s Red Mill

2 teaspoons (or 1 packet) quick-acting yeast

¾ teaspoons salt

Add all ingredients to the bowl of a bread machine following your manufacturer’s instructions. Select and start dough cycle. Rough is ready when cycle is complete.

Caramelized Onion and Fig Pizza with Havarti

Makes 1 14 ½-inch diameter thin-crust pizza. I used Mission figs for this recipe, but any kind will work.

½ pizza dough recipe listed above

1 tablespoon butter

1 ½ to 2 large onions, sliced

1 ¼ cups dried figs

2 cups Havarti or Fontina cheese, grated (or as much as desired)

¾ cup Mozzarella cheese, grated (or as much as desired)

all-purpose flour for rolling

nonstick cooking spray, such as Pam

cornmeal for dusting pizza pan

Place figs in a bowl of warm water and let soften up while you are cooking onions.

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. When butter is melted add onions. Cook for about 10 minutes until onions are soft and wilted. Turn heat to low and slowly cook the onions stirring occasionally for 30 to 40 minutes. Don’t rush the onions. As they cook they will turn a caramel brown and become sweet. Set aside when done and allow to cool.

Heat oven to 475˚ F. Drain figs and pat dry. Slice into ½-inch thick slices. Set aside.

Dust work surface with flour and roll out pizza dough to fit a large, round pizza pan. Alternately, you can use two cookie sheets and make 2 smaller, rectangle-shaped pizzas. Spray pizza pan with coking spray and dust with cornmeal. Place dough on pan. Top with onions and figs then cheeses.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until crust is golden brown and cheese is melted. Enjoy!

Links: www.wvcheeseco.com

www.bobsredmill.com

Zucchini Overload

It was August when Trevor and I moved to Portland. The sun was shining in a way that made me doubt Portland could ever be cloudy and drizzly for a good eight months out of the year. And it was peak zucchini season. We walked by a bus bench on the way to explore our new neighborhood and noticed a plastic grocery bag sitting on the bench. When we returned home, the bag was still sitting there. Curiosity got the best of us and we opened it up to discover a bag full of gorgeous green zucchini. And a desperate note: Please take. So we did.

When we got home, I searched through my Cooking Light magazines for some recipes to use up the gift squash and found Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread. http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1809024 I thought, “Perfect!” It’s been a favorite ever since.

Summer squash season is still going strong at Persephone Farm, so we had a large selection this week. I grabbed a few extra to make this wonderful snack bread. I did “unlighten” it though. I didn’t have applesauce on hand so I increased the grated zucchini to 2 cups, upped the oil to 1/3 cup and added 3 tablespoons of light sour cream. I also swapped 1 cup of all-purpose flour for 1 cup of Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour. It still was moist and delicious

I’ve still got more squash in my fridge, so later this week I’ll post my Zucchini Slaw recipe that I developed after tasting a wonderful salad at a bakery in Corvallis, Ore.