weekend food coma

Tomorrow is St. Paddy's Day, and while I'm celebrating the fact that it's a Saturday and I won't have to be in Manhattan for the boozefest, I'll be putting together my own Irish feast. On the menu is traditional Irish Soda Bread with Irish Cheddar and apples, Corned Beef and Cabbage with Horseradish Sauce and potatoes, and an Apple Crumble with Whiskey Cream. The best part about moving my usual Sunday cooking fest to Saturday is that the leftovers will turn into Corned Beef Hash on Sunday morning.

I'm a bit of a purist when I'm attempting a dish that is traditional and well-known, so I did my share of searching around for different recipes to determine what I thought were the most vital classic elements for each dish.

For the Irish Soda Bread, I found a recipe that seemed to incorporate all of the major elements without any fussy reimagining, from a website called FamilyFun.com that I had never heard of before. This should be interesting.

Ingredients

2 cups white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. butter, chilled
1 cup raisins
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients.

Cut in the butter until it is pea-sized. Stir in the raisins and buttermilk or yogurt. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, knead 1 minute, and shape into a disk.

Cut an "X" in the top and bake on a greased baking sheet for 45 to 50 minutes.

Makes one 8-inch-wide loaf.

The one thing the recipe does seem to be missing is caraway seeds, so I'll probably just add a teaspoon or two. The best thing about this recipe is that it calls for buttermilk, meaning there will be leftover buttermilk for biscuits to go with the corned beef hash on Sunday morning.