Irish Soda Bread

I wish I had photos for you of the bread but unfortunately, it was all gobbled up faster than I expected. So this post will be accompanied by some photos from the Irish pub we stumbled upon in Peru. 

Ingredients 

* 4 cups all-purpose flour

*3/4 cup white sugar 

* 1 tsp salt 

* 1tsp baking powder 

*1 tsp baking soda 

1/2 cup butter at room temperature (I personally like Kerry Gold Butter) 

1 1/2 cups raisins 

1 1/2 cups buttermilk at room temp

3 eggs 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 

Grease and flour your baking pan. 

Mix together all your dry ingredients. 

Begin to cut the butter gently into your dry ingredients until they are well combined and then mix in your raisins. 

In another container, whisk together the buttermilk and the eggs. After they are both mixed together, mix this into the flour/butter paste. 

Place the dough into your buttered pan. 

Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour the top of your bread will be golden brown. 

When you remove the pan from the oven, allow it to cool for a little while before removing from the baking pan (10-15 minutes should do it). 

Serve with butter, jam, a Guinness or whatever goodies you have in mind.

Happy St. Patty's to you whatever your altitude!
Have fun! Stay safe!

Venison Chili with Jalapeno Cheddar Beer Bread

Leftovers, not particularly appealing... ever. But I've been trying to get better about using what's in the house and making it into a new second meal. 

After making the venison tenderloin last night I had some left over meat, which I shredded and set it aside. 

I then chopped one yellow onion, three cloves of garlic, two jalapeños, one orange bell pepper, one leek, and three to four stalks of coarsely chopped Swiss Chard. I put all of this in a pot with a teaspoon of duck fat, and a teaspoon of butter. I put all of this in the pot over a low to medium heat and allow the vegetables to sweat while stirring intermittently. After about ten minutes I added a few capers, and the spices with a splash of bourbon. Then after another two minutes I added two cups of chicken stock and a can of crushed tomatos, and the venison. Cover the pot and allow it to cook for thirty minutes. 

The spices I added were two tablespoons of chili powder, a teaspoon of cumin, a quater teaspoon of  paprika, a teaspoon of finely ground sea salt, a quater teaspoon of cocoa powder and two teaspoons of  ground black pepper. 

My secret ingredient is adding a quater cup of bourbon to the vegetable base when I add the spices and allowing it to cook for at least five minutes before adding the additional liquids. 

After thirty minutes, remove the cover add two cans of drained and cleaned kidney beans. Allow it to cook for an additional fifteen minutes without the cover or until it reduces. 

I also prepared a loaf of cheddar jalapeno beer bread. 

The recipe for beer bread is available in the side bar

Today I used Shock Tops Belgian White beer and found that it was a nice compliment to the cheddar.  

I served the chili also with multi grain tortilla chips and crumbled cotswold cheese for a topper. 

My baby brother insisted on using the chili essentially as a nacho dip for the chips but it was a delicious idea and I quickly followed suit, maybe a new favorite snack? 

Cotswold Cheese 

Beer Bread

Things are finally getting back to normal after Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy. No more police at the gas stations, ridiculously long gas lines, power is slowly being restored and most of the trees that were downed are removed from the roads. The recovery is going to take a while but clearly as the following photo will show at least to a certain extent, our household was prepared for our two week blackout...

Hurricane Supplies... sort of. 

Bear in mind, these were only the supplies I was instructed to pick up before the storm hit, everyone else brought reinforcements. As the blackout continued the boys kept restocking and once the fridge started working again, we still had a whole cooler filled with "supplies." 

This recipe is incredibly easy to do. You should keep in mind that whichever beer you chose to use for your bread is going to really impact the flavor. I realized that I like there to be a bit of bite in this recipe so I used the Brooklyn Brewery's Oktoberfest.  

Brooklyn Brewery 

What you'll need: 

• 3 cups of all purpose flour 
• 3 tbsp. of sugar
• 1 tbsp. of baking powder
• 1 tsp. of salt
• 2 tbsp. of honey
• 1 bottle of 12 oz. beer (your choice) 
• 4 tbsp of melted butter (approximately half a stick)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) together in a bowl. Then, in a separate smaller bowl put the honey in the microwave for 3-5 seconds and mix with a small amount of the beer. This makes it easier to not only mix the honey in, mix into the dry mixture thoroughly along with the rest of your beer. 

Grease and flour a loaf pan. 

Now take half the butter and pour it into the bottom of the loaf pan. Add your batter, and top with the rest of your melted butter. It looks a little funky but it makes the top nice and crispy. 

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, allow it to cool for 15 minutes and enjoy!

You could also add cheddar (1 cup) and jalapeños (1/4 cup) and serve with a bowl of chili, and a nice cold beer. 

If I was going to add the cheddar and jalapeños, I would omit the honey and use the following ingredients/proportions;

• 3 cups of all purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1 teaspoon of salt 
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1 cup of cheddar (shredded) 
• 1/4 cup of jalapeños
• 1 bottle of 12 oz. beer
• 1/4 cup of butter

Add the cheddar and the jalapeños last after the rest of the batter has been prepared. 

Zucchini overload- Zucchini Bread

This year we've grown more zucchini than we know what to do with! 

I've been trying to give most of it away and use whatever is left over but it's been... 

a little bit challenging.  

I decided to make zucchini bread, and since I don't really have that much experience with baking I based it off of several recipes that I found online. I had  more than enough "raw material" to do several batches before I found a recipe that gave me a flavor I was happy with.  

Start by grating the zucchini, some people suggested using a Cuisinart food processor in order to expedite the process, but I just grated it by hand.  

Because of the size the zucchini's have grown to, I was careful to remove the seeds (which had reached the size of PUMPKIN seeds) and the spongy center.

 Spongy center = Weird texture, no flavor, no thank you! 

You will need: 

- 3 eggs

- 1 cup of vegetable oil

- 1 and 3/4 cup of sugar

- 2 cups of grated zucchini 

- 3 cups of all purpose flour 

- 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

- 1 teaspoon of baking soda

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

- a pinch of powdered ginger

- 3 tsp. cinnamon 

- nutmeg to taste ( I used 1/4 teaspoon) 

You can add 1 cup of chocolate chips, or walnuts or whatever you want to. 

This makes about 2 loaves of bread, I added the chocolate chips to my second loaf and left the first plain. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease two bread loaf pans with butter and flour.

First scramble the eggs well and at a rapid whisk. 

After these have been well scrambled, whisk in the vegetable oil slowly being sure to fully incorporate the oil in small increments before adding more. 

You want to aerate the egg batter as you're whisking, this will add volume to the mixture. 

Once you are done adding the oil, mix in the sugar in the same manner. Small increments, well whisked then add the vanilla extract. 

Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and mix them well. Reserve the nuts and/or chocolate. 

Slowly mix the flour mixture into the egg batter. 

Follow with the zucchini folding this into the batter, following with the nuts and or chocolate chips.

Pour the batter into the two greased pans and bake in the oven for one hour.

 To check that the bread is done put a fork in the loaf, if it comes out cleanly without any residue then it is done. 

Allow to fully cool, remove from the pan, and enjoy!