Irish Soda Bread

My grandmother was always, always making soda bread. Most of the time it was real Irish soda bread: a brown quick bread, almost like a large biscuit, made with whole wheat flour and oats. But when the grandchildren were coming, out came this version of soda bread--the sweet, raisin-studded, American version, often with sugar dusted right on top. Of course, both versions were deeply slashed with a cross, "To let out the devil" she always said, before catching my eye, wide-open in childish horror at the thought that something so delicious could be so wicked, "And to catch the sugar too." She would always wink.

All was right with the world again.

This version is a bit of a spin on hers: I soak my raisins in tea laced with port, so they are extra plump and delicious, and I use a happy mix of Greek yogurt and whole milk instead of the classic buttermilk. I think it makes a nicely tender crumb, with a bit more breakfasty heft. Of course, feel free to use buttermilk instead. 

I also make this recipe the way my grandmother did: with a bowl, a spoon, and a grater rather than my trusty food processor. It's a great trick: simply pop the butter in the freezer, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, make a well in them, and then grate your cold, cold butter into the dry ingredients using the medium small holes in the grater. Stir. The butter is now perfectly incorporated! Simply continue on with the recipe. 

Makes 2 loaves

Recipe:

• 4 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar plus 2 Tablespoons for dusting
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 cup plain yogurt, Greek if you can
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1 stick very cold butter

• 1 1/2 cups raisins
• 1 teabag of your favorite tea
• splash of port if you have it
• hot water to cover

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven. Spray either a large baking sheet or two 8-inch cake pans

1. While the oven is pre-heating, dump your raisins in a little bowl with your teabag and splash with port, if you have it. Bring some water to a boil and pour over raisins. Cover and set aside. 
2. In a bowl or a food processor, combine the dry ingredients. Incorporate butter (see above) and then yogurt and milk. The mixture will look shaggy and dry. DON'T WORRY, and DO NOT keep mixing--it will come together. A light touch is best.
3. Drain the raisins and add them to your shaggy dough. If you are using a food processor, DO NOT hit start--you will puree them. 
4. Turn dough out and gently but firmly pat it into shape. The dough will quickly come together. Divide into two round loaves, about 8-9 inches in diameter. Slash each with a sharp knife with a cross and sift  sugar over the tops. Place in cake pans (they will rise quite a bit and look quite cake-ish) or on large baking sheet (they will spread and look more authentic and homemade.)
5. Cook about 35 minutes until tester comes out clean and the tops are nicely cragged and lightly browned and crusty. Let cool about 10 minutes and turn out onto cooling rack. Serve warm with lashings of butter. 

Spice Doughnuts

On snowy days, my father always tells the same story. He is a small boy, awake early on a very cold morning in the depths of January. It is the late 1940's. His Irish grandmother is in the kitchen, looking out the window at the snow sifting down from the still dark sky.

"No school for you today, laddie" she tells him.

This tall, iron gray woman, a daughter of famine, quite literally--her family had only survived the Great Hunger because they had been cook and gamekeeper on an Anglo-Irish estate "by the grace of God" as she put it, while more than 1 million people starved--set to work making breakfast for my father and his five siblings.

My father had oatmeal every morning of his life--made by his grandmother, and if he didn't eat every bite, she bopped him on the head with the serving spoon.

She was a very firm woman.

But this morning, when my father was still the only child awake, and it was just the two of them, grandmother and grandchild in the cold kitchen before the stove had a chance to chase the chill from the linoleum, my great-grandmother made my father a treat--these spicy doughnuts. Fried dough, she'd called them then, and recalled for him a time when she herself had helped her mother make them on a rare snowy Irish morning, in an enormous Victorian kitchen, at a range that burned bricks of peat in a country an ocean away, in another century.

Of course this is not that recipe. But on a recent snow day, I missed my family. And so my children and I made these, and I thought about my Dad, and his grandmother, and her mother.

Love, comfort, snow.

Recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups  all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• vegetable oil for frying
• cinnamon sugar or confectioner's sugar for dusting

Special Equipment: heavy skillet for frying, thermometer

1. In a medium bowl, stir dry ingredients together. 
2. In a smaller bowl, whisk buttermilk, egg, vanilla and oil together, and then whisk into the dry ingredients. Stir just until combined. 
3. Fill skillet with oil to a depth of 1/2 inch and heat over medium heat until thermometer registers 375 degrees. 
4. Drop SMALL, rounded spoonfuls of dough into the hot oil CAREFULLY. The dough will puff as it cooks, so think less than a teaspoon. As they cook, they will usually turn themselves over, but sometimes they may need a little helping hand with a slotted spoon. Remove when they are lightly golden brown and puffy and drain on paper towels.
5. Dust with cinnamon sugar or confectioner's sugar while still warm.