Cab Caraway

Feeling like I'd missed the boat on St. Patrick's day, when I saw a small corned beef at my supermarket, on sale no less, I grabbed it and brought it home to prepare. True to tradition, I boiled it for hours (perhaps even a little too long, as it fell apart in shreds rather than carved into nice slices) and served it alongside some steamed yellow fingerling spuds.

I pressed the potatoes with my thumb to half-crush them, a trick I learned from Jamie Oliver; it gives them a little more texture and visual interest than mashing. A little dab of butter, a sprinkling of chopped parsley and they were ready.

You gotta have cabbage with corned beef, right? It's tradition. It's proper. It can be ever so boring. So, I decided to re-think the cabbage part.

First, I had purple, not green, cabbage in the crisper and it needed eating. Second, I thought onions would improve it immensely. So, I hauled out my little pot of bacon fat, sautéed the onions first briefly in that, then added the shredded cabbage - but the stroke of genius came when I was remembering my soda bread from St. Paddy's day and wishing I had some to go along with this meal.

Caraway seeds!

I sprinkled about a tablespoon of those tasty little brown commas throughout the pan of cabbage, ladled just a tablespoon or so of the cooking water from the corned beef into the pan and steam-stirred it until the cabbage changed in color from dark orchid to true amethyst. It still had it's crunch but it was a quieter crunch than before. Man, that was good!

I must admit that the color combo on the plate was perhaps not the prettiest I've ever made but the flavors were happily complementary and that Cab Caraway was "the berries," as my dear Irish father would have said.

Irish Despite The Orange

It seems disrespectful to add anything orange to food as typically Irish as soda bread, but I confess that I, a daughter of the Auld Sod, did just that and on St. Patty's Day, no less!

I added orange peel to the traditional raisins and caraway seeds.

You see, Cookiecrumb and Cranky had gifted me with some of the wonderful navel oranges from their tree, and the peel of those oranges is as good as the insides. Preparing to start the soda bread, I stopped to peel an orange for snacking, and inspiration struck.

I used my zester to peel thin strips of the vibrant orange skin, chopped the strips into half inch pieces, and mixed them into the dough. The result was deeply fragrant bread dotted with sweet pockets of dark raisins, zingy spots of orange and just a hint of caraway under all that goodness.

I was wearing green and singing "Irish Eyes" as I committed this blasphemy - I hope that will compensate enough that my Irish ancestors will forgive me.

Irish Soda Bread with Orange Peel, adapted from Gourmet magazine, October 1991

4 cups bread flour (I used all-purpose unbleached and it was fine)
1 Tablespoon double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (another time, I might add just a tad more)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins or dried currants, rinsed in hot water and patted dry
1 Tablespoon caraway seeds (a bit more of these wouldn't hurt, either, next time)
zest of one orange, orange part only, cut into thin strips of about 1/2 inch in length
2 cups buttermilk

Into a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and stir in the raisins, caraway seeds and orange peel. Add the buttermilk and stir the mixture until it forms a dough. Turn out onto a well-floured surface and knead briefly, about one minute.

Shape two equal round loaves out of the dough and place them on buttered parchment paper on a baking sheet. (You can omit the parchment, if you want, but it makes cleanup a lot easier). Cut an X 1/4 inch deep across the tops with a sharp knife and bake the loaves in the middle of a preheated 350 degree F oven for 45-55 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Transfer the loaves to a rack to cool.