Irish Soda Bread

Did you know that there is a society for the preservation of Irish Soda Bread? I didn't know that until I read about it in the newspaper. I thought I kept the article, but sadly, I didn't. The society is apparently very upset about the fact that any ingredient other than flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk is going into Irish Soda Bread. Apparently, true Irish Soda Bread does not contain raisins, or nuts, or chocolate chips, or any ingredient other than the original four.
So Julia's recipe for Irish Soda Bread fits within the boundaries of the Society's mission. The only ingredients are flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. I still haven't located my camera--so no pictures. I made this, along with roasted cabbage and potato-leek soup, for an Irish family dinner when my dad and stepmother were in town. I loved how easily the bread came together--although it was REALLY messy! I kept adding flour so I could get it to a consistency that would allow me to "pat the dough into a disk about 6 inches across."
The bread came out beautifully, and was delicious. There was only one very small piece left, which I took to work the next day. Although the recipe says that the bread will "turn as hard as the Blarney Stone," it was really good the next day too!

CTN: Chile Coconut Braised "Beef Short Ribs"--Actually, Seafood

I am so glad I was late with this recipe, because it meant that I could see the comments from Maria and Michelle that this sauce would work with seafood. This gave me all the excuse I needed not to cook with meat. I was very happy about that. After seeing Maria's pictures of meat, I was scared.
Dad and Sharmyn are in town, so even though they had already made this recipe, they got to eat it again--in a very different incarnation. I didn't feel like getting my camera out of the car, so there are no pictures.

I used halibut. When I told the man at the fish market that I was making curry with it, he gave me a really big fat piece, which cut into cubes nicely.

I also used some nice fat shrimp. Not krill shrimp, as depicted here. It is surprisingly difficult to find public domain images of shrimp.

I used the braising technique-- tossed the shrimp and halibut cubes with salt and pepper and sauteed them in some coconut oil. I took the seafood out and threw a chopped shallot, 2 jalapenos (which I think were just really small bell peppers from my CSA bag), 4 cloves of garlic, and a whole mess of grated ginger into the pan, stirring it around until it smelled incredible. I added cumin and garam masala, stirred that until it was fragrant, then stirred in a can of coconut milk, the zest and juice from two limes, and the seafood. I let that cook for a bit longer, until the halibut chunks started to fall apart.

I served this over rice, with sauteed bok choy and delicious fish market sourdough on the side. It was DELICIOUS.

And I'm certain it was very different than the beef recipe.

CTN: Gingery Split-Pea Soup

I honestly can't remember when I made this soup. I think it was on a Saturday. I do remember that I tried to buy the ingredients at the Farmer's Market, but couldn't find carrots or celery at any of the booths. I did buy a ginormous leek, which you can see dominating the picture below. Which is the only picture I took, because I got busy making my Rugelach for Tuesdays with Dorie.

I was trying to cram it all in because Pete and I were leaving for Montana on February 27 to go to Yellowstone. So instead of pictures of the soup, I am including my terrible photos of Yellowstone. Pete took beautiful photos, but I don't have access to his card.

I started the soup by trying to crush the coriander seed with the back of a knife as Melissa suggested. What happened is that the seeds would squish out from underneath the knife and end up all over the floor. From the perspective of somebody very small on the floor, the seeds might have looked like bison on the roadway.

So I had to crush the seeds one by one. That was a huge pain in the butt. It took me about 15 minutes to crush the seeds. The whole time I was thinking that it would only take me about 30 seconds to go get my mortar and pestle. But I was too lazy. I guess I was conserving my energy for cross-country skiing.

I put the coriander into the pan, but didn't turn it on because I didn't want the coriander to burn while I was chopping the huge batch of vegetables. I diced all those carrots, leeks (I used one leek and no onion--which was perfect in my opinion), celery, and garlic. And I grated a pretty large chunk of ginger. When I started heating the coriander, I told the other people in the house to tell me when it was fragrant. It smelled so good. When I added the chopped vegetables, I was told that the house went from smelling good to smelling like onions. I take it that is a bad thing. Sort of like a wolf constructing her den on the south side of a slope. Not a good place to raise puppies.

I threw in the lentils and the huge amount of broth and water (didn't make homemade broth this time), and brought the pan up to the boil. The steam smelled fantastic. Unlike the steam you can see below, which smelled like sulfur.

I thought the soup was delicious. I let it slide down my throat just like the water behind a frozen waterfall. I ate a huge bowl of it. I loved the spicy-citrusy taste of the coriander. Sam, who doesn't like very many things that I make, ate two huge bowls of the soup. I brought a large container of it to Natalie, who was recovering from a pretty nasty bacterial infection, and she loved it too. I would definitely make this soup again--but never with split peas. The red lentils were perfect.

Just like Yellowstone in the winter.

TWD:BWJ--Exploding Rugelach

I made the Rugelach early because I went here:

Terrible picture of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

So I was in sort of a rush. But I was certain these would be delicious. How could they not be with a pound of butter and almost a pound of cream cheese in the dough? The dough came together quickly and rolled out very nicely. Here it is rolled out into its rectangular shape and cut in half.

 I bought homemade apricot and nectarine preserves at the farmer's market rather than using Lekvar. The Lekvar would have made it less sweet, I believe. But the preserves were delicious.

 Here it is with the cinnamon sugar layer.

 I used dried apricots and dried cherries. I bought the apricots at the farmers' market, and they looked just like the apricots my family dried when I was a kid. I kept eating them while I was chopping them. Yumm. I also used a blend of hazelnuts, walnuts and pecans.
The question, after I put the nuts and fruit on top of the dough was--How do I roll this up????

Very carefully. These were FAT rolls! This is also the end of my photos. I got really busy and forgot to take pictures of the sliced rolls or the finished product. Which is probably a good thing because they were a MESS! The dough absolutely could not contain the abundance of delicious fruit and nuts inside.
Even though they were messy, they were absolutely delicious. It is now 8 days after I made them, and they still taste just like they did the day I baked them (I have the packed in wax paper, ziploc bag, and tupperware). If I had room in my bag, I would have taken them to Yellowstone. They would have tasted great with a cup of tea after cross-country skiing.

CTN: Crispy Roasted Cabbage

The world's speed-eating record for cabbage is 6 pounds, 9 ounces in 9 minutes, held by Charles Hardy. I'm nor sure how Mr. Hardy's cabbage was prepared. If it was Crispy Roasted Cabbage, I believe I could give Mr. Hardy a run for his money.

 I bought two kinds of cabbage at the Farmers' Market--Cone Cabbage and Savoy Cabbage. I had never heard of Cone Cabbage before. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It looked sort of like a smooth protea flower. The woman at Suzy's Farm said that it is slightly sweet. Two heads of cabbage is a lot of cabbage. It barely fit onto my large baking pan.

Since I had already seen glimpses of some precautionary tales of greasy cabbage, I was very light in my application of olive oil. I brushed it on, as suggested by Melissa in the recipe, probably using one tablespoon for two heads of cabbage. I then liberally salted the cabbage with my rapidly diminishing supply of French salt (this is just a small hint for anybody who might be able to rectify that situation), and shoved it into the oven.

I then went on with my business of making winter pasta salad (broccoli, bell pepper, olives, marinated artichoke hearts, and some grated Spanish cheese). I turned the cabbage over once, and baked it far longer than the 20-25 minutes suggested. Maybe 40 minutes. I'm not sure.

As you can see by the lovely crispy Savoy leaf at the bottom right of this photograph, some of my cabbage was crispy--like cabbage chips. Yummmm. The rest was simply delicious. I ate half of the pan of cabbage myself. I could have eaten more. Maybe even 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

My only regret about this cabbage was that Maddy wasn't here to enjoy it with me. Natalie likes cabbage (Pete and Cassandra do not), but not as much as Maddy. I think it is quite possible that she is the only college student in the history of the world who has begged her mother to make her cabbage while home on break. So I hope Maddy's cabbage was just as delicious as ours was.

TWD:Julia. Chocolate Truffle Tarts

Wow. That's a bad picture. I was in a hurry, and didn't take pictures as I was going along. And the one picture that actually came out makes this tart look pretty bad. Gotta work on my photography.

I was actually scared about making this tart. I went on the TWD site and was reading about other experiences in making the tart. Mostly about how the crust was crumbly and messy. I only had a small amount of time to make the tart. I was worried this was going to be a disaster.

But it really wasn't. My crust was beautiful. I made it in the food processor. No extra water. When I poured it out onto the Silpat and mashed it out onto the surface as the recipe indicated, the dough came together nicely. After refrigerating it, it rolled out beautifully. I had a little trouble getting it into the really large pan (I used a 12-inch tart pan because I didn't have small tart pans, and my daughter calculated that the volume of a 12-inch tart pan was about the same as 6 4.5-inch pans).

I don't have a double boiler, so I just melted the butter and chocolate in the microwave. It took a while for the egg yolks to beat--about 15 minutes. I was imagining doing it with a whisk, as indicated in the recipe. Whisking for about an hour. That sounds fun.

I used chopped Hershey's chocolate, chopped Ghirardelli white chocolate, chopped toffee-almond biscotti, and used 70% bittersweet for the melted chocolate. And I have to say this is about the most intensely chocolate thing I have ever eaten. Pretty tasty in very small quantities.

Natalie and I were the only ones who ate any. Cassandra--the chocolate lover--was at her grandma's house. She missed out, because I'm taking the leftovers to choir!

Carey's Castle

Joshua Tree National Park is one of my favorite places in the world. Although it can get very cold at night, winter is definitely the time to go. I wish I went every year.
Took Friday off of work and hit the road with Troop 3116 to the Indian Cove campground. Spent Friday afternoon and evening scrambling around in the rocks around the camp, looking at the brilliant blue sky, and then, later, watching the stars and the satellites making their slow way across the sky.
On our first trip to Joshua Tree, we heard about a "secret" place in the park known as Carey's Castle. There is little known about this location. What we heard was that a man named Carey staked a mining claim in a very remote area of the park (an oxymoron), and that he built a home in the rocks. There were mentions of this in several guidebooks, but none gave information on how to get there. We spoke with a park ranger, who told us that she had heard of it, knew it was in the southern portion of the park, but did not know how to get there. She suggested we try to find someone who had been there.
Since then, every time we went to Joshua Tree, I checked to see if there was information about the trial to Carey's. There were more trip reports, but they always said the same thing--this is a secret location and we aim to keep it secret. Apparently, people even knock down the "ducks" others have left to mark the trail.
This time was different. Somebody finally posted the GPS coordinates online. Lisa downloaded them into her GPS and we were ready!
The trailhead is at the end of a road which has signs everywhere that indicate that it is private property and you are entering at your own risk. Since we have had experience with this, we were a little concerned. Until we discovered that the owner was the Metropolitan Water District. Not as scary as a private owner. We were happy to see four other cars at the trailhead--mostly because it meant we were in the right place.
And here is our journey, in photos.

At the trailhead. Need to journey off across this desert into the mountains.

Some of the beautiful plants we saw along the way.

And a beautiful little lizard.

Heading into the wash.

Shade!

It was getting a little hot. The rocks were cool.

Beautiful trees in the wash. And a lot of water.

Got excited and thought we were there. But just rocks to climb over.

Gotta climb up those rocks behind the girls.

Not a problem for the girls.

The rocks out beyond India looks promising. I was pretty sure we were there.

And we were!

Going in. I didn't take any pictures inside. It was full of rat poop. Pretty gross.

Nice place to eat lunch though.

Adventure Girl was excited. So excited she left her feet in my backpack.

Carey's Mine.

Now we have to climb DOWN all the rocks.

I thought this rock looked like something you would see in a home furnishing store.

It was a beautiful hike. I am glad that we finally found Carey's Castle. It was worth it. And I hope that it doesn't get a ton of publicity. I saw in the log book that people are saying that the traffic has increased ten-fold since the coordinates were published. We came across 3 other groups of hikers--which is a pretty small number when you consider we were there on a popular holiday weekend.