March 2014 – Recipes – Irish Recipes, Easter Eggs

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St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

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 Warm Corned Beef n’ Cabbage Salad Wraps

Wanting to enjoy these favorites but lacking the time to roast a corn beef with cabbage, I decided to update this classic with an easy style.  I captured the popular supper combination in a wrap or quick salad. The dish is a new way to serve a classic favorite. The warm cabbage slaw tops a large lettuce. Caramelizing deli-corn beef strips lets you top the cabbage with a few or as many as you like. The best part is the cold horseradish sauce that’s drizzled over the top. It’s a wrap and eat dish, a little messy but so much fun.  If you don’t want to wrap it, just serve it open face style as a salad.  No matter how you make it, the results are rewarding and a perfect way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Url Link to Corned Beef n’ Cabbage Salad Wraps

 

pdf – Warm Corned Beef n’ Cabbage Salad Wraps

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Country Style Irish Soda Bread

Irish Soda Bread always finds its way to the table on St. Patrick’s Day too. Almost everyone loves this bread with raisins, caraway seeds, or just traditional simple style.  It usually contains flour, baking soda, and buttermilk. The earliest breads were baked using handfuls of ingredients since they were prepared often.  While traditional soda breads were baked for suppers, the American version added other ingredients such as caraway seeds, raisins, more sugar, eggs, and even orange flavors. This recipe adds some of those innovative ingredients.

 

                                               Url Link for Country Style Irish Soda Bread 

pdf Link for Recipe for Country Style Irish Soda Bread

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O’Briens 1914 Irish Soda Bread

On my hunt for some original and unique Irish soda breads, I was lucky to cross paths with Kathyn Marie  Z. from Louisville, Kentucky, and to my surprise, she had a recipe that was 100 years old.  I traveled down to Kentucky, and we chatted about the fun of baking Irish Soda Bread.  She wrote out the original recipe and even autographed the card.

I could hardly wait to try it, and the next Monday, it was in my oven.  The original recipe didn’t list any eggs or salt, which was typical in the early soda bread recipes that I found. When I made the bread, I added some salt to the recipe.

I also noticed that the recipe called for putting a small amount of buttermilk on top of the unbaked crust, and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened.  This additional buttermilk created a crisp and crunchy crust with a soft bread texture inside. Everything about it was warm and wonderful.  If you wondered about the X on the top, the legend explains that this cross was meant to scare away evil spirits………There sure weren’t any around our bread……..it was just a perfect way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day…………Thanks, Kathyn Marie.

                                 Url Link for O’Briens 1914 Irish Soda Bread

pdf Link for Recipe for O’Briens Irish Soda Bread

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   Vegan Style –  Harmony Hall Irish Soda Brown Bread

Oh!  But what about all those people who follow a special diet.  I was so grateful when I received an email from Frances Micklem, who lives in Ireland.  Woo Hoo – She is a host on CCN with a program “Energy Healing for Heart & Home.”  Frances, known for Healing by Franc, was the perfect person to give us some authentic Irish hints   She not only provided her original healthy Irish Soda Bread recipe but also included pictures of those healthy breads, which were just baked when she took the pictures.  The attractive sunflower and pumpkin seeds on top make it look like a rustic, Irish brown bread.  What a lovely addition!  Also in her enclosed pictures, I could see her hand kitchen tiles, painted with caring words and power animals. I felt the inspirational energy there.  Frances also included a picture of Harmony Hall, and a scenic photo taken close to her home.  Just seeing those pictures vicariously brought me to her home in Ireland.  You are indeed a wonderful energy healer, Frances.

 When you see her recipe, you will immediately notice that it uses spelt and rye flour, wheat germ, wheat bran, baking powder, molasses, baking soda, and hazelnut, almond, soy milk or water. Originally, she received this recipe from Jani Iivonen, a vegan chef at Harmony Hall.  Being an experimenter, vegan, and lover of organic products, Frances made this recipe her own with substitutions of hazelnut milk or soya milk and later prepared it with water to create a soya free bread. In addition, she wanted to include molasses for its health benefits.

Organic.sugar.com reported that molasses has a high mineral content since it hasn’t been stripped of its natural goodness and has the concentrated goodness of sugar cane.  With only one tablespoon of organic molasses, you receive 20% of the daily recommended intake from calcium, 22.5% of magnesium, and almost 40% of your daily intake for iron.  That just sounds amazing.

According to their sources, molasses will help you to experience improved moods, raise your energy level, have clearer skin, renewed hair growth, and improve your digestive system.  If you want more information, check out organic sugar.com.
Thanks for suggesting this healthy substitution, Frances.  An added benefit for me would be the vibrant flavor that molasses adds when it is combined with rye flour.  Just love that!  I adapted this recipe to use U.S. measurements.  It’s an excellent bread to use for those healthy sandwiches.

                       Url for link for Harmony Hall Irish Soda Brown Bread

pdf for Recipe for Harmony Hall Irish Soda Brown Bread

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Egg Information

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Easter Family Tradition –  Egg Wars

You know how some celebration days just can’t come fast enough.  That was how I felt about our Sunday morning on Easter.  There they were, all those beautiful colored eggs,  just waiting for the Egg Wars.  We played lots of egg games like “The Easter Egg Hunt” and guessing Jelly Bean colors by their taste, but the best activity was Egg Wars. I’m not sure where this ever started but I know that it existed for my entire life.  Everyone in our family participated and anxiously waited for it to begin.

I recall my father and brother tapping the eggs on their teeth to test out which one was the strongest.  I never quite reached that level of expertise as they all seemed the same to me. After finding what you believed would be your holiday champion, you would challenge someone.  Each person would hold their egg with the pointed side up. Then while one person held his egg, the other person took the pointed side of his egg and smashed the one below. Believe it not, you never knew which one would break. I always thought the smasher had an advantage, but it just depended on the strength of the shells. One of them would always crack and then the winner could challenge another person.  This continued until one egg was declared the Champion since it never cracked.  There was always lots of cheering, giggling, and yes, declaring oneself the Winner was the best part.

There was only one problem with this fun game.  If you wanted to play, you had to agree to one big rule.  If your egg cracked, you had to eat it.  Since a boiled egg wasn’t one of my favorites but I wanted to play, I was prepared to smear my losing egg with soft butter to help it disappear.

This is what a Winner and Loser egg looks like! Look at the picture to the left. You can see the cracked blue egg was the loser, and the uncracked yellow egg won this round. Also, each member of the family could use multiple eggs as long as he/she agreed to eat all the damaged eggs.  Sometimes, small children would seek assistance from elder family members to agree to eat their egg.  But over time, most became hard boiled egg eaters.

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                         Url for Egg War Video Clip

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Naturally Colored Easter Eggs

What a wonderful way to combine science with Easter Day traditions!  It opens up a new world to the children to be creative and experiment. Spices, herbs, juices, and an explosion of nature’s favorite fruits and vegetables help to make your boiled eggs into a basket of unique colors. It’s an activity full of fun and surprises, as you experience colors you didn’t expect.  Have fun and enjoy being together.

Release your creativity this Easter?  Join in the fun and experiment using natural spices, herbs, fruits, and vegetables to color your boiled eggs.  Everyone gets a chance to be a scientist and experiment.  The eggs, brimming with color, marbleized, blushed, or dotted, will surprise and delight everyone.  It’s a “have fun” activity.

                               Url link for Coloring Hard Boiled Easter Eggs

pdf for Instruction on Naturally Coloring Hard Boiled Eggs

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The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

Some people call it Easter, others say Bunny Day, but for all of us, it is a day and month for celebration with bright colored eggs, jelly beans, and lots of fun games.  As a child, I remember that big pot of boiling water and Mom being concerned about the eggs cracking.  That never bothered me, even if there was a dark grey circle around the yolk. It wasn’t until I was married that I discovered that this grey ring was a problem when I wanted to make an attractive egg dish  Finally, I hunted down the secret for making that perfect golden boiled egg.  My trusty friend Betty Crocker clued me in and then the Egg Industry added some helpful hints.
The first thing to remember is not to use super fresh eggs as they are difficult to peel if they are too fresh. When I was cooking at the Egg Festival in New Jersey, I fought a battle with the shells and after seeing a look of desperation on my face, one of the industry associates said that real fresh eggs many times love to hold onto those shells, and it wasn’t my fault. So I learned to buy my eggs at least a week before I use them.

                             Url for link to Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

 

pdf to Instructions for Making Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

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 Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs Using Water Oven – Sous Vide

The Water Oven is a simple device. A hot water bath set to a specific exact temperature.  To make the perfect hard boiled egg, we found 162F degrees to be the perfect temperature.  Just place the room temperature eggs in the water bath (i.e. cold shells may crack going into the hot water),  set a timer for 1 hour and then pull the eggs out and put them into the refrigerator to fully chill before removing the shells. If they are either too well done or not well done enough for your particular taste, adjust the temperature a degree up or down and that will meet your needs. The Sous Vide method is virtually fool proof, and you can do something else while the eggs are cooking to a perfect state.  But water ovens are expensive, so if you invest in one, you need to consider using it on a regular basis. By the way, if you see one at a garage sale, do consider buying it.  There are many advantages in using a water oven to prepare nutritious foods. Sous Vide method is included in the link below with the Stove Top method.

Url link for Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

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