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Anraith Oinniún agus Cáis le Arán Beoir agus Triacail

Onion Soup and Cheese with Stout and Treacle Bread! 

See full recipes:

Bread

Soup

#irish food #irish language #irish cooking #irish diaspora #soup season #soup #baking #breadmaking

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Onion Soup with Cider and Cheese (Anraith Oinniún le Ceirtlís agus Cáis)

Recipe number two! I wanted something to go with my stout and treacle bread and this recipe fortuitously calls for two of the herbs I have growing under my kitchen window so it seemed like a perfect fit.

I started with Kerrygold butter because if I am going to cook Irish food, I figure I need to start with Irish butter (im)

I cut the recipe in half because I am only one person and I am glad I did because I could barely fit 5 onions in my pot! How big is the pot that the author has??? You can also see in this photo that I chose to chop up my herbs rather than put them in whole and remove them later. I wanted to make sure that I kept as much flavor in as possible since there were so few seasonings but I think that it would have been fine either way.

As always, I needed to cook the onions much longer than the recipe called for in order to get them nice and brown. I think I ended up cooking them closer to an hour and half rather than 40 minutes. 

One thing I am looking forward to with this cookbook is the opportunity to forage local ingredients and connect the lands I have grown up on (Ohlone and Coast Miwok) to my homelands in Ireland (West Coast to West Coast haha). There weren’t any foraged ingredients in this recipe, but I did use my favorite local cider.

The final product was INCREDIBLE! I usually get a french onion soup on Christmas Eve from the steakhouse we go to every year but I opted for something else this year (lobster bisque, which was delicious). I was a little bummed to have missed out on that tradition and this definitely scratched that itch. Honestly, I think it was probably even better than french onion soup, I though the cider/chicken broth complemented the onion much better than beef broth. 

I topped the soup with crumbled Cougar Gold, an aged white cheddar that my university (Washington State University) makes on campus and that my advisor sent for me for Christmas. 10/10 cheese, don’t be turned off by the fact that it comes in a can lmao

My final recipe rating:

Difficulty: 1/5

Taste: 5/5

#irish food #irish cooking #irish diaspora #cooking #soup season

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Stout and Treacle Bread (Arán Beoir agus Triacail)

The first recipe I went with was Stout and Treacle Bread, which was probably a silly choice since I have no experience baking bread but it turned out pretty well! Not having to deal with yeast definitely made this a simple bread for a first try.

Here’s the recipe: 

I used Guinness (duh) and the molasses with the cutest label (Tá coinín air!)

The dough was definitely drier than I expected because the recipe says to “pour” it into the pan but it is definitely a real dough. The recipe also didn’t explain what to do with the oats but I assumed they go on top, which I am sure was correct but I wish there had been instructions because they didn’t stick to the loaf well after cooking :(

Before the oven:

And after!

I served it with onion soup (post to follow) and it was delicious, and its density held up well against the soup so it was perfect for scooping up onion.

MY final rating for this recipe is:

Difficulty: 1/5

Taste: 4/5

Next time I may add in a touch of brown sugar (siúcra donn) to give it a little sweetness. Overall, not a bad first recipe!

#irish food #irish cooking #baking #breadmaking

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Dia dhaoibh! My sister gave me a copy of Jp McMahon's The Irish Cookbook for Christmas so I figured I would share my attempts to cook through it and use this blog as a way to motivate me to actually cook and as an excuse to practice my very very basic Irish.

I'll be posting about the recipes, my reflections on reconnecting to my Irish heritage, my opinions on Irish politics, and assorted Irish diaspora content.

Stay tuned for my first recipe attempt later today!

#irish language #irish food #cooking #cookbook #gaeilge #irish diaspora