Good evening and welcome to The Sheltie Chef. My name is Classicas Dark Dream Bi Parkhurst, CGC, TN-N, NJC, TG-N. You can call me Raven. Tonight we will be making Irish stew and soda bread. We will be doing this because today is St. Patricks Day -- an important celebration if you are Irish. Im actually not Irish, but my Boss is. So Goldi and I are making a nice St. Patricks Day surprise for him. In fact, since I am of Scottish descent and Goldi is definitely German and we are making this recipe up by ourselves, our Irish stew might be VERY surprising. For example, the people back in Ireland who invented Irish stew made it with mutton or lamb because thats what they happened to have. Goldi and I happened to have a pound and a half of chuck roast in the refrigerator. So, Goldi cut it all up into yummy little pieces and put them in a skillet with a little butter and some salt to brown. Next we needed some vegetables. In Ireland, they used to walk out into the garden and see what was ripe. Our garden is pretty much mud right now. The only thing in it is Bosss cat -- and we are certainly not putting HER in an Irish stew! YUCK!! No, QFC is our stew garden. On the way home from work, Goldi picked up carrots and potatoes and cabbage. (We already had some onions.) First, Goldi chopped an onion up into little pieces and dumped them into the skillet with the meat. That will give the meat a zippier flavor. She pulled a nice sized kettle out of the cupboard and poured in one whole can of beef broth. She put it on a back burner of the stove and turned up the heat. The carrots she brought home are those cute little, already peeled baby carrots. They are exactly the right size for a Sheltie mouth. In fact, Goldi couldnt resist putting two or three of them IN my mouth -- just so she could see how cute I looked eating them. After all, cooking should be a celebration and every celebration should include eating. Right? But, back to work --- Goldi put about one half of the bag of baby carrots in the heated beef broth so they could soften up a little. She carefully washed three potatoes so they were clean enough to use without peeling them. She cut them up in pieces and put them into the skillet with the meat and onions. If you fry them a little before you boil them, they dont get all mushy. Personally, I like mine crunchy -- so Goldi gave me a little piece of my own. Making Irish stew is such a friendly, sharing sort of project! When the meat was browned all over, Goldi put all the things in the skillet --- the yummy meat, the onions, and the potatoes -- into the kettle where the carrots were cooking in the beef broth. She added one cup of water and then we turned our attention back to the skillet. There was still a lot of meat juice there. So Goldi set the skillet back on the burner and added one and a half cups water, a third cup of flour, some salt, and some freshly ground pepper. When it all boiled -- MAGIC! It turned into gravy! Cooking is so delightful! You guessed it -- the gravy went into the kettle with everything else. Thats why they call it a stew -- because everything is just pitched in there all together to cook. Good timing is so important in cooking. If you arent organized, the next thing you know, one good thing has turned into a mess while you fixed something else. That almost happened to us tonight! I could tell that Goldi worked hard today and she was SO tired. She was cleaning up the onion skins and so forth when suddenly she looked at me and said, Raven! We need some soda bread! Quickly, she checked her recipe box. There were 2 recipes for Irish soda bread -- one of them from an authentic Irish that she knew a long time ago. Sadly, both recipes would take too long. Goldi and I were forced to be creative. We pulled out the Bisquick. I understand that, back in Ireland, they didnt have any Bisquick. So probably they had lots of times when their stew got overcooked while they measured out ingredients. Goldi and I did not have that problem. We set the oven for 450 degrees. Fast as a herding dog, Goldi measured out 2 cups of Bisquick and one cup of milk into a mixing bowl. Not JUST milk -- the best soda bread is made with buttermilk. (That makes sense, EVERYTHING is better with butter!) We didnt have buttermilk, but if you put a tablespoon of lemon juice into the milk, it makes it taste like buttermilk. So, thats just what we did. We also put in a teaspoon of baking soda and two tablespoons of sugar and a whole bunch of raisins and mixed it all up. Quick as a squirrel, Goldi climbed up the step stool and got the round baking pan out of the cupboard. She sprayed it with pan spray and poured our soda bread batter into it just as the oven beeped to tell us it was hot enough to bake. Goldi put the soda bread in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes. Things were getting pretty wild. Goldi checked the stew and found that the potatoes were starting to get soft. Yipes! Time for the cabbage! Quick! Whipping out the big chopping knife, she cut a small head of cabbage in half. She chopped up one half of the cabbage and put it right into the stew. Just in time! It would cook to just the right softness while the soda bread was baking. Its very important to cook the cabbage enough so its soft, but not to overcook it so its yucky. Goldi and I cleaned up our cooking mess so we would have a clean area where we could put the meal in dishes. Goldi and I have our team work down -- just like the chefs in all the famous restaurants. Goldi cleans the counters and I handle the floor. We can clean a kitchen in SECONDS! In fact, we had time for a rousing game of fetch the rolley ball before the oven timer beeped. Goldi pulled the soda bread out of the oven --- golden brown and PERFECT! She cut it in wedges the way you would cut a pie. She stirred the stew and turned off the heat. After she put some of the stew in two bowls, she set each bowl on a plate with a couple of wedges of hot soda bread. So beautiful! I scampered into the living room to let Boss know it was dinner time. He was very pleased to see me! Goodness! After all that wild time fixing stew and soda bread, it was so lovely to relax in our cosy, stew scented living room and enjoy the little pieces of soda bread Goldi gave me. The happiest part of cooking is sharing it after it is all cooked. My great great great great great granddogs lived in the Shetland islands, north of Scotland. It was rainy and windy and cold like Seattle has been this winter. Probably after a long day chasing sheep, they sat around with their bosses and ate bread and stew just like I did tonight. Thats why they call this type of food comfort food -- because it is so comforting to think of all the other dogs and bosses that have worked hard together and enjoyed yummy food together down through the centuries. I love cooking traditional food --- almost as much as I enjoy eating it. So, thank you for joining us for tonights episode of the Sheltie Chef. I hope you will all be encouraged to explore the foods associated with YOUR heritage. And may many good things fall onto your floor! Good night!
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 05:53:47 +0000
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