Christmas Baking in West Waterford, Ireland

Every family has their own Christmas baking traditions.  Some people get it all done before Halloween, others bake for the entire neighbourhood, some are lucky enough to be the recipients of home baked cakes.

Our family tradition is to fill the oven when the day comes to bake the Christmas cake.  The oven is on for what seems like the entire day to bake such a mammoth dessert and my Mum has always made sure to bake at least one other cake, sure you couldn't be wasting all that spare heat!  Every year she makes a Dundee cake which is basically a smaller, slightly drier fruit cake with whole almonds on top. Last year I missed the Christmas baking and I got a big slice of Dundee cake in the post.  Oh joy...


2 weeks ago, my gorgeous Mum fell and managed to dislocate her shoulder, so stirring massive bowls of cake mix was out of the question.  I decided to head home for a week to help with cooking and dog walking duties and it seemed the perfect opportunity for the McKenna girls to get together to do some Christmas baking.

To bake McKenna style, there are a few essentials - lots and lots of dried fruit, an old copy of the Irish times to line the baking tins, a bottle of brandy for generous fruit soaking, my ancient copy of the 'Hamlyn New All Colour Cookbook' for the Dundee cake recipe and a 'Stork Christmas Baking' leaflet saved from 1976 for the Christmas cake.  Finally, there must be absolutely no peel!  The only way to avoid peel at Christmas time it seems, is to do your own baking.

The night before the big bake, Mum and I sorted through all of the fruit, looking for and removing any stems still attached to raisins and sultanas.  I think we counted about 20 little stems in 2kg of fruit.  When Mum was a girl, there were so many stems it could take hours to do the same job and all the fruit would stick together, so a final dusting with flour was essential to make sure the mixing job was easier.  These days, fruit is coated in vegetable oil, which stops things sticking together, but I wonder what the quality of the veg oil is?  Not worth thinking about too much I reckon.  Once that job was done, we soaked the fruit in plenty of brandy, covered the bowl with a tea towel and left it overnight.

My job the next day was to line all the tins.  Mum has a foolproof method for this.  Line the base and sides with two layers of newspaper (preferably the Irish Times for interesting reading) then a layer of parchment paper.  The sides are cut extra wide, to allow for an overlap at the bottom and an extra bit of height at the top, as the cake will rise and no matter how well you plan, it's sure to spill over!

My sister and I did all the beating and folding, stirring and measuring, while Mum and Tilda supervised.  Mum had a small jar of walnuts that she figured really should be used up too, so we made a Date & Walnut Loaf to fill the last space on the oven shelves.  Suffice to say, if the recipe tells you to bake something for 30 mins at 180C, baking for an hour at 140C won't really cut it.  As Mum reluctantly admitted, 'I suppose baking is a science after all!'

Several hours later, 3 cakes were out of the oven and we breathed a sigh of relief.  All done until next year!

   

Coming out of Hibernation

Have you ever wondered why the beginning of the year is, for us northern hemisphere dwellers, still in the middle of winter?  It doesn't always feel very 'new-year-ish' to me.  Making resolutions and sticking to them is kinda hard when it's still dark and cold outside.

Mountain Man and I returned to Malmö 4 days ago and after 2 weeks in the Emerald Isle, I realised how much warmer it is there!  Daffodils are shooting up, cherry is already in blossom and there is a definite feeling of Spring in the air.

As we hiked up Scarr in the Wicklow Mountains on new year's day, it struck me how much I missed the hills and the outdoors.  The incredible view, the easy chat that was carried away by the wind, the feeling of being away from distraction - it's unbeatable.  Living in a city is wonderful, but being without our car means we're a little bit stuck in urbania.  One of my resolutions for this year, which should help me get out of the city, is to do 30 minutes of exercise every day.  On Sunday we cycled out to Lomma, a pretty coastal village about 10km away, ticking the box for daily exercise, as well as getting into the countryside.

As I cycled past fields in fallow and a nature reserve by the sea, it struck me that Mother Nature is still hibernating.  While we may have cleared away all signs of Christmas by now, ready to kick off another new year, the natural world is preparing for Spring.  There is still plenty of time to bounce forward into the new year and for me, this is a time for reflection and contemplation...on the year that has been and how I want 2013 to be.  Picking some bare twigs, withered berries and grasses may have looked a bit crazy to passers by, but they are a reminder to me that there is no rush.  I'm still in hibernation.

Of course, that doesn't mean I want to continue eating Christmas cake and mince pies for the next month.  Along with my daily exercise resolution, I am also determined to get more greens into my belly.  Yesterday I made the easiest soup on the planet (more anon) and have begun to take 'Synergy Natural Super Greens' a green powder mix of spirulina, chlorella, barley grass and wheat grass.  It's definitely an acquired taste and capsules are always an option if you can't hack the particularly dark, earthy flavour, but this stuff actually tastes ok.  I'm not sure how they've managed it, but I had a teaspoon in water earlier and didn't gag.  The whole point of all the green foods is to get the PH of my body back into balance.  Sugar, dairy, stress, life...all contribute to acidity in the body but green foods (among others) push us back towards alkalinity, which the body prefers and discourages disease of all kinds. If I take two teaspoons a day the tub will last me about 20 days.  I expect to have more energy, lose a few pounds, sleep better and eliminate some niggling joint pain I've been having.

I'll keep you posted.  Happy New Year.

Whenyouhaveacold Soup

I was in Ireland recently for a wedding.  It was a glorious occasion - the sun shone, the bride and groom were beautiful and the food was divine.  I didn't take any photos though, so I won't tease you with stories of the dinner in Dromoland Castle, nothing about all five courses, the sorbet, the petit fours...oooh no, it would be too much...

Instead I thought I'd share a soup recipe I got from my father in law.  He made and served it to Mountain Man and I on the day we left Ireland after the wedding, to come back home to Malmö.  It's the kind of soup you can make with whatever you have in the fridge, is terribly forgiving and will stretch to feed whoever happens to turn up (as we did).  We gulped it down half an hour before we had to be at the airport, after a manic weekend of wedding glamour and intense visiting.  It was so good I could have had 3 bowls and curled up in a corner, happy.

This week I have been suffering from a nasty head cold and so I dug out the recipe he had emailed me and made the soup, albeit with one or two ingredients missing or replaced with something else.  I figured it would cheer me up, boost my immune system and be a fairly easy lunch for the week.  It was.  My father in law calls it 'whatsleftoverveg soup', for me it's 'whenyouhaveacold soup'.

In a nutshell, you take a couple of cloves of garlic and an onion  and dice small.  Cube 3 carrots and a couple of sticks of celery (size matters, small is good, but whatever you decide, keep it consistent) and put them with the onion & garlic into a saucepan with a dash of good quality sunflower oil and a smidge of real butter.  Saute for 10 minutes or so, then add 1 litre of stock, half a tin of tomatoes and a teaspoon of each of the following spices - smoked paprika, cummin, ground black pepper - and 8-10 whole green cardamon pods.  If you like a bit of heat, now is the time to add in some chilli powder or harissa paste.  I added half a teaspoon as it needed to suit Mountain Man too.  Simmer for about 15 minutes, then add in half a tin of beans,  half a leek and a bunch of chopped parsley & coriander.  Continue simmering until the veg is al dente and serve up with some crusty bread and butter, or as I did some Swedish 'hard bread' or crackers (more on those in the next blog). 

You may notice there are lots of 'half' things here.  That's because I halved the recipe (apart from the tinned tomatoes, which I accidentally put in an entire tin of, hence the very very red soup) but if you want, double the recipe and freeze half the soup.  I also left out a potato, as I didn't have any, but I think it is a worthy addition, so do add it in. 

The onion, leek & garlic are fantastic cold fighters, natural antibiotics and great for your immune system generally.  I am definitely feeling the benefit of a bowl every day this week and it is dead easy to make.  When you do serve it up, adding a dollop of greek yoghurt and a squeeze of lime makes it particularly moreish.  It's all run out now, so I'll have to make more tomorrow, maybe with some ginger added, for extra ooomph.

Pickled Fish?

I am sitting in our kitchen, flooded with light, enjoying the beautiful view over rooftops and into the courtyard below.  The fact that I am sitting here, rather that on the bed, balancing my laptop on my knees is cause for celebration.  You see, yesterday, we bought a dining table and chairs.  In the process we also made some Swedish friends.

Using a most wonderful Swedish institution (it seems) www.blocket.se we searched for second hand furniture and found what seemed like the perfect, inexpensive pine table and 4 chairs for just 300kr.  We contacted the seller and agreed to visit to take a look yesterday afternoon.  When we arrived we were shown the furniture, but also a beautiful walnut table and 6 chairs which were for sale too.  This lady is completely decluttering her house, her daughter piped up from indoors that she had already sold her bed and had to sleep on the couch!

For just 50kr more (that's about €5.88) we agreed to take the walnut table and chairs and proceeded to get everything into our car.  Following a rather sweaty 20 minutes, the lovely Hanna and Sten offered us a cup of coffee.  My inner introvert said 'No, I need to get going' while my lovely sociable husband beat me to it with a 'Yes, we'd love to'.


We stayed.  We drank coffee, sitting in their back garden in the sun.  We ate delicious little Swedish biscuits.  Maps were pulled out and we both shared stories and tips for our respective countries.  Sten has lived in Malmö all his life and was full of suggestions on where to shop, where to buy fish and on which day.  I grilled them on how to pronounce the new Swedish vowels that I am working hard to get my mouth around and I think I am a little closer to 'getting' it.  Susanne, their daughter was dying to hear all about Ireland and where she should go to experience a genuine Irish village with a proper pub & thatched roofs.

It seems that Malmö does not quite fit into the Swedish stereotype when it comes to food.  They are not big fans of the pickled fish that I have heard about, in fact Hanna advised we steer clear and wrinkled her nose at the thought of the smell alone!  They do not seem to have a particular favoured dish or speciality.  Perhaps this is because Hanna hates cooking?  She did get very excited when she started talking about a cake they enjoy in January & February called Semla, a combination of cream, sponge and marzipan. Not sure it would be my cup of tea, but I will certainly give it a try!

2 hours later, we departed with promises to keep in touch and help each other learn English & Swedish.  This is not the Swedish stereotype that I have been hearing about.  I did not expect to be welcomed into someone else's home so easily and so warmly.  There were so many jobs on my to-do-list yesterday, but I truly wouldn't have chosen to spend the day any differently.  Thank you Hanna, Sten & Susanne.