A Summoning of the Gaels

Heirloom recipes are a time machine of taste, a portal into the past flavor experiences of your ancestors.

A good recipe recreated is an homage to our forebearers. A spell we cast a summoning of sorts to have them among us again as we partake of the thing.

When I was just a little kid running around my neighborhood there was an old Irish Couple that lived across the street from me, the O’Donell’s.  I distinctly remember the little statuette of a leprechaun near their front step that I used to sit on.

I don’t have a clear memory of them just rather gauzy impressions of fresh baked smells, their brogues and smiles carved into deep wizened features, and a deeper kindness.  They were the embodiment of Irish hospitality, always offering me a cool drink in summer or a treat of some sort.

While Ireland does not have as much a celebrated culinary heritage as some other cultures (we a people of lyrical sensibility, and deft at weaving prose…. think Joyce, Keats, Beckett, Wilde among others) we do have some treasures of taste: Boxty, Cottage Pie and I mean Guiness perhaps one of the finest brews to ever exist and I will fight anyone over this point. Combative, another Irish trait. And of course this Irish Soda Bread.

Kay O’Donnell shared her recipe for her mother’s Irish Soda Bread with my mom and she then shared with me. This has been baked and devoured every year, around Saint Patrick’s Day since my birth, I bake it now, my sister now serves it. A recipe that has crossed oceans and generations to arrive at your table.

Though the Brown Bread of Ireland some could argue is more traditional, this recipe does share some characteristics as an English Spotted Dick (no not a British Venereal disease) but a loaf involving dried currants or raisins with a mildly sweet flavor.