Banbury Cakes for Bloomsday

Regular readers know that I'll celebrate virtually any holiday -- religious, secular, literary, whimsical. Since it's all about the food, it doesn't much matter to me whether I'm fully invested in the reason for the festivities, as long as there's something good to eat!

But today is a holiday which is completely and utterly a part of my very being: today is Bloomsday, in honor of the profoundly fascinating Irish author James Joyce.

Joyce's masterpiece -- the challenging, beautiful, lyrical and little read (even when it's assigned in college courses!) novel Ulysses -- takes place on June 16, 1904. It is modeled after The Odyssey, and tells of the adventures of Leopold Bloom as he travels through his day in Dublin.

This is very sweet and romantic, in that this particular date was chosen because June 16, 1904 is the date on which Joyce first went out with his future wife, Nora (née Norah). How often does one's first date get commemorated in a revered work of literature???

I love Joyce, though it has admittedly been many, many moons since I've indulged my affection and actually read his work ... I should remedy this, perhaps re-reading Dubliners, the book which began my Joycean devotion, on my sunny front porch this summer.

I have celebrated Bloomsday with lamb stew, with soda bread, with any number of traditional Irish foods; but I haven't yet resorted to preparing or eating some of the foods that Leopold himself relishes:

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

This year, I thought I would take some inspiration from the book ... but not with any organ meats! Instead, I made a sweet pastry described in Chapter 8 - "Lestrygonians":

"He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected that. Manna."

And so today I offer Banbury Cakes: ovals of puff pastry filled with spiced dried fruits, and distinctively bearing three slits in the top. They originated in the Oxfordshire region of England and have been made since at least the year 1586.

I have actually made my own puff pastry before -- just once -- but can't really justify the time and effort, given how little counter space I have in my kitchen and how readily I can just open the freezer door at the grocery store to purchase a box of dough that Pepperidge Farm has graciously already prepared for me. So this recipe is very easy to make, and the fragrances emanating from the oven are absolutely divine!

The filling should theoretically offer currants, raisins and those little candied fruits that everyone else loathes in cakes and cookies at Christmastime. I don't actually mind them, but since it's not fruitcake season it didn't seem worth hunting them down; I used only currants, because that's what I had on hand ... that and some candied ginger, simply because I adore it.

Instead of "brittle paste" and "powdery crumbs," I found myself with warm, fragrant, freshly baked pastries that were sticky, sweet, perfectly spiced and addictive.

It would have taken virtually no effort to devour the batch, but I employed restraint and ate only one half of one treat ... though I can only claim that much virtue because I managed to clumsily drop the other half!

And I was valiant in my effort to save some because I didn't want to have a late-night craving and find myself wanting. These Banbury Cakes were so wonderful that they deserve to be savored with a cup of coffee or a glass of iced Irish breakfast tea.

Whether exhibiting more strength than the gulls did in resisting the temptation to eat every morsel in one fell swoop or taking the time to savor Joyce's intricate work, patience can be a virtue ....

Banbury Cakes

1 cup currants
1/2 cup green tea
splash of vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons minced candied ginger
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 sheet Pepperidge Farm puff pastry, defrosted
1 egg

Place the currants, tea, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger and brown sugar into a small saucepan; bring to a boil. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Chill.

Preheat the oven to 425F. Lightly grease a baking sheet.

Lay the puff pastry onto a lightly floured surface and cut into 6 rectangles. Roll each out just a bit, 'til 1" wider in each direction.


Divide the currant mixture among the rectangles, placing each dollop into the center of the dough.


One by one, bring the long sides of the rectangle up to meet each other; pinch to seal.


Trim the corners off each end of the dough.


Fold the dough up and pinch it to seal, forming an oval-shaped pastry.


Beat the egg. Flip the pastry over, and brush with the egg wash.


Take a pair of scissors and snip 3 diagonal slits into the top of the pastry.


Place the pastry onto the prepared baking sheet, and repeat with remaining dough and filling.


Bake for 20 minutes, until the pastries are golden and the filling is just bubbling. Let cool.

Makes 6 small (4") pastries.

Irish Soda Bread

To get into the spirit of things today, St. Paddy's Day, let's start by listening to a cover song (originally done by The Dubliners) that Jeremy and his buddy Andrew -- otherwise known as The Celtic Clash -- have produced: "I Knew Danny Farrell."

Okay, now!!!

Since I'm 1/4 Irish, you can imagine that St. Paddy's Day is a big deal for me even without the green beer (since I don't usually drink, other than an occasional glass of wine, and have always loathed beer even when it wasn't looking putrid).

I usually make corned beef 'n' cabbage, except that it's not vegetarian and so I can't cook it where I'm currently staying; but there's always just happy indulgence in a plateful of potatoes ... maybe a buffet of mashed, roasted with garlic, fried ... :) Don't worry -- I'll throw some protein (perhaps some salmon?) into the mix!

But the key ingredient to my celebration is my Brown Soda Bread, served with beloved Dubliner cheese ... sigh. Really, I don't need very much else to make me happy.

I've been baking this bread for so long that I don't even know where I found the original recipe, which has been tweaked so many ways that I now call it my own. I know it didn't come from my paternal grandmother, born Mary Brigid (Maie) Collins - is that a great name for a redheaded Irish girl, or what? - who never wrote down recipes and simply cooked and baked instinctively. But beyond that, I'm clueless.

I should make this more often because it's so easy; and yet, it seems to just be an annual celebratory food at my house. Some things are more special when only served occasionally, after all.

Irish flours tend to be more like our whole grain flours; so, for greater authenticity, you need to use whole wheat rather than only white varieties. It's not a sweet bread, despite the currants, and it's also very crumbly and scone-like.

I once saw a recipe for soda bread that contained yeast, which is kinda missing the point of it being a quick bread that relies upon baking soda for leavening. And I've also seen recipes containing caraway seeds; but as my father, the son of my Irish grandmother, always says with utter disgust: "Caraway seeds don't belong in soda bread." He has spoken!

So be sure to take some time while your corned beef is simmering to bake this simple, nutritious, beautifully rustic, and exceptional bread. And don't be shy about slathering it with butter -- St. Paddy's Day is a day for festivity, after all, but there's no need for imbibing or drunkenness ....

Brown Soda Bread

1-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
4 cups white whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup quick oats
3 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup currants, softened (you can also use raisins or dried cranberries or blueberries)
2-2/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Sprinkle a bit of flour onto 2 baking sheets, and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the white flour, white whole wheat flour, salt, oats and baking soda. Add the butter and mix it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles meal. Stir in the raisins and the buttermilk to form a wet dough.

Knead the dough until it is cohesive. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into an 8-inch round; place one dough round onto each of the prepared baking sheets. Slice an “X” into the top of the dough.




Bake the breads for 30-35 minutes until they are golden brown. Let cool completely before serving.

Makes 2 loaves.

Jeremy's Birthday Bonanza

Jeremy's birthday was yesterday, on the 10th, but we always start our celebrating on the 9th.

On January 9, 1991, my ex-husband and I went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Jeremy was a week late, lazing away in warmth and coziness as I was enormous and miserably uncomfortable. But at 3 o'clock in the morning, after going out for our dinner, I started to feel pains. And while he took his sweet time showing up, not appearing 'til 8 p.m. that night after being dragged out with forceps, Jeremy must have decided that he liked Chinese food enough that he wanted more ... at least, that's what his dad always says. And so, every January 9th since, we eat Chinese food.

Jeremy's and my favorite place is the Evergreen Restaurant; the place we'd gone to the night before he was born has closed, so we've at least come up with an excellent substitute!

The lunch specials are an exceptional value: for an average of $7, you get a bowl of soup, a small salad, and a generous plate of your entree served along with rice as well as a spring roll. It's just about the best lunch deal in town!

So, needless to say, the Evergreen is where Jeremy and I ate on Sunday. He took a break from the Atkins diet he and his dad are doing together and indulged in some celebratory Sweet and Sour Chicken (one of his favorite meals ever), along with Wonton Soup. But he doesn't like the ginger salad dressing, so I traded him extra wontons for extra lettuce. I absolutely love the dressing!

I ordered Mongolian Chicken (which is unfortunately not quite as vividly photogenic as Jeremy's meal!), with generous quantities of meat and lots vegetables. It was perfectly cooked, not too spicy. But the portions are always so generous that there was no way that either of us could finish our meals.

And that was just Day 1 of the party. On Day 2, we had cupcakes for breakfast: chocolate and vanilla marbling, per Jeremy's request, with buttercream frosting and a coating of mini M&Ms. What a way to start a morning!

Then Jeremy and I went to lunch at his very favorite restaurant, Conor O'Neill's Traditional Irish Pub. We always order the Galway Bay Mussels in a rich, creamy, luscious, garlicky sauce; and we always order extra bread because the sauce is so amazing that there is never enough served initially to sop it all up. (We had extra sauce once a few years ago, and I mortified Jeremy by asking for a container to take it home in. It was amazing on pasta for dinner the next night!!!) Jeremy actually said that these were so good that they are "conversation stoppers."

Then Jeremy ordered his requisite Reuben, which he orders anywhere that he finds it on a menu. But this one is his favorite, because it may not have the most overwhelming portion of meat but it has the tenderest of any. Jeremy said, "You know how embarrassing it is when you bite into your sandwich and a slab of corned beef pulls out and hangs on your chin 'cause it's too tough to chew???" Well, at Conor's you won't find that, Jeremy assures you!

Believe it or not, I didn't have too much trouble deciding on my own order that day ... some planets must have been in alignment for a brief moment! I chose Conor's Ploughman, a huge vegetable sandwich with melted cheese and pesto mayonnaise, served on whole grain bread. It sounded warm and gooey with a hint of nutrition, and just plain delicious. And it was, when I took one bite! After practically inhaling mussels and bread and rich sauce, I simply couldn't eat the sandwich. But that, in addition to some leftover french fries, would provide a lovely lunch for the next two days at work, wouldn't it??? I was a happy camper ... :)

In closing -- here, in honor of his birthday (which earned him a very generous $10 gift card, too, when I embarrassed Jeremy by asking the waitress if being the birthday boy came with any perks!), is Jeremy in his favorite booth at his favorite restaurant on his own special day ....

Irish Pub Grub

Conor O'Neill's is a traditional Irish pub on Main Street in Ann Arbor; there's also one in Boulder, CO, but I haven't been to that one. Interestingly, the place doesn't seem like a chain restaurant -- it definitely has a secure spot in the Irish lineage, but it still seems unique to our little burb.

I've gotta say that it's kinda loud ... and really, that's an understatement. 'Cause remember, it's primarily a bar. A bar with great food and friendly service and maps of Ireland and pictures of my beloved James Joyce, but a bar nonetheless.

So when Jeremy and I go there to eat -- yes, eat: I almost never drink, and Jeremy's not old enough to do so (legally!) -- we always try to get a small table tucked in the back, behind a wall. It has a bench seat on one side and 2 chairs on the other, so there isn't even the debate you sometimes get between people who prefer booths vs. people who'd rather sit at standard tables. And it's not exactly quiet, but it's quieter.

But that's okay, 'cause I have never, ever had a bad meal or dish or garnish or anything there. The food is fabulous! For starters, two of my favorite appetizers are mussels in a creamy, garlicky sauce (so amazing that I once asked for a small container to take home the extra to pour over pasta!) and Brie baked in a beer batter. Those decisions are pretty easy, and Jeremy will choose the mussels every time to make my life just a little bit easier. But then we move on to the entrees ... and, well, we all know how much trouble I have with that.

Shepherd's Pie, featuring cheese-topped mashed potatoes and a gravy made with Bass Ale? Fisherman's Pie with a luscious, creamy cheese-and-dill sauce generously loaded with salmon and shrimp? The Irish Boxty, essentially an enormous plate-sized latke topped with grilled vegetables and pesto mayonnaise? The slow-cooked Irish lamb stew in a rich Guinness gravy? You can see that an omnivore like moi, who also happens to be one-quarter Irish, would fall in love with every option and feel as though she were being unfaithful to all the others!

But when I was last at Conor O'Neill's with Jeremy, I settled upon the fish and chips. I hadn't eaten it for awhile and, truth be told, they make the best variation on this seemingly simple dish that I have ever eaten. (The menu itself tells you that it's "The best you've ever tasted!") The batter is made with Bass Ale, but that's not the only key ingredient; another is knowing just how long to fry the fish, so that they're not slightly burnt but also not greasy. Truly, the fish is absolute perfection. Even the excellent fries pale by comparison.

Now, Jeremy doesn't ever have these menu dilemma issues. If there's a Reuben on the menu, he will order it. And there's a Reuben on the menu at Conor O'Neill's ... a classic one of corned beef, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and rye, grilled to toasted, gooey beauty.

As Jeremy puts it, this specimen doesn't offer as much corned beef as some other restaurants do; however, each and every bite is meltingly tender, whereas the places that might give you more beef are using a lesser quality ingredient that is often chewy or gristled. 'Tis better to have less of an exceptional product than globs of a mediocre one. So this is Jeremy's favorite Reuben, other than the one he ate at the Carnegie Deli in NYC which was amazing even though it was about a foot tall (or maybe 1/2" shorter, but pretty close).

Fortunately, since Irish "fayre" is some of my favorite food, Conor O'Neill's is very conveniently located -- no plane rides for the phobic, yay!!! And we'll be going back there fairly soon, for Jeremy's birthday in January. As I typed this, I asked him if he wanted to go back there again as we have for several years (enough to make it a tradition). He looked at me as though I were the most foolish creature on Earth and said, "Pfft! Yeah!" Oh, if only I could type out the disdain and dismay in his voice!

But I love him anyway, so Conor O'Neill's it will be on January 10 ....

A Day-Long Food Fest

Oh, man, Sunday was an incredible festival of food!  Tom, Jeremy and I started out in Berkley, at O'Mara's Irish Restaurant on 12 Mile at Coolidge (as opposed to Coolidge at 12 Mile ... inside joke, after my father corrected me for phrasing it improperly).  It was an occasion for Tom to meet my parents, for me to visit with Tom's dad and stepmother again, for Jeremy to meet some of Tom's family ... it was -- as Tom succinctly put it -- "Lunch with the In-Laws" despite there not even being any engagement let alone a marriage.  It was a convenient way to phrase a complicated arrangement ... and it's kinda sweet, too.  And we needed to play yenta and get all of the old(er) folks together, since my parents live in Birmingham while Tom's live in Royal Oak ... they're practically neighbors!

I'd never been to O'Mara's before, but it was well worth the schlep across 696; Jeremy -- who has recently embraced being 1/8 Irish with a manic devotion -- has now declared it his new favorite restaurant.  There was a beautiful mural of charming Irish doorways along one wall, a gigantic Guinness mirror on another wall, and just a warm, friendly atmosphere with no one rushing anyone out the door.  I never got to look at a menu, because a Sunday brunch that was exceptionally good -- with lots of choices for everyone (from good eaters to picky nuisances) -- was already waiting for us: a beautiful assortment of breads and rolls, a lovely green salad, a gorgeous fruit tray, tuna pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, hash browns, French toast, a variety of cakes and pastries, and -- the absolute pièce de résistance -- some of the best scalloped potatoes I've ever eaten (which both my mother and Monica, Tom's stepmother, had raved about before we went up to the table to peruse the offerings).

Now, anyone who encounters me for even a few brief moments knows at least two things about me: I'm not shy about being the first one up at the buffet table, and I'm also not shy about going up for seconds.  But I didn't want to be a glutton -- not to mention being unable to eat the breakfast meats because the ubiquitous sodium nitrite gives me migraines -- so I exhibited restraint and stuck to salad, fruit, mac 'n' cheese (it was home-style, with real cheese on top ... how could I resist???), the divine potatoes, and splitting small pieces of luscious mocha and lemon cakes with Tom.  (Still recovering from the hamantaschen binge of Purim, no massive quantities of food were on the agenda.)  I enjoyed myself immensely, always happy to eat and to converse and to eat a bit more.  And everyone else seemed to enjoy both the food and the company, as well; our parents even compared notes on afternoon naps and having doctor appointments as their primary source of entertainment ... groan.  My father and Gary (Tom's dad) were similar sorts who long for the good ol' days and an old-fashioned work ethic, while my mother and Monica were the last to leave the table because they were so congenially engaged in conversation with each other.  "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match ...."

After that, we went to my new favorite grocery store: One Stop Kosher Food Market at 10 Mile and Greenfield in Southfield.  I'd been there once before, a few weeks ago, and only had sufficient time to peruse the perimeter ... but that was enough for me to fall in love at first sight.  I felt right at home, as though I were back in NYC where I grew up, shopping side-by-side with Orthodox Jews wearing yarmulkes and wigs and tzitzit and black hats.  And the food -- oh, the food!!!  Bagels and rugelach (crescent-shaped cookies, usually with a chocolate or a fruit filling) and babka (an exceptional coffee cake) and knishes (single-serving savory "pies" with a variety of fillings, from potato to cheese to -- oh, my God!!! -- pastrami) ... I was in my gluttonous glory just absorbing it all!

I bought some Bazooka gum (sugar and all, I'm sorry to say) because the writing on the wrappers was in Hebrew.  I bought some cotton candy (more sugar, virtually nothing but sugar) because it was made by Manischewitz (which has a very special place in my heart after inviting me to be a semi-finalist in its 2nd cook-off) and the container would be perfect -- priceless! -- for bringing lunch items to work.  (I have a very strong sense of whimsy, it seems.)  I bought chocolate-covered matzahs, because that's one of my favorite Pesach (Hebrew for "Passover") foods and the price was better at One Stop than I find it to be in Ann Arbor.  And I bought another box of my beloved Alef Beis (alphabet) cookies so that I can not only have a treat to enjoy with cocoa or with tea, but so that I can practice reading Hebrew by forming words with the cookies ... my equivalent to eating Alpha-Bits or alphabet soup and playing with my food!  I even bought a container of something called "Whip," which is a non-dairy cream.  In order to make baked goods that are pareve [PAHRv] -- neither meat nor dairy -- for my Jewish friends who keep kosher, as well as being able to provide treats for one who has a dairy allergy, I use Earth Balance vegan butter substitute and soy milk or yogurt; but now I can melt some pareve chocolate chips with Whip and even make a glaze or ganache or frosting, as well.  It takes so little to make me happy ... :)

And then, once we got back home, it was on to my food for the Oscars.  I'm not much of a t.v. fan, but will admit to watching the occasional movie on Turner Classics (usually an MGM musical), baseball (lots of baseball ... lots and lots of baseball!), the Tonys, "Monk," and the Oscars.  I care a bit about who wins the awards, but not a lot since I usually haven't seen many of the movies.  But I love to see the clothes, even though I know this makes me seem very shallow and inane ... oh, well, we all have our moments.

For the show, I offered a buffet with not much of a theme other than simply not requiring any utensils -- I'm not Wolfgang Puck, after all, making Oscar-shaped pumpernickel bread toasts with lox or mini gold leaf-covered chocolate statues!  (In a previous life, I might have tried; but now ...?)  We ate a tropical chicken salad (minced chicken, papaya, pineapple, toasted coconut, and a curried coconut milk sauce to kinda/sorta/maybe bind it together) dolloped onto crispy rice crackers, fruit, an assortment of vegetables for dipping, some exceptionally good salt-and-pepper kettle cooked potato chips, and an experimental dip for which I should win some sort of prize:

1 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon each cumin and paprika

1/2 teaspoon Ras el Hanout -- a Moroccan spice blend

a splash of Tabasco

a pinch of kosher salt

a sprinkling of Cajun seasoning

1 tablespoon of my new favorite condiment -- Polish Mustard From Hell

And I made peanut butter cookies -- adding both chopped honey-roasted peanuts and peanut butter chips -- because ... well, who needs a reason???  They're fabulous, soft, crumbly, rich, delicious, and addictive.  It's sort of surprising that there are any left, but then I did bake a lot of them ....

So, that was my Sunday -- eating food, buying food, making food, eating more food.  Not a bad way to end the weekend!