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.

Bloomsday

Today, for those who don't know it, is yet another of the odd and sundry holidays that I celebrate at my house.

Among others, there are the standard ones (Christmas -- cookies and more cookies!), the Jewish ones (Rosh Hashanah -- the new year, Chanukkah -- the festival of lights), the secular ones (New Year's Eve, Hallowe'en), the ethnic ones (St. Paddy's Day), and the literary ones (Robby Burns Day -- January 25 -- in honor of Scotland's favorite poet). I'll celebrate virtually anything -- as we already know, it's all about the food!!!

But today, June 16, has a special place in my heart: today is Bloomsday. It is the day featured in the great novel Ulysses, by my beloved James Joyce.

I first read Joyce as a college freshman, like so very many both before and after me. My Freshman Comp teacher encouraged my writing, and as he got to know me realized that I would undoubtedly find a kindred spirit in an author from Ireland (I'm 1/4 Irish -- my paternal grandmother was born and raised in Cork), who had been raised Catholic (13 years in Catholic schools, God help me!), and who had become disillusioned with the Church (I now consider myself a secular Jew). I found a copy of Dubliners, a collection of stories ending with the extraordinarily beautiful and poignant "The Dead," and immersed myself for the entire next night in reading the book. I have been a Joycean ever since.

Ulysses follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom as he meanders in an Oydssean fashion through Dublin on June 16, 1904. In real life, it was on this day that Joyce went on his first date with the woman whom he would eventually marry, Nora Barnacle (originally Norah). She was instrumental in his life in so many, many ways; and God knows she put up with a lot living with a genius! What a singularly unique and romantic way of commemorating such a critical date (and person) in one's life -- using it in one of the greatest works of English literature!

The book was considered obscene, so many publishers refused it. Yeah, there's language issues, bathroom talk, infidelity, some activities that are rumored to make a person go blind ... and its stream of consciousness was radical at the time, so many people didn't understand the book or what purpose it might serve.

So an expatriate American living in Paris, Sylvia Beach, originally published it in 1922 through her bookstore Shakespeare and Company. (And I cannot tell you how thrilled -- thrilled! -- I was to find a framed photo of the place years ago at a street art show! It now has a proud place in my library-themed half-bathroom, so that all can see it and worship.) The book wasn't published in the United States until 1933, after a trial(!) and a judgment by U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey that it wasn't pornographic.

But anyway ... I am not the most devoted and erudite of Joyceans; I'm simply a sincere fan. And since virtually everything in my life revolves around food, I don't celebrate Bloomsday by taking a tour through Dublin that follows the book's storyline or by reading Ulysses again each year. I make traditional Irish food, though I'm not sure yet whether we're eating salmon or lamb, or whether I'll make rhubarb crisp.

I could, I suppose, make a meal in honor of Leopold Bloom's favorites:

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

But I'm none too keen on any of these particular items myself ... not that I've actually tried them, but I kinda have a feeling! So I'll spare you a recipe for any of them, and devote my fingertips to a more suitable purpose: typing out my recipe for Brown Soda Bread.

I make this every St. Paddy's Day, and always say that it's so easy it should be served more often throughout the year. Well, here's the proper occasion! Honor Bloomsday -- a celebration of literature and of love -- by making this hearty bread which is fabulous just plain with butter, or served with jam or with cheese. "... yes I said yes I will yes."

Brown Soda Bread

1-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup quick oats
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, cold, cut into bits
1 cup raisins, softened (I prefer dried cranberries, but Jeremy likes raisins)
2-2/3 cup buttermilk

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

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1/2 cup white flour, whole wheat 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.

Sprinkle half of the remaining flour onto the countertop, and knead it into the dough; repeat with the rest of the flour until the dough is no longer sticky.

Divide 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, and bake the breads for 30-35 minutes until they are golden brown. Let cool completely before serving.

Makes 2 loaves.

And check out this article in today's New York Times encouraging the humanities and, especially, the reading of Ulysses ... :)