BROWN BREAD...THE REAL IRISH BREAD This is from Malachi McCormick's Irish Country Cooking. It's a great book, and puts the lie to the common misconception that there's little to savor in traditional Irish cuisine. Not so? Over time, I'll put my favorites from the book - and other sources - up here. Try them out, and tell me which you like best. And kudos to Mr. McCormick, for a job well-done! Ingredients: 4 cups of whole wheat flour (stone-ground preferred) 2 cups unbleached white flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups sour milk Butter Equipment: Bowl Wooden spoon Board, floured 8-inch cast iron pot, with lid Round 8-inch cake pan, with lid Wax paper Knife Tea towel This will yield one round eight inch loaf. It will go quickly, so feel free to double all, and bake two loaves. Goes well, Malachi tells us, with butter, or a tart jam, such as gooseberry, blackcurrant, or loganberry. And now, the recipe, pretty much verbatim, f
CEOL - OR IS IT “IRISH SOUL”? By Brian McGowan Rethinking Irish 5 You may recall prior mention of a singing style called sean-nós. What, you may be asking, is this sean-nós singing? Quickly said, sean-nós is a highly ornamented style of solo, unaccompanied singing defined by one authority, Tomás Ó Canainn , as a complex way of singing in Gaelic , with a highly ornamented melodic line, and varying greatly in ornamentation depending upon where in Ireland where the singer hails from, either the South (Munster), the West (Connacht) or the North (Ulster), three of the four “provinces” of Ireland. The fourth province, Leinster, in the east and southeast of the island, and holding Dublin, capital of the 26-county Republic of Ireland, was historically called “The Pale”, that region of Ireland centered on Dublin where English law and authority prevailed in the centuries following the 12 th Century Norman invasion. The other three provinces retained their Gaelic identiti