My father's maternal line hails from Ireland, county Cork to be exact. For some reason our family embraced the Irish heritage more so than most of the other heritage lines, so every Saint Patrick's day my mother would make Irish Soda Bread and Guinness Beef Stew. It was a familial tradition, every yeah, like clockwork. My father would joke about how it was a waste of a perfectly good Guinness and claim that my mother had to buy her own to cook with and not get into his stash. Ah, family. Occasionally my mother would just hit up Casey's Grocery Store in Naperville and buy the stew and bread instead of making it. It wasn't any less important.
After I left my parents house to go to college, I had missed a few St. Patrick's days with my family and would often get homesick around this time. I'd also find myself somewhat buried in school work, so I couldn't get up north to celebrate it with them. This year I decided to bring St. Patrick's Day to me. I used this recipe for the Stew and this one for the bread. I browned the beef and boiled a pint of Guinness and then introduced all the other ingredients to make the stew. It smelled like heaven.
I started on the bread while the stew cooked. It was rather unremarkable, I simply
followed the recipe as closely as I could and made the bread. Only, I didn't follow the recipe, apparently. Because the bread was rock hard, heavy and tasted NOTHING like the Irish soda bread I grew up with and it had the consistency and texture of biscotti. I had no idea how I messed up, but I did. It's clear that I'm not a baker. And that putting whole pans in the oven is a bad idea. Within two minutes I forgot that the Calpholon had spent time in the oven and burnt my hand trying to pick it up.
The meal was decent overall, but hard to plate and the bread blew. It did make me nostalgic for home and help cure some of my home sickness. Plus I had mad leftovers to freeze and eat at my pleasure. I definitely had seconds on this one.
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