Presently the calendar is between St Bridget's day - 2nd of Feb - and St Patrick's day - 17th March. As the date of Lent approaches, when people are meant to eat less/eat simpler what home made food could be simpler and more Irish than potato bread? In the spirit of such simplicity I present a version of the recipe I learned from a close relative thirty years ago. Recipes are food memes, for them to live and change they have to be passed on. Job done? Maybe....
1-Scrub clean but leave on the skins on two medium-large sized potatoes.
2-Boil the potatoes halved in salt water until they are cooked, but are definitely firm.
3-When the potatoes are cool, grate them, skins included, with a coarse grater into the bowl.
4-To the grated potato add flour. How much flour? This is the guesswork: Add two handfuls at time, or a small pile, on top of the potato. When you have kneaded the flour into the potatoes evenly enough that the result is a half-firm ball of dough with the mix that is how you know you have used the right amount of flour. The ball of dough might fall apart a bit, but overall if it only just holds together that is about right.
5-On a large surface, put a spread of wholemeal flour and or/sunflower seeds.
6-Divide your dough in two and put one half on the flour/sunflower seed surface.
7-Roll the dough out, putting some flour or sunflower seeds on the top side between the rolling pin and dough to reduce sticking.
8-Roll it out very thin, not much thinner than the shop-sold commercial potato bread you might see.
9-Cut to shape, either palm sized squares or half circles, using the lid of a small pan as a cutter/shape and bisecting the rolled out dough.
10-Put each piece you have cut to one side (hence the large surface).
11-In a skillet or large pan put a 50/50 mix of olive oil and sunflower oil, just enough to cover the whole surface thinly.
12-Heat your pan to medium to high heat and put in your shapes of potato bread using all the space in the pan.
13-Watch them so that they seal and brown slightly in the heat.
14-Place 'done' pieces on a side plate.
The two medium-large size potatoes make six to ten pieces of potato bread using the pan lid cutter technique. From the potatoes being left to cool after boiled, the whole operation has taken me forty mins.
I usually put the pan/skillet on the heat at the same time as starting the first cutting out, and 'multi-task' by rolling thin the dough and cutting more pieces out whilst watching those on the pan or skillet and having the plate ready for the finished pieces. As I take fried pieces out of the pan/I put them on the plate/put more pieces into the pan/cut more pieces out/watch the frying/put the next finished piece of potato bread onto it's plate/cut out more shapes/put more potato bread in the pan/maybe adding a bit more oil/and back to rolling out more dough and cutting out more shapes, all in a rather circular movement ideal in a galley kitchen where free space is premium. My buddy, Anthony still likes potato bread. He likes to tidy the mis-shapes that get made in the process well before we sit down to have them warm with-what else? Our own homemade blackberry jam.
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