AN irish Bread For Sunday

With corned beef and cabbage being this star of this Sunday's St paddy's day, it hard to forget another Gaelic staple - good fresh from the oven bread. Try baking a loaf to go with the corned beef or even just to have with butter and jam latter on.

New contributor and famed Hudson Valley chef Clare de Boer wrote about the famed brown bread fromBallymaloe Cookery School  in Cork in Wednesday';s New York Times Food section. This is the perfect bread that should accompany corned beef(and also be part of Monday's corned beef sandwiches). It is a simple bread  that Chef de Boer first had when she visited the school, enjoying it thickly slathered with butter and covered with tiny prawms from nearby Ballycotton Bay,Darina Allen the school's co-founder says its an easy mix, perfect for novice bread makers.It's also a good recipe for those who fear yeast. It's just micing it with water and treacle syrup, letting ti foam and then rise. Whole wheat brown flour is added.There's a quick rise and ten baking. It's origins are not Irish but English having been created during the Second world War by  nutritionist Doris Grant to make easy use of rations.it was less fluffy than sandwich bread but less cakey than Irish soda bread.it resembles Danish rugbroad but without its;s ourness and denseness.

Students who have attended the school now bake it for their shops and eateries that are located all over the world.Lily Starbuck a former student ,sells it at her cafe at the west end on Fisher's Island where the Long island Sounds meets the Atlantic Ocean.She pairs hers with butter and Camambaert and plans on having classes on it. Again it's a simple bake.The one thing to keep in mind is that make sure the yeasts foam when the molasses and water are added to it.If it doesn't;t then you have dead yeast and have to start over with a fresh packet. If you like a crunchy crust then sprinkle anything from poppy to sesame seeds on top. The flour is whole wheat, preferably stone ground.Use Bob's Red Mill or King Arthur for this. There;s also a teaspoon of kosher salt  (Chef de Boer recommends Diamond Crystal) and a tablespoon of molasses or if you can get it treacle.It;'s a very small amount of yeast, really  - only two and a half tablespoons.It;s just mixing the yeast with the molasses and warm water for five minutes until the liquid develops a creamy froth.Add the flour,Pour it into a greased pan lined with parcnhemt  and then bake twenty minutes at 400 degrees Farenehit,.after twenty minutes  carefully take the loaf outr of the pan and bake for another ten minutes..It should be done when you tap the bottom and it sounds hollow.

This ballymaloe brown bread is the perfect accompaniment to Sunday's corned beef and cabbage. It's also a great bread to make for a weekend .Try it and enjoy it's home baked sweetness and goodness.

Glorious Grilled Chicken

Memorial Day is coming up and that means one thing  grilled food!!! There's something about the smoky flavor and the crunchy texture. Despite being home, there's something special about a cookout featuring chicken pieces. Another good aspect? Anyone from novice chef to master griller can create a tasty backyard chicken dinner.

Clare de Boer, the famed British chef and co-owner of the Italian restaurant, King wrote about this summer must eat for today's New York Times Food section. She also offers tips about creating an evenly cooked piece. Grilling chicken is a tough tightwalk. It's entirely different in an oven or a stove top. Add some butter or spices along with some lemon juice. It renders the meat tender and juicy which  equals delicious. A grill is not as forgiving. You can't just add a little more heat and liquid to change dry meat into something mouthwatering tender. There is no temperature control when you cook over coals. Home chefs have to be more agile and attentive. Keep in mind that it starts with basic butchery as Chef de Boer states.Even out the bird's thickness with something as simple as a rolling pin. Boneless breasts are best when leveled with it . For whole chickens with breast and bone then spatchcock, flatten and slash. Slashing provides peepholes that allows you to see if the piece is completely cooked.

Seasoning in advance is also a good thing. Chef de Boer gives a spatchcocked  chicken recipe that's zinged up with oregano and Calabrian chili flakes. You could also just salt them but only with bigger cuts. Smaller ones will turn into chicken jerky. Also temper the meat before cooking. In other words keep it out so it becomes rooms temperature. A room temperature one will cook faster than a cold one.Match the cut of the bird to the grill's temperature. This is the most important bit of info. Thin cuts like breasts prefer it hot which they can char quickly, while thicker cuts prefer it low and slow, meaning there should be a cool spot on the griil. Also don't fiddle with it. Wait until there's a crust then you can flip to your heart's content. How do you know when it's done? Chef de Boer recommends poking (!) it . It should feel like a ripe peach. Then it's just resting the chicken on a plate to cool the interior temp and save the juices. If it doesn't work out , then use barbecue sauces. Try some Greek yogurt out of the fridge, mixed with olive oil along with citrus and sauce as Chef de Boer does.

Go wild with grilling this weekend. Buy that chicken and grill it to crunchy, charred perfection. It's definitely a treat worth cooking and eating.

A Chef's Diary

To look into a chef's  heart, look into their daily schedule. It is a whirlwind of planning, shopping  preparing and cooking. It is also a diary of an artist, someone who constantly creates and tweaks classics. It's a fascinating look inside , especially if it's by Clare de Boer. You can learn from just spending one day in her life.

That's what the New York Times Food section did yesterday.British born de Boer gave Times readers an interesting peek inside her kitchen. The section asked her to keep a journal for one week in July of what she made at home and not at her restaurant, King in Manhattan.,It was actually a story of two kitchens - her home in Brooklyn and her weekend place near Dover Plains, New York , a bucolic Duchess County hamlet.She cooks not only for herself but for her husband, Luke Sherwin, and his family.Although he's not a chef, more of founder to companies Block Renovation and Casper, he contributes recipes as well. I loved this diary. It gave me a lot of ideas for recipes and got me excited about adapting them for fall produce.They're relatively easy to recreate and would be perfect at any end of summer gathering. They're not fancy. You can find them at any farmer's market or grocery store.Like me, you can even adapt them for the upcoming autumn harvest, subbing in apples and pears for berries.

What are the recipes? The one that intrigues me most is the frangipane. This is a mix of almond flour, butter and egg yolks. It's then mixing them and slathering the mix on slices of buttered sourdough bread. Chef de Boer then piles sugared stone fruit such as peaches, plums and apricots.The slices are then baked for twenty to twenty-five minutes and afterwards broiled for only one to two minutes. It would be good with apples and even pears subbed in , topped with vanilla ice cream or plain cream. Another have to try recipe is the sformato, an easy kind of a souffle. It's combining the kernels of six ears of corns, and combining it with ricotta cheese and four whole eggs.Fresh basil leaves and lemon juice zing up the flavor.It's fluffiness comes from separating the eggs and whipping the whites into a meringue,What a great brunch dish this would be, especially with toasted and oiled Italian bread. One of her recipes, chicken baked in bread dough sounds amazing. Chef de Boer didn't list the recipe but you can find similar ones online. Her other recipe was a chicken with pepper and vinegar along with her husband's BLT one - the last a perfect Saturday lunch.

Chef de Boer gives us an interesting insight into her world. There is just more than shopping, prepping and cooking. There is creativity and thought - along with fun - the most vital ingredient in cooking.