Niamh Shields burst onto the blogging scene in 2007 and has since snapped up countless accolades for her food writing by The Times, The Telegraph and The Stylist, to name a few. Niamh is passionate about cooking, and when she's not travelling the world collecting culinary tips, she's at home concocting new and interesting meals for friends and family, including her foody fledgling niece. Here, Niamh shares all her know-how for delicious and easy home-cooking.
Pimp my soda bread: A new hearty twist with cheese & tomato
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I was raised on Irish soda bread both at home and we made it at school at a very young age. My mother would occasionally sweeten it with sugar to persuade us to eat it and we’d sometimes add treacle, oats and other quite safe and regular ingredients, but other than that I rarely played around with it.
I’ve been writing a lot today, teasing out some ideas and I haven’t left the house. I have a severe case of cabin fever as a result. That is one of the problems with working at home with no company to distract yourself. I am a social creature and I start to go a little mad. I had very little time to cook in the end, so I came up with an idea for a meaty soda bread as I was perusing the contents of my fridge, grim for once as it is usually full to capacity.
I had some very good end-of-season tomatoes in my fridge - you know those big juicy ones that slice like steaks. I also had some manchego, spring onions and parsley. I got to thinking about an open soda bread sandwich for tea.
Soda bread is the perfect bread for those loathed to leave their house to go to the shop on a lazy (or busy) day, it requires little effort and absolutely no kneading, and it requires the minimum of basic ingredients. Then I thought, why not put the ingredients in the bread?
Soda bread famously had a cross cut into it. The explanation always given to us for this was that we were releasing the fairies (yes, I know!), but I think it’s a practical thing to allow people to bring a quarter into the fields with them for their lunch. Back when we were all farmers and not predominantly working in IT ;)
I had no buttermilk, as is traditional, so I used the juice of half a lemon with 450ml milk. This will activate the bicarbonate of soda which is what the buttermilk would do. Otherwise, it’s a basic soda bread with a little more going on. This produces a dense, fruity, slightly cheesy bread. I liked it a lot and hope that you do too.
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 35-40 minutes
Serves 4-6 (depends on how you serve it really)
Ingredients
500g white flour plus a little extra for the baking tray
150g wholemeal flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
450ml milk
50g finely grated cheese – I used manchego but cheddar or similar would do
175g fresh tomatoes chopped as small as you can – discard the seeds, you only want the flesh
Handful of fresh chopped flat leaf parsley
4 spring onions, finely chopped
1 tsp sea salt
Method
Preheat your oven to 200 deg C- Add the lemon juice to the milk and leave for a few minutes
- Combine both flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Mix thoroughly so that you don’t get pockets of bicarbonate which will result in big holes.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly and quickly. It’s important not to overwork this bread. It should come together by now, but this will depend on your tomatoes so if it is too dry add a little more milk, if it is too wet, add a little more flour.
- Turn on to a baking tray covered with flour and shape into a round.
- Cut the a cross into the bread, almost into quarters so that it’s still round but will break apart easily when done.
- Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, when the crust is nice and crisp and brown, and when the bottom sounds hollow when you knock it.
This works really well warm or toasted, to melt the cheese a bit.
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