Ulster Fry

This time around Homegrown Gourmet is being hosted by Michelle at Culinography who decided that this time round would be a breakfast focus. I instantly thought of the Ulster Fry: a dish of fried food including bacon rashers, pork or beef sausages, fried egg, soda bread, potato bread and tomatoes. (Just a fried breakfast with an Ulster twist).

I decided to not only make an Ulster Fry, but to make the potato bread and soda bread from scratch as my entry for Homegrown Gourmet seeing as the ingredients are all locally sourced (in fact my potatoes were grown less than a mile from my house!!!!). I also used my mum's recipes again from the book I've mentioned a couple of times recently.

This is often very comforting for me because every Sunday after church Mum would fry up some potato bread, soda bread, sausages etc and we would have a little mini fry.... very often I only had sausages and potato bread or bacon and potato bread, but having made this today brings back lots of happy memories.





Soda Bread



Makes 4

Ingredients
12 oz soda bread flour
(I know not everyone can get soda bread flour, but you can substitute with 12 oz plain flour, 4 tsp baking soda and 2 tsp cream of tartar)
1/2 pint buttermilk
plain flour (for griddle pan)

Recipe
1. Sieve flour then mix well with the buttermilk quickly and knead into shape quickly, then cut into quarters.
2. Place on a floured hot griddle pan and leave to bake for 7-8 minutes on a medium heat. Turn and bake for a further 5-6 minutes.
3. When finished wrap the sodas in a damp tea towel to keep the edges from hardening.

When soda bread is being used as part of an Ulster fry it is often cut into 2 slices and fried in the pan on the cut side.


Potato Bread



Makes 4

Ingredients
8 oz potato
1 tsp salt
1 oz melted butter
2 oz flour

Recipe
1. Wash, peel and chop potatoes. Boil for 20-25 minutes, then mash.
2. Mix in the salt and melted butter. Then add the flour.
3. Using a little extra flour, flour a surface and then roll the potato mix into a circle about 1/2 cm thick. Divide into quarters.
4. Heat a little oil in a pan and fry each farl of potato bread for 2-3 minutes on each side.