been baking: Brown Soda Bread

This is my first foray into the world of bread making.  I thought soda bread would be a good start; it's quick (no proving) and uses minimal ingredients.  Plus, I love it.  My Nanny Patty made the best soda bread and my version fell nowhere near hers; I'm not entirely sure why but at guess I'd say I should have used more salt.  I've also seen some recipes online that use porridge oats so perhaps I'll try that next time to give it a chewier, crumblier texture.  But for this one I used my mum's old Irish school book recipe.

The Bread
250g plain flour
250g wholemeal flour
300ml buttermilk
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

Sieve the plain flour, wholemeal flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and mix together. Create a well in the centre of the mix and add the buttermilk, mix with a wooden spoon until you have a soft dough.

Lightly flour a surface and kneed the dough until the bottom looks smooth, then roll the dough into a ball shape and flatten slightly.  Score a cross through the top and bake for 40 minutes or so until the bread is completely brown and sounds hollow when your tap the bottom.

I think it's best eaten warm with nothing but proper melted butter.  Nom.

been visiting: Venice Biennale

been seeing: A Taste of Honey, Analog.Ue

I had a complete internet meltdown recently (literally, I think the wires melted or something) so I'm a bit late with my round-up.  Mercifully I've only seen a couple of things in the past two weeks so there's not much catching up to do.  First up is A Taste of Honey (Lytteton, 21st February) which is arguably now mostly known for being a huge reference point for Morrissey and, I confess, the reason I wanted to see it.  Time has eroded its shock value but what stops it from falling into an outdated period piece is the remaining, sometimes poignant, portrait of the relationship between mother and daughter.  They are a frenzy of contradictory emotions; bitter, flippant, self-deprecating, serious, dependent, disappointed and under it all, really just wanting more for and from each other.   

Analog.Ue (Lyttelton, 26th Febuary) is Daniel Kitson's return to the National Theatre.  There are clear shades of Beckett, in particular Krapp's Last Tape; 46 tapes spinning fragments of a yarn.  It's an ode to memory, loss and old recording machines.  But it's also about storytelling, about how we piece tales together from remnants of our past and how they live on in into the future, the bits that are kept and the bits that are scrapped.  It's great but to explain it any more than that would be spoiling it.  

been playing: Taxidermy Late at the Horniman Museum

Last week we went along to the Horniman's Taxidermy late where they has short films in the greenhouse, exhibition talks, a fantastic taxidermy photobooth and live demonstrations .  I finally got to see the walrus standing proudly on his new iceberg and spent most of the evening with a Mojito in one hand and stuffed animal in the other.

Horniman Museum

Happy International Women's Day!

This day two years ago I was in Ljubljana wondering why so many people in the city were holding flowers; almost every girl had one.  Later we visited the flower market to ask someone and found out that it is traditional in Slovenia to give every girl a flower to celebrate International Women's Day.

been travelling: Venice

been travelling: Lake Como