Wendy's Blog

Most people think dent-de-lion (aka dandelions) is just some weedy plant that are blithe to their gardens. Our land lord certainly think so for he gave us three bottles of dandelion killers. They used to be under the stairs, but I moved them to the annex (yes we have an annex!).

My sister in law gave me a Irish cook book when we moved here. The book had all sorts of recipes Irish. I was particular drawn to dandelions. I didn’t know they were editable! Apparently the leaves can be used for salad and flowers can be eaten. I was fascinated by the fried flower recipe. Any recipe with the word ‘FRIED’ is by default is delicious in my book!

So today we went out to gather dandelions. I wonder if our neighbors think we are insane!

Surprisingly it was hard to find. I guess people really hate them!

Anyway, feast your eyes on these wonderful dent-de-lions!

Before :

After:

Mr said they taste like bland fried vegetable. I will have to tweak the recipe next time to see if I should change the herbs or more salt. It smelled delicious as I was cooking them!

If you want to try it out, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 20 to 30 dandelion – or how ever much you can find in the garden
• Vegetable Oil for frying (you can use olive oil I just had vegetable oil handy
• 2 tablespoon of flour (you can use cormeal if you want)
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of black pepper
• Pinch of dried thyme
• pinch of dried oregano
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions:

• Rinse the flowers and dry them gently. I left them on a plate on top of some paper towels.
• Mix the flour, salt, black pepper, dried thyme, and dried oregano.
• Heat frying pan over medium heat with the vegetable oil. You don’t need that much just enough to cover the flowers.
• Dip the flower in the beaten egg and then in the seasoned flour mixture.
• Fry the little flowers in batches, stalk side up until golden.
• Serve

You really want to cut as much as stalk off as possible without breaking up the flower. It’s pretty tricky, but if you cut too deep you just end up with petals. It’s kind of cool but hard to fry.

So, the last brown bread turn out pretty well.  It was a bit sweeter than I think it should be.

I decided to search the internet for another recipe, since I still have tons of buttermilk left.  This recipe came up.

Irish Mum’s Brown Bread
3 cups whole wheat bread flour
1 cup unbleached white bread flour
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4+ cups buttermilk
2 ounces butter (preferably Kerrygold)
1 egg

Melt the butter over gentle heat.
In a medium-sized bowl lightly beat the egg and then gradually add the buttermilk all the while stirring to incorporate the egg. Beat in the butter.

In another bowl sift and mix the dry ingredients as best you can (not really a prob if you can’t find the coarse flour), and then stir in the buttermilk mixture. If you are using a baking tin the mixture should be on the wetter side – (heidi: like a thick brownie mix, something you could pour into the tin, not scoopable by hand really). If your dough is too dry, mix in small splashes of buttermilk until it is the right consistency.

Cook at 400F for 50 minutes on the middle rack. You want to hear a sort of hollow sound when you knock on the bottom of the tin. Resist the urge to take the bread out too soon, or the middle of the bread won’t get cooked through.

Makes 1 loaf.

With a name like that, I felt I should at least give it a go.

It’s baking in the oven as we speak. Will post later with the results of which one turn out better.

Stay tuned!

Usually, this is how I make brown bread.

Add water and mix, 45 minute later you have brown bread, how easy can it get! The Mr likes it and he’s the biggest consumer of brown bread in this house.

When I was in Ireland last year, I saw Karen make brown bread. It didn’t come of the package and it was so tasty. Got me thinking about making my own brown bread.

So I looked around the internet and found the following recipe.

Brown Bread

• 2 cups of white flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cup buttermilk

Combine flour, salt, powder, soda and sugar. Cut in butter. Add egg to buttermilk and beat lightly. Gradually add milk mixture to dry ingredients. Form into two round loaves on a greased cookie sheet. Dough is very sticky, so you may want to use a little extra flour for this. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes.

I drafted the Mr into making the dough and now it’s in the oven backing. (As I am typing this post in fact.)

While the bread is in the oven, I decided to look up brown bread on the internet.

Did you know, Amazon sells brown bread mix? I have to get some of those. Even though I don’t really know the brand mix.

In addition, some brown breads come in a can! I like how it recommended Scrapple to go with your Brown Bread in a can. I have never had Scrapple before, I heard it’s delicious!

While Ann, sister in law 2, was here, she would leave butter wrapper around. I thought it was odd, why didn’t she just throw it away? I assumed that she want to recycle it.

So as we were mixing the dough, Mr said his grandmother used to keep paper wrapper from butter to grease bread pans and stuff. There still quite a bit of butter on the paper. I never would have thought of that. Now it’ll make sense.