Halloween

H

The spooky excitement continues to build and build. The hype around Halloween, love it or loathe it, is fast becoming as relentless as Christmas and just as commercial.
Children from our local schools have helped to harvest the pumpkins, a poor enough crop this year, but enough for my grandchildren and their friends to carve into lanterns and to make the scooped out innards into soup (don’t forget to add lots of finely chopped herbs or spices to bump up the flavour). Then we’ll toast the seeds for a crunchy snack or topping and save some to plant next year’s pumpkin crop.
All round the country, shop windows are packed with tempting scary masks, ghoulish costumes and witches hats for Halloween parties and trick-or-treat forays around the neighbourhood.
In the midst of the cost-of-living crisis, Halloween costume swap shops are popping up and booming everywhere and the call to Swap not Shop is gathering momentum while still ever more elaborate and exciting Púca and Samhain festivals celebrating the myth, music, food and folklore of Halloween are popping up around the country.
Halloween apparently has its origins in the ancient druid festival of Samhain, a pagan religious festival celebrated over 2,000 years ago by the Celts around the 1st of November. Halloween apparently took root in the US sometime around the 19th century when the Irish immigrated to America bringing their superstitions and traditions with them which were by all accounts enthusiastically embraced by Americans.
But for me, one of the most exciting places to celebrate Halloween is definitely in Mexico where families welcome back their loved ones from the other world on November 1st, the Day of the Dead. They cook their favourite foods and bring a picnic to the local graveyard.
Here in Ireland, we simply must have a barmbrack. Sadly, many of the famous barmbracks we looked forward to from our local bakeries have long since lost their quality in an effort to keep the price unrealistically low. Please, please let’s make the original barmbrack again and give us a choice to look forward to. The Halloween version was always richer with the symbolic ring, stick, a pea and a rag hidden inside. Remember the excitement, as the brack was sliced…if you got the ring, you would be married within the year even if you were only six. The stick meant that your husband would beat you, a pea indicated that you would be facing hungry times, whilst the rag indicated a life of poverty.
How many of you remember the original Bewley’s barmbrack? Crotty’s in Kilkenny made a delicious fruity brack too and of course Thompson’s, now long gone. Many of you will have had other favourites that you remember fondly.
The few places that kept up the quality like Nuala Hickey’s Bakery in Clonmel are inundated with orders.
Here’s the recipe for the Ballymaloe tea brack, delicious, but not at all the same as a yeasted Halloween brack from a good bakery. Contact us if you know of a really good traditional Halloween brack.
We also love to serve bacon ribs and colcannon on Halloween. It’s become a bit of a tradition in our house. Make a trip to the English Market in Cork city, you’ll find lots of juicy ribs at Noonan’s butcher stall and several others also.
Here’s a recipe for meringue púcas to make with the children, they love making spooky shapes and decorating them with their friends. Don’t fret about the mess, this is what memories are made of – perfect gifts for the trick or treaters also!
Happy Halloween.

Ballymaloe Irish Tea Barmbrack

This is a more modern version of barmbrack, now commonly called a tea brack because the dried fruit is soaked in tea overnight to plump it up. You could add a drop of whiskey to the tea if you liked!

This little gem of a recipe is much easier to make at home than the Halloween Barmbrack made with yeast.

Even though it is a very rich bread, in Ireland it is traditionally served sliced and buttered.

Makes 1 large loaf or 3 small loaves

110g sultanas

110g raisins

110g currants

50g natural glacé cherries, halved or quartered

300ml hot strong tea or 225ml tea and 50ml Irish whiskey

225g self-raising flour

175g soft brown sugar

50g homemade candied peel

1 level teaspoon mixedspice

1 egg, whisked

Bun Wash

150ml water

110g granulated sugar

1 x 450g loaf tin – 13 x 20cm 

OR 3 small loaf tins 14.6 x 7.6cm

Put the dried fruit and cherries in a bowl. Cover with hot strong tea (or the tea and whiskey) and leave to plump up overnight.

The next day, preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

Line the loaf tin or three small loaf tins with parchment paper.

Add the flour, soft brown sugar, candied peel, mixed spice and whisked egg to the fruit and tea mixture. Stir well, then put the mixture into the lined loaf tin(s).

Bake in the preheated oven for about 1 ½ hours, until a skewer comes out clean. Brush with bun wash and cool on a wire rack. This keeps very well in an airtight tin.

To make the bun wash.

Put the water and granulated sugar in a pan and boil for 5 minutes until it thickens somewhat. Brush this over the barmbrack as soon as it comes out of the oven to give it a sweet, sticky glaze.

Bide Bodice or Salted Ribs with Champ or Colcannon

Salted pork ribs, bought and often cooked in a sheet, are a great Cork speciality, known as ‘bodice’.  This follows the Cork tradition of naming various bits of offal after items of women’s clothing.  We also eat skirts!

1 bodice, about 11 bacon ribs

Cover in cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour or more until soft and juicy.

Eat using your fingers with English mustard. Mashed potatoes, carrots or swede turnips are often served with bodice, but we love champ or colcannon, our most traditional potato dishes and the ones that are always associated with Halloween.

Scallion Champ

A bowl of mashed potatoes flecked with green scallions with a blob of butter melting in the centre, add the butter just before serving so it melts into the centre. ‘Comfort’ food at its best.

Serves 4-6

1.5kg unpeeled ‘old’ potatoes e.g. Golden Wonders or Kerr’s Pinks

110g chopped scallions or spring onions (use the bulb and green stem) or 45g chopped chives

350ml milk

50-110g butter

salt and freshly ground pepper

Scrub the potatoes and boil them in their jackets.

Chop finely the scallions or spring onions or chopped chives.  Cover with cold milk and bring slowly to the boil.  Simmer for about 3-4 minutes, turn off the heat and leave to infuse.  Peel and mash the freshly boiled potatoes and while hot, mix with the boiling milk and onions, beat in the butter.  Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.  Serve in 1 large or 6 individual bowls with a knob of butter melting in the centre. 

Scallion mash may be put aside and reheated later in a moderate oven, 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

Note: Cover with parchment paper while it reheats so that it doesn’t get a skin and add the lump of butter just before serving.

Spooky Meringue Púcas

Serves 4-6

2 egg whites

110g caster sugar

éclair pipe – No. 9 and piping bag

Beat whites until stiff but not yet dry.  Fold in half the sugar.  Beat again until the mixture will stand in a firm dry peak.  Fold the remaining sugar in carefully.  Fill into a piping bag.  Cover a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper.  Pipe a small blob of the meringue onto the paper pulling the piping bag upwards quickly to create a willowy point.     

Bake in a very low oven, 100°C/Gas Mark ¼ for 4 hours approx. 

Allow to cool completely.

Meanwhile, melt some chocolate and fill into a paper piping bag.  Decorate the meringues by piping little dots for eyes and a little oval for a scary mouth. Arrange on an appropriate plate.

Serve with a bowl of softly whipped cream. 

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Darina Allen
By Darina Allen

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