Feeling Irish - Soda Bread and Shepherd's Pie

So for some reason we decided to make shepherd's pie one night. And I decided to expand upon that and make some soda bread to go with it. I used these two recipes, so check 'em out: Irish Soda Bread, Shepherd's Pie.

Dinner is Served

The bread turned out pretty well. I made a few changes, as I tend to do when cooking. First off, I didn't have buttermilk, so I used a homemade method for that. I also didn't have raisins (and don't really care for them) so I used craisins instead. Other than these changes I followed the recipe as is, since it's baking and not cooking... I'm not usually that brave. One thing that I would change next time, though, is that this calls for more caraway than we care for. I'll probably scale that back to about half of that for next time.

Making the Dough

Hot Out of the Oven

I love Alton Brown and Good Eats, which is why I looked up and "used" his recipe. But I wasn't making everything from scratch and already had a good idea of how I wanted to do things, so I used his recipe for just a few things. We had part of a box of dehydrated potatoes (don't judge me...) from something else we had made awhile ago, so I used those instead of fresh potatoes. And, to make things simpler, we just bought a bag of frozen peas and carrots to use instead of fresh veggies. Lots less work this way. I used Alton's recipe mainly to see what he added to the filling - the tomato paste, chicken broth, etc. I also added some cheese on top of the potatoes. You know, because this is America. It all came out pretty well and was a lot less work than doing it his way, so not bad in the end.

Cooking the Filling

Spreading the Taters

Hot Out of the Oven

Now that the kitchen is unpacked and we're starting to settle in a lot more these food posts will hopefully become more of a thing. But who knows, I may stop feeling so adventurous and just order pizza every day. We'll see. I also need to get my real camera out so I can stop using my iPhone camera and get some better shots. Again, we'll see...