I’m not one for noticing detail. One market day recently, I glanced upwards after the lunch time rush, and spotted evergreen gracing the top of my stall.

Of course! We’re getting close to Christmas, and the market is embracing it. We have chocolate salamis and spiced pecans, gorgeous homemade Christmas puddings and mulled wine. I’m serving up my 8 hour slow roast pork with spiced apple, but I am also including spiced soups to warm the senses on these very cold days. Recently I served up a very traditional boiled Irish gammon sandwich, we always have these over Christmas, particularly on St Stephens Day (Boxing Day in the UK) and it filled me with a surge of nostalgia and a longing from home.

I would love to do more festive dishes, like Irish spiced beef, very popular in Cork. Cured for weeks with spices like cloves, allspice, ginger, mace & bay, it’s then boiled and served up over the Christmas period. I adore the leftovers in a sandwich. It’s not to be this Christmas period though. I simply don’t have the fridge space for pork shoulders and spiced beef, not to mention the food I eat normally week to week. Maybe next year. I have however, rolled out the Christmas decorations, and have a new festive red tablecloth, which kept me cheery through the bitter cold.

Soups this week, were all aromatic. Thursday was pumpkin and lentil with a spice paste made from galangal, lemongrass, red chillis, garlic & ginger. Kaffir lime leaves and bay also added some fragrance. A similar base graced Friday’s white bean, pumpkin and spinach soup.

This last week was particularly special, as Sig, blogger behind Scandilicious, had a Scandi Christmas stall On Thursday and happily shared mine with me. She served up some delicious specialities Gingerbread with Lemon Icing, Chocolate & Cardamom Cake and my favourite Potato Pancakes filled with Cinnamon Buttercream. Sig has posted the recipes on her blog, with a fun photos of us, where I am Michelin Man esque (in size only), I blame, in part only, multiple layers of thermals, that market is bloody cold.

We had lots of visitors, and there was much quaffing or prosecco, pork and cake. The simple pleasures life brings! I had a great day, thanks to Sig for being such charming company. Normally by 4pm I am bored and wondering who I can ask to cover my stall while I nip off for a loo break.

Not only that, the market is all inclusive and we also had latkes for Hannukah from Daniel of Young & Foodish. I adore latkes, I’ve blogged about them before, both the traditional latkes with apples sauce and some more avant garde beetroot ones with goats cheese. Daniel’s latkes were delicious, served solo, or with sour cream and salmon roe. Very popular, he sold out early both days, and I, nipped down to catch the last two, as I was desperate for seconds.

So, one more week left of market, and then we close until mid February. This week, it opens Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I will only be at market on Wednesday and Saturday this week, but I am lining up a guest stallholder to take my place on Thursday and Friday. Watch this space!

Come by and say hi! It will be the last of my slow roast pork, soup, and Bisol Jeio Prosecco, for a couple of months. I do plan to come back in February though. I initially only committed to Christmas, but I really enjoy it and want to see if I can push it further. Maybe it can become a real business? Right now it only supplements work, and on bad days when the weather is grim, I am lucky to break even, but I’ll give it a try. The only question is, when combinging it with work, how long will I be able to work 7 days a week for?! I think I can manage.

Some photos are from my iphone, so forgive the quality. Thanks to Willie Lebus for the photo of Sig & I.

And… drumroll! Now for the recipes.

I was really excited by how many people really enjoyed the brown soda bread and cucumber pickle. I was a little nervous about how they would be received, and at 6am, sleep deprived and coffee’d up, I had a thought: what if people hate it?! Thankfully no one seemed to, in fact lots of people wanted the pickle and bread to take home, so if I do it again folks, I’ll make sure that I jar some and make some extra bread (if that’s possible!).

As I said in my previous post, both of these recipes are very straight forward but with excellent results, it’s virtually impossible to mess these up. Depending on your taste you may want to alter the sugar/vinegar ratio in the pickle, I prefer it to be a little on the tart side. Both recipes are adaptations of Ballymaloe recipes. The original Ballymaloe soda bread calls for buttermilk, however, that’s not terribly easy to find in the UK, and when available it’s expensive. I substitute whole milk, soured a little with fresh lemon juice, about a tablespoon for every 850ml. You need the sour aspect to wake up the soda. The Ballymaloe cucumber pickle calls for onion and less vinegar so that it’s a sweeter pickle, I prefer to make with just cucumber and a little more vinegar.

This is utterly perfect with smoked salmon, but if you’re vegetarian try it with a robust cheese, like a good strong cheddar or Mrs Kirkham’s. It would work a treat.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Frank Hederman you can visit his site – www.frankhederman.com.

To get your hands on some delicious Bisol Jeio (it really is delicious!), you can order some from Bibendum. I will be.

Brown Soda Bread

Ingredients:

600g wholemeal brown flour
600g plain flour
850ml whole milk soured with 1tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt

Method:

Preheat the oven to 230 C.
Mix the flours, salt and sieved baking soda thoroughly.
Make a well in the center, and add the milk, drawing in the dry ingredients from the outside as you add it with your hand.
Mix until sticky but not too gooey, you should be able to pick it up and shape into a round.
Wash your hands and flour them and transfer your dough to a floured board. Shape into a round. Turn over onto a floured baking tray and shape once more, tidying the edges is necessary. It should be 1 1/2 – 2 inches thick at most.
With your knife, draw a cross in the centre (as per the picture) cutting down to the bottom of the bread. The idea is that it should come apart into quarters quite quickly. Stick the knife into the centre of each quarter to let the fairies out (yes!).
Cook for 20 minutes and then turn down to 200 C. After 20 minutes, take the bread out of the oven, turn upside down and knock on it. If it sounds hollow it’s done. If it doesn’t put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes, upside down, and try again. That should be enough.

Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients:

2 cucumbers, sliced as finely as you can.
240 ml cider vinegar
200g sugar
1 tsp salt

Method:

Heat the vinegar, sugar and salt just until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Allow to cool.
Pour over the cucumbers and leave overnight in the fridge (or for 5 hours).
Your cucumbers are pickled!
Keeps for up to a week in the fridge.

Enjoy!