Soda Bread, Corned Beef, and all things Irish

Growing up in an Irish community, St. Patrick's Day was a big day for celebration. When my sisters and I were in elementary school, we would give an Irish Step Dancing demonstration in all the other classes in the school. My mother cooks corned beef and cabbage for dinner every March 17th, and she would bake a soda bread in the morning (that is not reserved strictly for March 17th though). After an overindulgence of currants when I was four years old I would pick them out of the bread when ever she served it - my mother would keep boxes of them in the pantry since they were hard to find, and Erin and I split a box of them once (about 2 cups between us). That experience ruined my stomach lining for a while, and I couldn't stand the sight of the shriveled fruits for a long time - this also extended to raisins since they were so similar.

No matter what my aversion was to currants, I liked the taste that they left in the bread. Since the recipe was my Nana's (my Irish born grandmother), I always saw currants as the authentic fruit for Irish Soda Bread. To this day, when I see The Bread with raisins, I scoff and dismiss it as a pretender.

This predisposition against raisins left me surprised when my cousin Maureen was raving about her Soda Bread recipe which she had gotten from her mother (my mother's sister-in-law). I assumed it was the same recipe, but she sent it to me, and it was not. Her recipe called for raisins, and also eggs and baking powder. Shocking! I was all astonishment. It differs from my mother's recipe quite a bit, and I assume that its a totally different type of bread. We've agreed to try each other's recipes since we each swear by the one we have used for years. We'll see.