This is a starter you can make in a jiffy, but the Irish paprika soldiers make it wonderful. Follow this link for a post about paprika, and why the world’s best comes from the De La Vera region in Spain.

Ideally you will make the soda bread freshly, even just the smell will get your guests slavering at the mouth.  It’s dead simple – of course I’m not suggesting you should start messing around trying to make a bread which needs kneading and proving and waiting and all of that, it is a simple wholemeal soda bread. You can even mix all the dry ingredients ahead of time, and have ready to just add the buttermilk. Follow this link for how to make soda bread.

Recipe for Seventh Heaven Smoked Trout Pâté With Irish Paprika Soldiers

Serves 8-10 as a starter and more served with drinks

Ingredients

• 400g (2 x 200g packs)/14 oz Philadelphia cream cheese
• 4 tbsp full fat milk
• 4 spring onions, chopped
• 200g/7 oz smoked trout, flaked and chopped (in fact you can use offcuts of both smoked trout and smoked salmon)
• juice and zest of half a lemon
• 1 teasp Worcestershire sauce
• brown soda bread, sweet smoked paprika and butter

Method

1. mix all the ingredients together except for the trout, then mix that in, put in the fridge and leave overnight if you can.
2. serve with hot buttered brown soda bread soldiers – if you make the soda bread fresh you will be in seventh heaven, but even if you freeze it and make the soldiers from toast you will still be in six and a halfth heaven.

^{© 2014 Saucy Dressings}

You may also be interested in a recipe for Smacked Mack – aka smoked mackerel pâté with an Indian twist.

“At last the baker stood and addressed Stella. “She says the bread is for a famous author?” As she explained about James Baldwin and his asparagus, he lifted a wheel of bread from a shelf and pushed her money away. “Have you read what he wrote about bread? I have it by heart: ‘It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it.’ Blasphemous! Such a good word. Will you ask Monsieur Baldwin to sign a copy of The Fire Next Time? That would make me very happy.”

-Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel