Thursday, January 10, 2008

Fifteenth night

It is one of the best kept secrets in this country, that Christmas is actually 12 days long. Yes, there’s the song, but when kids ask their parents about it, they get the same level of hemming and hawing as when they ask about drug use later on. The church (the real one, where clergy don’t wear microphones or have back-up singers) knows all about it, and know that “Little Christmas” is Epiphany, the day the magi arrived to adore the Christ child. It is the Twelfth Night immortalized by Shakespeare, and the day that many still celebrate with some sort of twelfth night cake or tart. The tree and decorations are taken down the next day, after Christmas is over. Unfortunately, the boy scouts pick up trees for recycling on January 5th in our neighborhood, so we’ll have to recycle our tree the old-fashioned way—in the fireplace.

Like many people this time of year, I am chronically behind. Sunday was Epiphany, but we were invited to a Little Christmas party by enlightened friends who not only celebrate all twelve days, but have two Priuses (Prii?). So I didn’t get to the galette des rois then. No big deal, I thought, but then Number One gave me puppy eyes and asked when we were having the tart. Yeah, chimes in Little One, the one where you find the thingy inside and get to be king? And then I remembered: Swiss friend brought me a very special fève she found, which I had been cleverly hiding in the back of the baking drawer since the summer. The fève was a representation of Grossebaf, the fearless Norman warrior featured in Astérix chez les Normands. With his hands on his hips, he clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

So I did make one, but the easy way: What a delight to discover that Trader Joe’s now has frozen puff pastry (imported, of course) and I still have a bag of frangipane mix from France that we picked up last spring.

Following the spaghetti course (the only acceptable menu for spelt Wednesdays, according to both offspring), the galette made its entrance, and we did the traditional cutting with Little One under the table calling the names to decide who got which piece. After the third bite, I donned a tasteful paper crown, and handed the little Swiss treasure to my Darling Husband.

I have it from a reliable ecumenical sort that Christmas isn’t really over until the Sunday after Epiphany, so I’ve got a few more days to take care of dismantling the tree.


Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Combinations

Number One Son had an attack of adolescent angst the other night (conveniently right in the middle of cello practice), so, after a good talk and listen, I introduced him to one of the joys in life: A bit of Green & Black 70% chocolate, and a lovely ripe Anjou pear. Take a bite of chocolate, and when it’s nearly melted in your mouth, take a bite of the juicy pear. Lovely. What is it, he asks. Belle Hélène, I respond, beautiful Helen. We silently bless the French woman who clearly knew her chocolate and knew what to do with it. It got us chatting about some other famous food combinations, which got me thinking about the Rotkohl I’d prepared for supper that evening.

I’m always perplexed by the ingredients list for this German-style red cabbage. You’d think I’d remember the recipe, since I’ve made it so many times, but I always end up pulling Dr. Oetker off the shelf to remind me what the forgotten ingredient is. This time I’d forgotten the currant jelly. It makes me shake my head and wonder just how this list of seemingly disparate elements came to reside in the same pot.

I have an image of a desperate eighteenth century German Hausfrau, being told oh by the way honey, the boss is coming for dinner as her husband trots off to the office on their one and only horse. Here she is, stuck at home to conjure up a meal from what’s in the freezer, but it hasn’t been invented yet. As she walks past the juniper bush into her house, she absently pockets a few berries from the bush. She sighs when she sees the breakfast dishes (right where he left them…) and starts clearing the leftover bacon and jar of red currant jelly off the table (she made it last July from the bush down the lane). The larder is next to bare, just a single bay leaf, a few cloves and a half bottle of apple cider that has turned. Her market basket holds half an onion, a shriveled green apple, seven potatoes, and three-quarters of a head of purple cabbage. Things do not look good, but our heroine is a creative woman, and has a vested interest in her husband’s career (this is another time, so neither divorce nor career is not an option). She renders the bacon in a big pot and sautés the onion in it (always a good start), then chops up the apple and the cabbage and throws them in. She considers her options, and chucks in the cloves and bay leaf, and then tosses in the leftover jam and a glug of the vinegar for good measure. She gives it a good stir, and sighs, gazing out the window at the fields below. And then she sees it: movement in the grass. She deftly takes the shotgun from the corner, and slips out the door. It takes her a good hour and a half to finally bag her main course, but she is whistling brightly on her way in, with a hare dangling by its ears. Delighted that the extended simmering has actually made her kitchen smell good, she takes the juniper berries from her apron pocket, sniffs them, and throws them into the simmering pot while she prepares her quarry for the roasting pan. The potatoes get a good scrub and join the hare, and she sets the table with a sprig of pale blue rosemary blooms plucked from the kitchen garden.

Needless to say, a dinner like this clinches her husband’s promotion, and the boss sends a messenger to fetch the recipe for his housekeeper (in my mind, she’s an extraordinary woman, and is fully literate among her clearly many talents). I simply can’t imagine any other plausible story as to how all these odds and ends wound up in the same pot.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Stewing

It’s cold. Bone-chilling, wet, as-cold-as-it-can-get-without-really-snowing cold. I grant you, it’s not the 5,000 below zero they get in the Midwest, but this is the temperate rain forest. The whole family has been congregating to use the newly completed downstairs bathroom because of its incredibly toasty tile floors. All the long underwear in the house is off the shelf and on our bodies, and yet we still feel cold. There are extra quilts on the bed, and Little One’s toes are covered in socks where they stick out from under the covers.

So when I saw a package of big chunks of Oregon beef in the market, I knew what we would be eating for supper last Friday. I also bought a local onion and three horse-leg thick carrots from Dungeness farm as well, and headed home.

Number One’s stomach led him into the kitchen by his nose, and he said, “that chicken and wine thing?” “Nope, beef stew” “Mmmm.”

Darling Husband came through the front door, his manly bulk exaggerated by the extra layers of coat and sweaters. After he had stomped off his boots and doffed his Indiana Jones hat, he paid a visit to the pots on the stove as well. “Coq au vin?” “Nope, boeuf bourguignon” “Mmmm” For this, I get a good wet one planted on my cheek. And neck. And…

At the supper table, our bellies radiating the warmth, we push back and start talking about classic French dishes. We love the way the traditional winter dishes warm us. Coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon are family favorites. But we’re also open to change (a good thing in this election year). I immediately think of Ratatouille—the movie—where our rat hero updates a classic dish, but is still able to trigger a Proustian moment in the cold heart of a jaded restaurant reviewer. I grab a French cookbook off the shelf, and it reminds me that ratatouille nicoise is a peasant dish featuring onion, green pepper, eggplant, zucchini and tomato. Judging from the ingredients, it is a dish planted firmly in autumn, celebrating the harvest, when tomatoes and zucchini are abundant and warm on the vine in the afternoon, but the evenings are verging on cool. We sigh a collective family sigh and make a mental note to try it next September.

But the splatty snowflakes continue this Monday, and we are getting snippy again. Even Hannah opted for indoors today, trading her all-day freedom forays for a toasty armchair where some kind soul left a wool throw. I head for the computer in my wool slippers, ostensibly to organize myself, but my morning reading leads me to the P-I foodie blogger, who tells me about the lentils she had for Christmas and about hogwash, another local food blog, where Jess Thompson has submitted herself to the tortuous journey of creating a recipe a day during 2007. I browsed and ogled, and while I was reading, I realized I had already seen what I was looking for: a bowl of lentils cooked with duck fat. Now, I’m fresh out of duck fat, but I do have some onions and freshly dried herbs and a couple of late tomatoes. I’m thinking of a thick lentil stew over some creamy polenta to warm the troops tonight. I’m sure it will warm their bellies better than suburban housewifey fallbacks like fish sticks or stir-fry.