Author: xPal EuroCuisineLady

 

"I'm particularly fond of mulligatawny soup, James."

The word "mulligatawny" is a worn-down version of a Tamil phrase: "molagu tunni" — "pepper water". The pepper in question isn't the kind ground from peppercorns: the Tamils meant chilies.

Originally this wasn't even a soup, but a sauce or condiment intended for ladling over rice. It was also originally a vegetarian mixture — not much in it but chilies, water, and the occasional passing vegetable. Other non-vegetarian Tamils got in the habit of adding other ingredients such as salty dried fish and tamarind juice or similar sour "sharpeners" to balance the salt.

Eventually the British arrived, and during the Raj period molagu tunni started turning up on British tables as a luncheon dish: not over rice, but as a soup, with a little rice sometimes added to the soup at the end of the process as a nod toward its origins. However, as the 1800s progressed, the soup started going through a myriad of changes as many British-influenced cooks adapted the recipe to their own tastes. Some of the writers of the period, including the redoubtable Colonel Kenney-Herbert (who wrote his food columns as "Wyvern" in the mid- to late-1800s), began to complain that there were now so many versions of the soup, without being distinguished by different names, that even though you were being offered "Mullaghee-tawny" there was no knowing exactly what was in it any more.

Over time the variations began to settle down, however, as the soup made its way back to the British Isles as part of the birth of the longtime British love affair with Indian food. These days mulligatawny soup is most likely to contain chiles, onions and curry powder, is normally based on a meat stock, and the meat involved will normally be either chicken or lamb. The lamb seems a little more unusual, which is a shame: mulligatawny made with lamb has a deeper, richer flavor than the chicken kind.

In this case, it's the rest of Miss Sophie's dinner that gives us a hint of which way to swing. She's already having chicken as her main course. We have to assume that downstairs from Miss Sophie and James there's a Cook somewhere, and bearing the poultry course in mind, Cook would not be so careless as to offer a soup that also had chicken in it. So the version we're describing here is a lamb mulligatawny. (If you really don't like lamb, go ahead and swap in an equivalent amount of chicken. We made it both ways, and you can see the image of the chicken mulligatawny at the bottom of this article.) Our recipe follows guidelines set out by Colonel Kenney-Herbert in his Culinary Jottings for Madras, which remains one of the best cookbooks and guides to the Indian food of the Raj ever written*.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound / 450g of lean lamb (from the neck end: "lamb chop" lamb, not stewing lamb) or chicken breast
• 1 quart / liter vegetable or meat stock, according to your preference: vegetable or chicken stock if you're using chicken in the soup, beef stock (or lamb stock if you can get it) for lamb
• 1 large or two small onions, chopped small
• 1/3 cup butter, clarified (instructions on clarifying below)

For the spice mixture:

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon peppercorns
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon chili flakes
• 1 teaspoon fenugreek seed
• 1 teaspoon coriander seed

To finish:

• 1/4 cup heavy cream or double cream

You might want to prepare your clarified butter shortly before starting the main food prep. Here's how to make it:

On the stovetop: Melt the butter slowly. When melted, pour into a tall, relatively narrow container. In the microwave: Put the butter into a small microwave-suitable container, as tall and narrow as possible. Cover it with a loose lid or a little clingfilm (pierced) to keep it from spattering: microwave for 30 seconds or so.

Let the butter stand. Shortly, no matter which way you prepared it, you will find that the butter has settled into two layers: a clear layer of clarified butter floating on top of a milky layer of the milk solids from the butter. You are only going to be using the top layer.

To prepare your meat: if you're using lamb, remove any bones and trim the lamb of fat before cutting it into dice of between 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch wide. If you're using chicken, dice the chicken as above.

Now prepare the spices. Heat a dry frying pan and add the whole spices: stir them well until they start to become fragrant. Add the ground cumin last. Stir until it becomes warm, but be careful not to scorch the spices — if they begin to smell at all acrid, remove the pan from the heat immediately and get the spices out of the pan immediately to stop the toasting process.

Grind them in a mortar and pestle until very fine (or you can use a spice grinder if you have one. We use our coffee grinder, but make sure you clean it out immediately and thoroughly, or your next cup of coffee is going to taste extremely weird.)

Heat a heavy pot or wok over medium heat and add half the clarified butter. When this heats up, add the chopped onion and saute until translucent. When they reach this point, scoop the onions out of the pot or wok and put them aside. They'll be added back in shortly.

Add the rest of the clarified butter to the pot or wok. When this has heated up, add the ground spices and stir immediately and constantly, lowering the heat. The spices will dissolve into the clarified butter to make a thick paste. Cook this for a few minutes over low heat, again watching carefully to make sure they don't burn or scorch.

After a few minutes, add the diced meat and stir well so that it's al coated with the spice paste. Add the sauteed onions to the mixture and again stir well so that the spice mixture coats everything evenly. Turn up the heat for about thirty seconds and add the vegetable or meat stock: then immediately reduce the heat again, cover the pot or wok and allow to simmer on medium-low heat for 30 minutes.

At the half-hour point, test the meat for doneness and tenderness: if you prefer it a little more tender, simmer for another 15-20 minutes. Check the seasoning and add salt if necessary. (This "salt check" should always happen last, as different stock and stock cube formulations contain widely differing amounts of salt, and your soup might not need any more salt than it already has in it.)

Before serving, the last thing to go in is the cream. You can either stir all the cream into the whole pot of soup, or swirl it separately into each diner's bowl.

Serves four.

 

"I think we'll have sherry with the soup…"

Sherry sometimes winds up in mulligatawny soup, but we didn't elect to put it in our recipe since we knew already what Miss Sophie intended to drink in company with her soup. To balance the spiciness of the soup, you will want a dry sherry rather than a sweet one — and the dryer, the better. Avoid sweet, "cream", or blended sherries. A fino or manzanilla would be ideal: an amontillado would be even better if you can lay your hands on a bottle from a source you trust.

 

 

*The edition we've linked to is a facsimile of the complete 1885 edition, a trade paperback from Prospect Books, and worth seeking out either in its newer printing or an older one from AbeBooks or another used book retailer. The 2011 Penguin edition is not the whole work, but a condensation, and useless for the serious cook or anyone who wants to enjoy the Colonel in full flight. He's an opinionated old bird, and extremely funny.

 

 

 

"A nice bit of North Sea haddock, Miss Sophie…"

Haddock is one of those fish that in recent times has been rather typecast in the British seafood spectrum. During the last century, in Scotland and the north of Britain, it became such a matter of routine to smoke haddock that people these days routinely assume that's the only way it comes. But as a fresh fish haddock is quite lovely, if you can get it — it's seasonal, normally only appearing in the shops for a few months starting in April. It freezes brilliantly, though, so even if Miss Sophie was celebrating her birthday in the winter, she could still have had some for her second course.

Because the fish course at this dinner is coming in between two fairly substantial courses (the spicy mulligatawny soup and the relatively vigorously spiced roast chicken), British dinner protocol of the time suggests that the fish course should be something comparatively delicate, a relief from and contrast to the stronger flavors on either side.

Period recipes for fresh haddock are surprisingly thin on the ground in English sources, possibly because of the limited fresh-fish season. Some sources, like the Larousse — which would have been a reliable '20s and '30s resource in an upper-crust kitchen such as Miss Sophie's — simply say "Treat haddock as cod." To find any significant variety in treatment, or anything much beyond the "crumb it and panfry it / bake it" school of thought, you have to start digging out cookbooks from places like Iceland, which would not have been present in an early 20th century British kitchen.

So we've kept the treatment of Miss Sophie's haddock fairly simple: clarified butter, a dusting of paprika to give it some color, and a short time in the oven, after which the fish is served accompanied by a favorite white-fish sauce of the period.

(Dinner For One aficionados, please note: while in the video Miss Sophie appears to be eating a single small whole fish, it's important to know that this stage-food fish is not a haddock — as haddock routinely run up to a meter long, and even the relatively small ones that might find their way to a British fishmongers' would be much too large for Miss Sophie's plate.)

Ingredients:

For each diner:

• A piece of fresh or frozen haddock weighing approximately 1 lb / 450g
• 1/3 cup / approx 250g salted butter for clarifying
• Sweet paprika (just a few pinches for dusting)
• Salt and pepper to season

Maitre d'hotel sauce for the fish:

• 2-3 ounces of very soft butter
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 2-3 teaspoons finely chopped fresh parsley

To cook the fish:

Preheat the oven to approximately 200C / 400F. Find a heavy cast-iron (or similar) skillet with a heatproof handle.

If you don't already have clarified butter prepared, do it this way:

On the stovetop: Melt the butter slowly and when melted, pour into a tall, relatively narrow container. In the microwave: Put the butter into a small microwave-suitable container, as tall and narrow as possible. Cover it with a loose lid or a little clingfilm (pierced) to keep it from spattering: microwave for 30 seconds or so.

In both cases you will be left, after a few minutes' time to settle, with a clear layer of clarified butter floating on top of a milky layer of the milk solids from the butter. You are only going to be using the top layer.

Pour about half your clarified butter into the skillet you're going to be baking the fish in. On the stovetop, heat it until fairly hot.

Put the haddock int the skillet, skin side down (if your haddock has any skin on it). Brush the top of the fish with the remaining clarified butter. Sprinkle it lightly with paprika, then salt and pepper it, and put the fish in the oven.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. While the fish is baking, prepare the maitre d'hotel sauce. (Or if you prefer, prepare it before you put the fish in the oven. It will hold that long.)

This sauce does not hold well, so the later you prepare it — that is, as close to the time the fish will come out of the oven — the better.

Warm the butter until it is about to start melting, but hasn't quite done so. Add the lemon juice and the parsley and beat everything together very well with a whisk until well combined and creamy.

(If the sauce "breaks" or otherwise gives you trouble, it's all right to warm it very gently while beating — either on the stovetop or over a bowl of hot water — until it reaches a liquid consistency.)

At the 10-12 minute point, test the fish for doneness. It should have gone opaque and still be just slightly springy to the touch. If you're in doubt, or the piece of fish is more than an inch or so thick, give it another 3-4 minutes, but no more.

When the fish is done, remove it from the skillet immediately (you don't want it to keep cooking) to a warmed serving plate. Garnish with some parsley and then nap it with the maitre d'hotel sauce.

Nothing is said in Dinner for One about what side dish Miss Sophie might have for this course, but new potatoes sprinkled with parsley do very well.

 

"White wine with the fish, James…."

Haddock is not as delicate a fish as cod, but more delicate than the more robust seafood like swordfish: so a wine with enough character to stand up to a more pronounced fish flavor is a good idea. A Gewurztraminer might be a good choice, but so might a more flinty-natured Chablis, or one of the more characterful Italian wines like an Orvieto.

 

 

 

There's a tendency to think of the turkey as having been the traditional Christmas dinner for ages. But only a couple of centuries ago, turkeys would have been seen in Europe as pricey fad food — a waste of time when there were better, cheaper and more traditional alternatives available: like goose.

People have been eating goose all over Europe for thousands of years. The association of geese with the feasts of deep winter and the Solstice's death-and-rebirth theme may go back as far as ancient Egypt, where the goose was the symbol of the creator-god Amen — the universe itself was sometimes said to have been hatched from a "cosmic egg" produced by this deity. But leaving aside any possible religious connotations, geese were the perfect fowl for small farmers down through the centuries to raise (and later, big farmers too). They were smart, economical to keep — since they live by grazing and don't need expensive grain — and best of all, geese are tough, able to withstand disease and bad weather. By contrast, the turkey, which Spanish and West African traders started bringing to Europe from Mexico in the 1600's, needed a lot of coddling in Europe because it had little resistance to the avian disease histamonosis or "black head", a protozoan-borne liver disease of barnyard fowl. So disease-prone and labor-intensive a bird was expensive to raise; since that extra cost was naturally passed along to the customer, turkeys were slow to spread through western Europe.

Meanwhile as populations grew, and demand for geese along with them, prices dropped and geese became cheaper and easier than ever for even city people to enjoy at Christmas. For the last few centuries, as December approached, hundreds of thousands of geese — sometimes wearing foot protection to help them cope with the hard roads — would be herded from upcountry farms to cities like London in gigantic flocks, then dispersed to local keepers and breeders for their final fattening. People in city suburbs even raised geese in their back yards: the loss of a city-bred goose like this is what gets Sherlock Holmes involved in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." It would be nearly another half-century before the price of turkeys would drop low enough for them to start competing with geese. Until then they were seen as a pricey fad food only suitable for gourmands and rich people. This is why, in A Christmas Carol, only when the wealthy Scrooge pays for dinner is there any chance the Cratchit family will have a turkey for Christmas. Their own original choice is the traditional and affordable goose.*

These days the popularity of goose is on the rise again as people start to get tired of the tasteless meat of turkeys that have been bred for sheer size, or are simply looking for something that hasn't been intensively reared and is "greener". Geese are perfect in this regard, since there's no such thing as an intensively-reared goose. They're free range by definition, spending the majority of their lives grazing on grass in the open fields. The so-called "green goose", which comes into season around the Christian feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, or Michaelmas (September 29), is reared exclusively on grass and greenery, and is fairly lean. The later "harvest" goose, also called the Martinmas goose for its finishing time around Saint Martin's feast (November 11th), spends its remaining time being fattened on grain, usually wheat or barley, and it's fatter and meatier as a result. This is the classic Christmas goose.**

In past years North Americans have sometimes been scared off the concept of making roast goose for Christmas because of rumors that it's a greasy bird, or that it won't be as good for holiday eating because it doesn't have as much meat on it as a turkey. It's true that the meat-to-carcass ratio on a goose is lower than it is on a turkey. But goose meat is much richer than turkey meat, and also much more flavorful: not a gamy flavor, but a substantial one. Once you've tasted a well-roasted goose, the contrast between its rich dark flavor and the bland flavor of turkey will surprise you. Also, the extra fat in the goose's skin makes it difficult to dry out a goose while roasting it. (And the fat you pour off at intervals during the roasting process can be stored in the fridge or freezer for months, and makes the best roast potatoes on Earth.) Additionally, pound for pound, goose is economical compared to turkey. Even a small goose of eight pounds (like the one in the photo above) can satisfy four people.

Sales of goose for Christmas in Britain and Ireland have been experiencing an upswing: in some places sales are up 100% or more. But elsewhere in Europe the strong holiday goose tradition has never waned despite the presence of the turkey. In Germany, Switzerland and Austria in particular, restaurants in every major city will offer succulent, crisp-skinned roast goose to their patrons at Michaelmas, Martinmas, and around Christmas time. The normal side dishes in the German-speaking countries are potato dumplings and red cabbage, and the goose's stuffing normally contains potato as well. In England and Ireland, the stuffings often feature tart fruits like quince, apple or cranberry, as well as savory sausage meats and bacon.

Our treatment here features a potato, apple and bacon stuffing seasoned with cranberry and lemon — tart flavors that balance the rich dark quality of the goose meat.

How to roast, stuff and serve a goose

First find your goose. Depending on where you are, this may mean ordering it from a local butcher or supplier, or just picking a bird up from your supermarket's freezer case (though seasonally you may be able to pick one up fresh). However, local resources vary so widely that you should start looking into where you'll get your goose at least a couple of weeks ahead. In some areas, a month might be better.

There may also be some variation in what state the goose is in when it arrives and what extra parts accompany it. Most butchers and suppliers will include the liver and giblets of the goose; others will add the neck of the goose as well. If you can get more than one goose liver — as we were able to, because others who had ordered geese from our butcher didn't want theirs — do so: they make terrific, fiendishly rich goose liver paté. If you don't want to make paté, the liver can be quickly seared in a frying pan, allowed to cool, and chopped up to add to your preferred stuffing (you can add it to the recipe we give below). The giblets, and the neck if you get it, should be simmered on low heat for several hours with a little salt, pepper and sage to make a rich basic stock . This you can use after roasting to deglaze the roasting pan and make your goose's gravy.

As regards how big a goose you need: allow 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of uncooked-goose weight per person. A goose for four people, for example, should weigh at least eight pounds — more if you want significant leftovers.

Preparing the goose

To get the goose ready for roasting, there are a few things you need to do.

Cut out the wishbone: This will make the breast meat easier to carve, and if there's enough neck skin left on the goose, it will also give you more room to stuff the neck cavity. With the breast side up, pull back the skin around the neck to reveal the bone. With a small sharp knife, cut around those parts of the wishbone that you can see on both sides. You don't have to cut too deeply: just enough so that you can slip a finger under the bone and pull it out.

Pierce the skin: Because geese live outdoors all year and are physically active in all weathers, they build up a far thicker layer of fat under their skins than intensively raised chickens or turkeys ever do. This fat needs an escape route during the roasting process if the skin of the goose is to achieve the crispness that makes roast goose famous.

To make sure the fat can get out during roasting, you must prick the goose all over with something sharp — a small knife, or the tines of a sharp fork. The idea is to pierce the skin without piercing the flesh underneath, so that the meat's moisture won't have a chance to escape at the same time the fat does. When doing the piercing, don't omit the legs: the skin there won't get crisp if you forget them. Also, make sure that the sides of the goose underneath the legs and wings get their share of the piercing.

Stuff and truss the goose: Because you'll be turning the goose a number of times during the roasting process, you'll want to make sure that the legs and wings aren't going to flap around, and that the stuffing is going to stay in place. First, therefore, run a skewer between the bones of the ends of the wings and push a length of (non-plastic) twine through the holes, knotting them together as tightly as possible.

When this is done, season the inside of the body cavity of the goose with salt and pepper: then fill with your preferred stuffing. As with a turkey or chicken, don't pack down the stuffing or overfill the body cavity. When stuffed, sew the body cavity closed with more twine. The simplest way is to pierce the skin on both sides with a skewer and push the twine through, knotting each pair of skewer-holes together with the twine. If you like, and if the legs seem at all loose, tie them together with twine behind the body as well.

 

Roasting the goose: Preheat the oven to 425° F / 220° C (a little lower if you have a fan oven). Rub the skin of the goose with a little vegetable oil or olive oil: season with salt and pepper. Prepare a roasting pan, lining it with foil if you like: if possible, put a roasting rack in the pan to hold the goose more securely. Place the goose on its side in the pan or on the roasting rack. Pour a few tablespoons of water into the roasting pan to prevent the goose fat from scorching.

 

When the oven is heated, put in the goose and roast it for 30 minutes at 425° F / 220° C.

When the thirty minutes are over, take the goose out and pour the fat that has accumulated in the pan into a heatproof container (Pyrex or similar). You are likely to get an amazing amount of fat out of the goose at this point, so be prepared! (The goose we roasted this year gave up 600ml of fat — more than a pint — at this stage, and continued to release it more slowly all through the roasting time.) Once you've poured the fat off, turn the goose on its other side and return it to the oven, lowering the oven temperature to 350° F / 175° C. Your goose will need to roast for at least 2-3 hours further. Calculate the remaining total roasting time this way:

You would have weighed the goose when you started. Take this amount in pounds and multiply it by minutes per pound: 18-20 minutes per pound if the goose is unstuffed, or 22-24 minutes per pound stuffed (use the longer times if your goose weighs more than 12 pounds). The answer you get will be your complete cooking time in minutes: subtract the 30 minutes for which you've already cooked your goose, and you'll get the number of minutes of roasting time remaining.

During this whole period, baste the goose as often as possible — once every fifteen minutes, if you can: but at least once every half hour. Please note that the goose's breast will cook more quickly than the rest of the bird, so protecting it with foil to keep it from overcooking and drying out is a good idea. (We kept the goose you'll see below "tented" with foil until the last hour half hour of roasting, with excellent results: the breast meat was perfectly tender after a three and a half hour roasting time).)You may also want to cover the ends of the goose's legs after about the first hour and a half to keep them from charring.

Half an hour after turning the goose on its second side, turn it again so that it's breast side down (again pouring off the accumulated fat): then, half an hour after that, pour off any remaining fat and turn the goose breast-side up to finish roasting. If you have a larger goose that requires more cooking time, keep giving it half-turns every half hour and pouring off fat as necessary.

When the goose is done, remove it from the roasting pan and set it aside on the carving board or platter to rest. It needs at least twenty to twenty-five minutes to rest before you start carving it.

 

Carving the goose:

The goose's body is shaped slightly differently from that of a turkey or chicken, so they don't carve in quite the same way. Here's how to do it:

• Cut away the string you used to truss the limbs of the goose and discard it.
• Cut open the sewn-up vent of the goose and remove all the stuffing to a bowl for serving.
• With a heavy-bladed knife, cut straight down through the goose's shoulder joints, all the way through. This frees the wings.
• Cut all the way around each of the legs and straight through the joint where it meets the body. Split the thighs away from the drumsticks.
• With a long carving knife oriented the long way along the goose's body, slice the breast meat off the breast.

Serve hot with your preferred side dishes. Use the goose fat you've poured off to roast potatoes or in other dishes (especially French ones): it will keep, refrigerated in a closed jar, for months and months. The carcass will make terrific stock. Finally, check out the stuffing recipe below.

Potato, Apple and Cranberry Stuffing for Goose

One of the best stuffings for goose that we know of. The tart apples and cranberries perfectly offset the richness of the goose meat.

Ingredients:

• 4 medium potatoes or 5 small ones
• 2 large tart cooking apples (Bramley or similar)
• 1 large onion
• 3 slices smoked bacon
• 1/2 cup fresh cranberries
• 1/2 teaspoon dried sage or 1 teaspoon fresh sage
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• Zest of one lemon
• 1 tablespoon butter or lard

Peel the potatoes and chop into approximately 1/2 inch cubes. Parboil in salted water for 5 minutes: drain and set aside. Peel, core and coarsely chop the apples; peel and chop the onion. Grate the zest off the lemon.

Put the butter into a frying pan; when it sizzles, add the bacon slices and fry them until crisp and brown. Remove and drain on a paper towel: chop finely.

Add the onion to the frying pan: saut&eacutge; until the onions soften. Add the parboiled potatoes and sauté until they brown very slightly. Remove from heat.

Wash the cranberries and chop them coarsely. Toss them in a large bowl with the potato and onion mixture. Add the chopped bacon, herbs, and other seasonings: toss again. Add the apples and mix together thoroughly.

Stuff the goose with all the mixture that will fit in comfortably: put the rest in a pie plate or cake tin to be cooked separately. (Moisten the pan-cooked stuffing with a little stock before baking it at about 350° F for about twenty minutes.)

After your goose is cooked, always remove all the stuffing from the carcass immediately after cooking. Refrigerate when it cools.

*It may even have been one they raised themselves in their own back yard: this would possibly explain why Dickens describes it as a little on the small side, as the Cratchits were chronically short on money and wouldn't have been able to fatten it up as effectively as a London goose-breeder could have.

**Another name for this goose is the "stubble goose", since the flocks were often turned out into grain fields that had been reaped so that they could pick up any missed grains of wheat or barley.

These traditional figures, which have many other names in various Swiss dialects — such as hanselmanne and bonhomme — start turning up in bakeries in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland around December 6th, which is the feast of St. Nicholas…and is celebrated as a sort of "children's Christmas" in various parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Families and kids' classes at school tend to bake grittibänzen on December 6th.

What the name "grittibänz" means is subject to some discussion, but the word appears to come from central Swiss dialect: "gritti" seems to mean something like "standing astraddle" — with the legs apart — and "Bänz" is a short version of the name "Benedict".

Grittibänzen are often said to represent Saint Nicholas (in Swiss German, "Samichlaus"), but they're also often simply described as "bread men", When making them at home, some people like to go out of their way to make them look like St. Nick, but others simply turn out a gingerbread-man-like shape. Occasionally these are decorated with little twigs of pine or fir, though simple decorations involving raisins or candies seem as popular. This Google search shows some of the many variations on the theme.

Many grittibänzen are made of a sweet yeast dough similar to the one used for challah — though there's some discussion about this too: many families have a tradition of doing salty or savory grittibänzen instead, like the savory grittibänzen (the unusually energetic-looking gritti you see below and to the right). Swiss supermarkets seem to steer a middle course, doing plain bread grittibänzen as well as sweet ones. The Swiss seem to get fairly passionate about having their grittibänzen done right: here you can see a Swiss newspaper's feature comparing the grittibänzen produced by the country's big supermarket chains.

The recipe below is for a very basic type of grittibänzen — though of course the decoration can be much more elaborate, depending on the baker's preferences. The recipe is below, as are links to some web-bakers' efforts.

Ingredients:

• One recipe sweet yeast dough
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 4-6 small sprigs of evergreen, to decorate

Prepare the dough the day before, according to the instructions in the master recipe, re-kneading it briefly and letting it warm up a little before use. Roll the dough out into a large rectangle 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into 4 or 6 rectangles, depending on whether you are making small or medium-sized figures. Leave a small amount of dough for decoration.

Using a sharp knife, cut out a round head. (You can also use a very small scone cutter, as we did: or even cut around a bottlecap or jar lid with a scissor, making sure to leave the head attached to the neck.) Pull aside the two pieces of dough on either side of the head and stretch and mold them into arms. Then make a slash up the rectangle's middle, almost to the waist, to form the leds: stretch these out until they're a good length.

The original recipe here suggests that you roll a small piece of dough into a very thin strand, cut off three pieces, and coil them to form two eyes and a nose. This may work for really large grittibaenzen, but EuroCuisineLady found it a serious pain in the fundament: next tile we'll use raisins or small ovenproof candies, and you might want to do the same. If you go the thread-of-dough route, though, brush the face of the figure well with egg, let it dry enough to go tacky, and stick the tiny rings onto the face.

Now roll another thin string of dough into another thin strand about the height of the figure. Loop it around the front of the figure's head, like a headband: then, behind the head, twist the strand once around itself and bring it around either side of the neck to the figure's front. Twist it again so that it looks like a little neckerchief hanging down on the bread-man's chest.

Now things get a little more exciting. Take the bread man's body at the waist and twist it around once so that what were the backs of the legs are now the front. Roll out another thin strand of dough and fasten it around the bread man's waist like a belt, pinching the ends together well so they don't come undone while the figure rises. Roll another longer strand, cut it in half, and fasten each of these around the bread man's arms at the wrist to simulate cuffs. Roll one more strand and fasten it around each leg to look like the top cuff of a boot. Bend the knees so that the bread man looks like he's heading to your right (or your left if you twisted him that way). Tuck one arm behind his hip and pull the other up by his head as if he's waving. Brush the figure well with beaten egg.

Added decorations after this are up to you. If you're using raisins or small candies, it might be smart to cut or poke in a small aperture for them to be nestled into, as otherwise they may pop out while the bread rises.

Once you're finished decorating your bread man, place each one of the Grittibänzen on a buttered baking sheets with 2 1/2 inches between each one. Leave them in a warm place until they have risen noticeably — approximately 20-25 minutes. Refrigerate for 15 minutes to help them keep their shape during baking.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 400° F / 200° C / gas mark 6. Brush the figures once more with beaten egg. Bake in the bottom third of the oven until golden — approximately 25 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Place a piece of evergreen in the arm of each one.

German-speaking readers might like to check out this recipe for "Pikante Grittibänzen" at the Spar.ch site. Also: the Vogt Family bakes Grittibänzen in Santa Monica, California: Merlikin shows us before-and-after pictures.

Those of us who routinely spend Thanksgiving off the North American continent but still try to lay out a traditional Thanksgiving dinner probably all have our own stories about being unable to get some vital missing ingredient, and then being forced to make do with something less than optimal… One item that sometimes turns out to be very hard to lay hands on is pumpkin.

The difficulty usually surrounds canned pumpkin rather than the fresh kind… but even that can be a problem when it's out of season. Markets in France and Germany for example, routinely feature some of the best fresh pumpkin to be found anywhere on the planet — firm, meaty, relatively seedless, and (most important) flavorful. But then these are varieties that have been bred for the table for centuries — not the North American varieties that are mostly bred for size so that they'll make good jack-o-lanterns at Halloween. Problem is, once they're out of season, you won't see them again until the next year… and when you go looking for canned pumpkin, the response is usually bemusement. You won't find it in most parts of Europe. If you can track it down, it's usually in some overpriced store that caters to foreigners and is going to make you pay five times more for it than you would have in a supermarket in the States or Canada.

At such times — if you're not willing to buckle under — you learn to improvise. This recipe is one of EuroCuisineLady's takes on the theme. It's an adaptation of the basic pumpkin pie recipe in The Joy of Cooking. This pie — using butternut squash and yams to replace the pumpkin — produces a rich, dense pie that compares very favorably with the traditional pumpkin version. It's not going to taste exactly like it… but for the moment it'll do.

(For a variant on this theme using only sweet potatoes, check out our Virtually Pumpkin Pie.)

Ingredients:

• 1 recipe of pie dough for a single crust pie (see below)
• 2 butternut squash or 1 butternut squash and 2 yams (about 10 ounces each), to make about 2 1/2 – 3 cups of cooked squash/yam mixture
• 1 1/2 cups undiluted evaporated milk or rich cream (double cream is ideal, but standard whipping cream will do)
• 1/4 cup molasses or 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 5 slightly beaten eggs and 1 egg yolk
• Optional flavorings /inclusions:
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla, or 2 tablespoons brandy or rum, or 1 teaspoon rum flavoring
  • 1 1-inch bud long pepper, ground fine (If you can get long pepper, this addition is strongly recommended: it really makes a difference to the finished pie. It's terrific in real pumpkin pie, too.)
  • 3/4 cup black walnut meats, chopped/broken

Method:

Prepare the pie crust (see below for recipe).

Preheat oven to 325° F. Wash the butternut squash(es) and split the long way: remove the seeds and strings. If using yams, peel them. Place the squashes or squash and yams cut side down on a baking sheet with a little water in it, and bake for one hour.

When finished, scoop the baked pulp out of the butternut squash into a bowl: if using yams, split them and do the same. Beat, puree or whip the squash or squash-and-yam mixture until very smooth.

If using molasses, warm it slightly in the microwave or put its jar in warm water to make it a little easier to handle. In a bowl, beat the eggs and egg yolk. Then add the molasses or brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, spices, and cream, beating very well until blended. Add the squash or squash/yam mixture and beat well again. Add the vanilla, rum or brandy, or rum flavoring, and (if you're using them) the walnut meats.

Pour the mixture into the pie shell. Preheat the oven to 425° F. When the oven is ready, bake the pie at 425° F for fifteen minutes, then reduce to 350° F and bake for another 45-50 minutes. Test with a knife blade: the pie is ready when the knife comes out clean (or very nearly so).

Pie crust recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup pastry shortening or butter
• 3 tablespoons water (slightly more if required)

Method:

Sift the flour before measuring it into a roomy bowl or food processor. Add the salt and mix well: then work in the shortening by cutting it in with two knives, using a pastry blender, or pulsing the mixture in a food processor with the plastic blade, until the grain in the mixture is pea-sized. Stir or pulse the water in one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture holds together when you gather it into a ball. (If using a food processor, pulse until the dough mixture just gathers to make a ball.)

Allow to rest for 15 minutes in the refrigerator: then roll out and use to line a 9-inch pie pan. Fill as described above and bake.

 

 

Shortbread is one of the oldest kinds of baked good in the British Isles, and one of the simplest. It's descended from early Scottish griddle breads called "bannocks" — the word comes from the Latin panicium, a term used for any baked dough. The holiday time, then as now, impelled bakers to use their best ingredients for specialty breads; and a common Yuletide treat in the northern Celtic lands before Christianity arrived was the "Yule bannock", a round sweet oat flour-based cake decorated to look like the sun (with fluted edges suggesting sun rays) and scored into quarters in order to suggest the four seasons of the year.

During the Reformation period there were a lot of attempts by the new Protestant church authorities (and the civil authorities who were under their thumbs) to impose their will on the local Scottish populations by stamping out old local traditions. They abolished Christmas, for example, claimimg that it was a Catholic invention. And the old Yule traditions normally celebrated at New Year's did no better — in 1573, for example, a party of fourteen women were tried for "playing, dancing and singing filthy carols on Yule Day [New Year's] evening."

The locals' response to this during the following half-century or so of repression was pretty much what it would be now: the celebrations and traditions went underground when the authorities were watching, and came right out again when they weren't. The Yule bannock changed its shape, routinely being baked square and cut into long rectangular pieces. It changed its recipe too as time went by, getting sweeter, adding wheat flour to the recipe (or losing the oat flour entirely), and adding more butter . It got "shorter", as a baker would say — more crumbly and tender — with the addition of that extra butter, and therefore started to be called "shortbread" in the 1700s. In fact, professional bakers insisted loudly that it was a bread even though there was no yeast in it: this kept it from being taxed at the higher rate assigned to cookies or biscuits. (Scottish bakers won the most recent of these taxation challanges in the 1990s.)

Over the course of time shortbread has become one of Scotland's primary exports — some sources say its largest. It's eaten all over the United Kingdom and Ireland, and is well known in many other countries. It's also baked once again in the round, with fluted or crimped edges and scored into eighths (called by some "petticoat tails"), as well as in short straight "fingers" that are easier to eat with your tea. Some bakers who make shortbread in the round have taken to decorating it with sunburst or sunflower shapes (as ours is above), which closes the historical circle nicely.

Our recipe goes back to the one in a traditional Scottish recipe booklet distributed in Scotland in the 1950s: you can download a .PDF copy of the whole thing here, if you like.

The basic recipe:

• 10 ounces pastry flour or all-purpose flour
• 2 ounces rice flour (if you can't get this, substitute another 2 ounces of wheat flour as above)
• 8 ounces sweet (unsalted) butter
• 4 ounces granulated sugar: regular (US) granulated / (UK/Irish) caster sugar is OK, but superfine is better if you can get it

Method:

Bring the butter up to a cool room temperature and cut into cubes. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together. Once the butter / sugar mixture is beginning to fluff up (you don't have to overdo this step: a few minutes of creaming will be enough), start adding the flour or flour mixture, a spoonful at a time, until all of it has been added and the mixture gathers together. Be careful not to overmix at this point or the shortbread will become tough.

Have ready a round, buttered 8-inch cake pan. Roll the shortbread mixture out into a round about half an inch thick. The rolled-out circle should be at least an inch or two wider than the pan. Cut around the bottom of the pan to make the basic shortbread cake.

Flute the edges of the basic cake by pressing between finger and thumb or using the tines of a fork to press the edge of the shortbread cake gently against your thumb. When you're finished, lift the cake carefully into the pan.

For the decorative upper layer: Gather together the shortbread mix trimmed from around the cake, compress it into a ball and then roll it out again, about 1/4 inch thick. Use a square biscuit cutter (or knife) to cut out six or eight two-inch-wide square shapes: cut these in turn "corner to corner" into four quarters.

Begin arranging the triangles around the edge of the cake, point outward, to look like the petals of a flower or rays of a sun. When the outermost circle is completed, start another circle inside that, point outward again, but staggered so that the point of each second-row trangle covers the spot where two of the outer triangle-pieces meet). When this circle is finished, start another one further in. When you're about to run out of triangle material, roll the last scraps of shortbread out and cut small circles to cover the center of the decoration.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and bake the shortbread for about 15 minutes or just until it starts to color. Then immediately lower the heat to about 325 and allow to continue baking for another 40-50 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan: then turn out very carefully onto a wire rack and let it cool completely.

Once completely cold, wrap in greaseproof paper or baking parchment and store in a cookie tin or similar airtight container. Shortbread made this way will keep for weeks if the container is kept tightly shut.

 

 

 

There's nothing fancy about it but the icing — if you have a local ethnic store from which you can purchase the "marbled icing", you're fortunate. But it's hardly required.

For the cake:

Preparation time: 1,5 hours

Ingredients:

• 5 eggs
• 250g powdered sugar
• 250g flour
• 150 ml oil
• 150ml hot water
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon cocoa
• Butter for the baking form / gugelhupf pan

 

Instructions:

Separate whites and yolks of the eggs. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Beat the sugar well with the egg yolks until creamy. Then slowly alternately add the oil and the hot water.

When this process is complete, stir the baking powder and flour together very well and start adding them slowly, spoonful by spoonful.

Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until approximatly four times their original volume (stiff peaks). Fold them carefully into the cake batter.

Divide the batter into two bowls and carefully add the chocolate to one of them (you don't want to beat it so hard that the folded=in egg whites lose their integrity: they'll cotribute significantly to the way this cake rises).

Pour the lighter-colored batter into the cake pan (which you've liberally greased first with the butter). Then pour the batter which has had the chocolate added to it on top. At this point you can if you like carefully draw a knife through the batter, once around the cake, but some cooks prefer not to do this.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a testing straw comes out clean. Allow to cool thoroughly on a rack before turning out.

To finish the cake, shake powdered sugar over it, or a combination of vanilla and chocolate icings. Some people like to add raisins or chopped nuts as well.

This countryside dish would have been the perfect treatment for that farmhouse standby, the years-old laying hen whose egg-laying days have sadly come to an end. These days, when not so many of us have chickens in the back yard, the supermarket broiler or fryer will do just as well…and the thrifty shopper will often find that packages of chicken legs are way less expensive, pound for pound or kilo for kilo, than the equivalent weight of a whole chicken.

Starting from scratch with dried white beans gives this dish a lot of its character. (You can of course substitute canned / tinned ones, but the final result is likely to be more mushy.) Also, there's no reason you have to add the sour cream if you don't care to, though there's no avoiding the fact that sour cream tends to turn up in the finishing stage or as a final garnish in a lot of Czech meat dishes. …This dish serves four, and is adapted from one in Peter Trnka's excellent The Best of Czech Cooking.

The ingredients:

• 4 chicken legs
• 4 thick rashers / thick strips of bacon (and 2 tablespoons lard if your bacon won't produce enough fat to fry an onion in and color / seal the chicken pieces)
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 large green pepper, diced
• 2 cups (usually equalling 1 average-sized can) canned tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cups dried white beans
• 1 cup chicken broth or water
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• 1/2 cup sour cream (optional)

The night before cooking:

Find a bowl that will easily handle double the amount of beans, put the beans in it, fill the bowl with water, and put in a cool place to soak for at least overnight but ideally 24 hours.

On cooking day:

Drain and rinse the beans well. Put in a 2-quart pot (or one of approximately that size), cover with water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for about an hour or until the beans are tender. Drain them and set them aside.

In a big heavy flameproof casserole dish or fryer (enameled iron is best for this if you've got it), fry the bacon on medium heat until it's almost crisp. (If you're in the UK or Ireland and dealing with back bacon or a similarly non-fatty type, help your bacon out by melting a little lard in the pan first.) When it's done, remove it to a plate with a paper towel to drain a little. When cooled, chop the bacon the short way into pieces about a quarter to a third of an inch wide.

Add the chopped onion and saute it, stirring often to make sure it doesn't scorch: you want it to get to the stage where it's almost golden. When it's ready, remove it to a bowl.

Now increase the heat and add the chicken pieces. (Add a little more lard at this point if there's not enough fat to work with.) Fry the chicken pieces on both sides until they're golden brown. Remove to a plate so that you'll have room to work on the sauce and beans in the big pot.

Sprinkle the flour into the hot fat and start frying it up, stirring it constantly. After a minute or so add the diced green pepper: keep stirring. After another minute or so add the onions and keep frying the whole mixture up, stirring constantly to keep anything from sticking. Add the chopped bacon and keep stirring.

Now pour in the chicken stock and stir and scrape enthusiastically to get all the brown crusty stuff off the bottom and into the sauce. After a minute, add the tomatoes and keep stirring and scraping hard. Then add the beans and mix well. Season well with the paprika, parsley, salt, and plenty of freshly coarse-ground pepper. Stir the seasoning thoroughly through the beans and sauce. Add the chicken a piece at a time to the mixture, submerging it as completely as possible in the sauce and beans, and spooning some over the top.

 

Bring the casserole to a low boil. Then cover and reduce the heat to a simmer. Let the casserole cook gently until done, about an hour.

If you want to use the sour cream, you can either stir it into the sauce-and-beans mixture in the casserole just before serving time, or set it out for each diner to add the preferred amount to his or her dish.

Serve with potatoes and a green salad.