by Andy Gricevich, Newsletter Writer
It’s the deep winter. As we pass through the longest nights of the year, most of us commemorate the beginning of our journey back towards the light with holiday celebrations. Every culture we know of has always marked this time of year with special rituals and gatherings—and such festivities nearly always include the sharing of holiday meals with special dishes prepared from ingredients of significance, whether for reasons of religion, history or the cycles of nature in the wild, the garden or the pasture.
Southern Wisconsin’s foodshed is made up of layers and confluences of many waves of immigration from all over the world, as well as the presence of the Ho-Chunk and other native people whose ways of living have shaped the region since well before the European invasion. Different cultural streams bring with them forms of the holiday meal that may or may not mirror the ones we’re most familiar with in contemporary U.S. culture. At the same time, cuisines always evolve, adapting to what’s available in a given region. Here, we’ll look at some perhaps less-familiar uses of many of our familiar ingredients—foods that can be part of our connection with this time and place, and can show up in different forms as part of our seasonal celebrations.
ROOTS
Roots and tubers are an important part of most of the world’s winter holiday feasts. Even in many places that stay warm year-round, winter is a time when the above-ground parts of plants recede, sending energies into the subterranean organs that store their nutrition for the spring. In climates like ours, highly storable roots are at their sweetest and most tender once they’ve been through some cold weather. Winter is the perfect time to try out some new preparations of familiar roots, as well as familiar ways to cook with more neglected ones.
Sweet potatoes are a ubiquitous, nutritious and abundantly available winter holiday staple. In addition to familiar preparations like baking, roasting, and oven-frying, sweet potatoes benefit delectably from the addition of savory flavors that balance their sugars and rich starches. Garlicky greens, smoky bacon, and acidic components (like cider vinegar, or even miso or kimchi) can all help turn sweet potatoes into a side dish that combines flavors and nutrition from components we usually meet as separate parts of a holiday meal. They also make fabulous potato pancakes, in the style of latkes, with some grated onion, salt and pepper, and just enough flour and egg to bind things together. Served with applesauce, and sour cream, they could be a perfectly substantial centerpiece to a winter feast.
Latke-style pancakes are also a wonderful way to prepare parsnips, carrots, turnips, and cold-season radishes like Beauty Hearts, roots whose sweet-spicy profiles quite outmatch the flavor of the humble, versatile, and admittedly delicious potato. Adding some rutabaga or parsnip to mashed potatoes enlivens their flavor and amplifies their nutritional value. Carrots, beets and (especially) celeriac make for a great slaw, grated raw on their own or mixed with shredded red or green cabbage, dressed with vinegar and/or mayonnaise and a little finely-minced onion. Savory or sweet pies can also feature any of these root vegetables. Quick-pickling and fermenting are great ways to prepare most of them as well; pickled beets, turnips, and radishes and home-fermented horseradish add delicious tanginess and heat that balance flavors when they accompany the richer and heavier dishes featured in many holiday meals. The culinary palette of underground foods goes well beyond just boiling.
GRAINS
Since the advent of agriculture, grains have been a staple food in many cultures due in part to their storability, so it’s unsurprising that they play a significant role in most special winter meals. It’s the perfect season for the deep flavors of grains like rye, buckwheat, and barley, whether as whole berries in a pilaf or as the foundation of whole-grain breads and cakes. Sourdough crackers from these grains are a delicious addition to a festive meal. It’s even possible, with the right tricks and tips, to make truly wonderful pie crusts and pastries with whole grain flour.
Back to pancakes as holiday centerpieces. In Russia, for example, the last weeks of winter are celebrated with blini—thin, crepe-like pancakes served with an array of savory and sweet ingredients, from smoked fish and cheese to fruit preserves and rich, sweetened dairy fillings, honey, and copious amounts of butter. Substantial grain flours shine here, also work well in all manner of traditional baked and steamed holiday puddings. And let’s not forget cornmeal, which, especially in its coarser-ground forms, lends great texture and flavor to cookies and breads.
Wild rice has been a staple food in our region since well before Europeans arrived. Sustainable and very nutritious, properly prepared wild rice is also incredibly delicious, with a unique, nutty flavor unlike any other. Stuff puff pastry or pork tenderloin with seasoned wild rice and fruit or mushrooms. Try grinding it in a good blender or food processor, and using the flour for baking, to thicken soups, stews, and gravies, or, again, as the basis of wonderful blini-style pancakes. This hasn’t been a good year for wild rice, but it’s still possible to find it—and wild rice at holiday meals is a true celebration of the abundance of native wild food in Wisconsin.
SQUASH & NUTS
We’re all familiar with squash as a component of holiday meals, and with the annual appearance of pumpkin pie. Squash offers so many possibilities. Its proclivity for hybridization has brought us a stunning array of edible varieties. It’s easy to throw a squash in the oven and bake it, but going to the effort of peeling, cubing and roasting at high heat, tossed with a little oil, salt and herbs, is truly transformative. That works especially well with some of the drier-fleshed varieties, like buttercup, black futsu, and the blue hokkaido pumpkin. Their more savory flavor will give you a side dish that’s a welcome change from a sweet heap of mashed substance.
Any squash recipe, even the usual sweet and soft serving, benefits from the addition of some savory flavors (like acidic vinegar and smoky paprika) and from some textural contrast. Nothing is better with a winter squash dish than roasted nuts, and the best pairings come from those closest to our native foodshed. If you’re lucky enough to have difficult-to-process wild black walnuts and hickory nuts around, they’re incomparable—but their cousins, the familiar English (actually Persian or Iranian) walnut and the cultivated pecan, are readily available; hazelnuts, which grow wild in our region and are commercially available, are another good addition to a holiday dish.
And let’s not forget chestnuts! Once covering much of the eastern United States, our intimacy with the chestnut was severely disrupted by the tragic blight that wiped out the majority of our native trees—but dedicated growers have been developing disease-resistant hybrids, and the chestnut’s making a slow comeback. Roasted chestnuts as a snack have been immortalized in song, and are incredibly good, but they’re versatile enough to have spawned entire cookbooks, with recipes for soups, sauces, stuffings, and more. Chopped and toasted, or sauteed with butter or oil, a little maple syrup, and something spicy, nuts are a perfect, nourishing seasonal participant in a winter celebration.
Nuts are also a fabulous topping for a big stuffed squash, which can be as proper a centerpiece for a meal as a turkey or beef roast. A squash filled with wild rice, cranberries, carrots, mushrooms, herbs, and cheese is itself a veritable cornucopia, a gathering abundance that mirrors the gathering of celebrants at a festive time.
MUSHROOMS, AND THINGS ROLLED
Fungi deserve a place on the table with their plant and animal relatives at any holiday feast. They have their own earthiness, quite different from that of roots and tubers, with complex umami flavors that can contribute something spectacular to just about any dish. Large caps of crimini mushrooms, stuffed with breadcrumbs, herbs, and cheese, make for a great side dish. For perhaps the most potent mushroom flavor, try stewing them in the manner described by Sofia Tolstaya, wife of writer Leo Tolstoy: toss coarsely chopped mushrooms with a little flour, salt, and pepper, top with many chunks of butter, and bake covered in a dutch oven for an hour. Stir in some sour cream and a little dill or dill seed, then bake for another hour. If you’re cooking meat, you can get somewhat close to the same result by including sauteed mushrooms in a gravy. In either case, try shiitake mushrooms, for their firm, meaty texture and marvelous, nutritious flavor. Mix with oyster mushrooms for a more complex taste of earthy wildness.
Mushroom stuffing is great as well. Rather than a roast, try pounding out a skirt or flank steak, then rolling it up and braising it after spreading cooked mushrooms, onions, and carrots along its length. Speaking of rolled things, stuffed cabbage leaves (you can also use collards, beet greens, or any large, edible leaf) are another worthy centerpiece to a holiday meal. In eastern Europe, the traditional filling is seasoned ground beef and pork, the rolls simmered for a long time in a rich tomato sauce with sauerkraut. It’s easy to make a perfect vegetarian version, with barley and mushrooms instead of meat. Long-cooked stuffed leaves feature in winter holiday meals from Italy to China, and bring to the table a nourishing sense of the warm hearth.
THINGS PICKLED
Acidity is a critical component of most of the world’s beloved foods, and just about anything on the holiday table will benefit from a tart component. Pickling (whether with vinegar overnight in the fridge or after weeks in a water-bath sealed jar) and fermentation, are great, classic ways to bring delicious flavors to the table. Acidity, in whatever form, also moistens the mouth, improving digestion at its first stage—often a useful thing at meals where a great deal of food is consumed.
Pickled fish is a festive winter staple from Norway to the Sahara, especially in cultures that tend to feature seafood, rather than livestock or wild game, as a central meat course in festive meals. The pairing of a cooked food with its pickled version isn’t at all unusual, and offers many possibilities. Brussels sprouts, sweetened by the cold weather, are wonderful roasted with bacon, but even better mixed with shredded, pickled sprouts. Cranberries fermented in salt brine for five or six days gain complexity in their tartness, and can still be sweetened and even cooked with fresh cranberries in the familiar fashion.
There’s nothing wrong with treating pickles and ferments as ingredients to be worked with like any other. Sauerkrauts and other cabbage preserves are often mixed with braised cabbage, added to soups, or cooked with apples and sweetened slightly for side dishes and stuffings. Pickled mushrooms are used in dumplings (ah, the dumpling—another central component of many festive meals!) and stews. Pickled apples and pears can be amazing atop a tart or a cake, and many baked desserts benefit from just a dash of vinegar (another product of fermentation). There are other great sources of acid for holiday fare, including the less local (and still wonderful) winter citrus and pomegranate—but pickling and fermentation offer possibilities that go beyond appetizers and relish.
We’ve barely touched upon meats, dairy, and desserts. We’ve also neglected the wide tradition of “things in pots” as holiday centerpieces, whether they take the form of elaborate soups or of dips like Italian-derived bagna, a rich, garlicky vehicle for crusty bread, raw cabbage and celery, and pickled vegetables and mushrooms. If the foregoing has felt like a scattershot tour of ingredients and notions, the underlying thread is twofold. First, there are endless possibilities for how to compose a holiday meal; a one-dish approach, or one that focuses on a component that binds everything together, can be every bit as legitimate and satisfying as the “centerpiece and sides” model. More importantly, there’s an incredible versatility to the familiar holiday ingredients that are in season and local to our foodshed. As we employ them in the meals central to many of our winter celebrations, we can tune in to the ways in which their natural proclivities for one another, in their fresh and preserved forms, stem from their shared time and place. They’re what we gather, and gather around together, when the year’s vibrant growth and energetic activity have slowed into sleep. The foods of winter celebrations offer opportunities for gratitude for what’s been, and for dreams of what’s to come.