Is fruitcake overrated or underrated? It is hard to recall the first time I tasted fruitcake. It is a holiday food item that is omnipresent, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and disappearing as quickly. Does anyone admit to truly loving it?
There is no nostalgic longing for fruitcake. It is not seen as a comfort food nor as highly refined culinary accomplishment. It is dark and archaic harkening back to a time when people have no family memories. This is medieval food.
Fruitcake is what people may have eaten in the renaissance.Perhaps there is ambivalence about loving fruitcake because it reminds us of our primitive roots. It is the reminder that despite our refinement and sophisticated technological adaptations, that we have barely moved beyond the dirt floors of our ancestors. The first time fruitcake was tasted is probably the same as it tastes now.
Fruitcake is a shock to the palate, sweet and bitter, aromatic and sticky. There is nothing else like it. Every time you taste it the sensation is reborn and becomes new again. This is not a taste the memory lingers over or waxes about poignantly or even craves.Fruitcake is the forest potion of a Germanic witch out of fairy tales, overripe fruit mixed with the groundnuts of the forest floor with a hint of pine resin thrown in. Have you ever eaten an acorn as a child? Well I did and there could be an acorn or two in this cake.
That is not to say I dislike fruitcake. I have acquired a sentimental ritual of eating at least one piece toasted with butter and a cup of strong black tea mixed with milk and sugar. It calms me and centers me in reality during those electrified bright days of the holiday season when we are all on sensory overload. Fruitcake is like the iron weight of food anchoring down the colorful bunch of bobbing balloon of holiday sweets.
There is a new breed of fruitcakes with lighter ingredients intended to enhance the palatability and image of fruitcake.I am not referring to this new species. I am referring to the fruitcake of old, the kind called "large dark fruit cake in the 1959 Farm Journal's Cookbook" or "fruitcake, dark" in the 1950 Mennonite Community Cookbook. These are the cakes heavy with molasses or brown sugar, nuts, the candies fruit or peel of cherries, dates, citron, orange and lemon. These cakes always have nutmeg, cloves and mace the spices used in medieval items used to mask foul food odors. There is one Maine recipe that uses three pounds of raisins. These are cakes that are baked and stored, well wrapped, in cool dark places. These are cakes as one recipe states are "best is made around Thanksgiving and kept in a tight container until Christmas"...
These are the cakes that are so cloyingly sweet and heavy that verge on being repugnant. If there is genetic memory this is the food of ancestral gorgings of frost sweetened withered grapes, browning apples fallen beneath tress and buried nuts. It was the food we ate as primitive people filling ourselves until we were stuffed for the sake of survival. It is food that we are simultaneously drawn to while being repelled.
Perhaps fruitcake is actually the apple of Eden.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Sunday, December 3, 2006
The First Time I tasted Mushrooms
The first time I remember tasting mushrooms was probably when I was eight years old when my mother made Hungarian goulash. I was always an experimental child and I was intrigued with the idea of eating something called goulash. It was a time of life when I had favorite words like, catechism and anthropology. Goulash sounded exotic.
I can still remember the aroma of the beef being seared and yellow onions being added. The kitchen was full of steamy aromas. Beef seemed to have a more distinctive scent when I was younger, wilder and bloodier. When the sour cream was added I asked for a taste. The sweet tang of the soured cream and beef with the aromatic juices of the onion whetted my taste for more.
Then my mother opened a can of button mushrooms. She drained them carefully in the sink before tipping the can into the stew pot. The pot was then left to simmer while she boiled a pot of water for egg noodles.
I recall the moment she sprinkled bright red paprika over the stew before serving. I was entranced with the foreigness of it all. At dinner she spooned the creamy brown goulash ove the egg noodles.I ate a piece of beef, stringy and tender. The sliced mushrooms were slid to the side of the plate before trying them. I pierced one with my fork and nibbled it. I was intrigued with the rubbery texture and the mildly salty yet vaguely tinny taste of the mushroom. I was hooked, mushrooms were my new favorite food.
The first time I tasted a fresh mushroom was when I was around ten.An old family friend of ours, Harold Clapp, was an expert at identifying wild mushrooms. Harold was an interesting man who had done his undergrad at Bates College in Maine and gotten his Masters in French from Harvard. He was a free thinker and an earlier follower of the natural food writer Adele Davis. He believed eggs were poison and canned alot of his own food. He had taught high school math in Hartford, CT and was the only white man in a neighboorhood of color. He only wore grey or khaki utility clothing from Sears and Roebuck having one set for each day of the week. He had white hair and flesh toned plastic rimmed glasses. He was a unique and brilliant individual. He was also the man that taught us all how to play chess on Sunday afternoons.
At the time he took us mushroom hunting he was in his 80's. My family had built a house on a lake in Maine where we vacationed. Harold also had a summer home in Maine that was built around 1920.He was a new widower after the death of his wife, Edith, a devout quaker. After a lifetime of marriage, Edith who wore only black dresses and white caps, had left him alone in his grey and tan.
The day we went foraging there was a group of us ; my mother, brothers, paternal grandmother and myself. Harold carried a basket lined with a linen napkin as we walked through the forest surrounding the lake. With a long stick he prodded through the dead and rotting leaves of the forest floor.The dappled light through the trees leaf canopy made it difficult to pick out the shapes of the mushrooms. The scent of leaf mold and hemlock needles was strong. The sounds of cicadas and blue jays announced the coming end of summer.
Harold knew instinctively where to lift up a clumps of leaves or peek on the other side of a log. Deerflies dodged our heads. Slowly we filled the basket with large tannish orbs, caps that were burnt umber and funghi in the shapes of coral in shades of ivory and orange. He told us the names, in latin, as we went along. Perhaps, more vivdly, I remember him warning us kids which ones were poisonous, so poisonous that touching them would make us deathly ill. These were the big mushrooms out of fairy tales with white stems and orange or red caps with white polka dots. My brothers and I walked in wide circles around them as though being in close proximity would somehow contaminate us.
When we returned home the basket was full.It was late afternoon and the sun now sparkled low on the water and the house was cast in shadows. We children slid out of our clothes and jumped into our swimming suits to take one last swim, to cleanse ourselves of the insect repellant sweat and cool our brown summer flesh.
In the house, Harold instructed my mother to clean the mushrooms carefully because they might contain insects.He left in his tan sedan to return to his cottage because he was a man of habits and rituals. He had promised my grandmother to bring her home and it was time for his dinner.
My mother rinsed the mushrooms of dirt, pine needles and beetles. Slicing a few I remember tiny worms squirming through them. She was at a loss at how to cook them because she had never cooked fresh mushrooms. Remembering canned mushrooms were in water the decision to boil them seemed logical. She also had seen those tiny worms and was worried she had missed a few during cleansing.
The mushrooms were boiled thoroughly and served. They were disintergrated and gluttinous. It was a revolting mass of slime that had a strange taste of dirt. I decided to eat only canned mushrooms.
After a few years, fresh cultivated mushrooms began to appear in the local grocery store. My mother decided to make stuffed mushroom capes for a dinner party and had obtained a recipe. The recipe was little more than the stems chopped and sauteed in butter with minced onions and seasonings and stuffed with bread crumbs back into the caps and baked in the oven. I thought they were nirvana and kept trying to finagle them from the guests. I recall they were succulent and full of mushroom essence enriched with butter.
My mother began to regularly buy mushrooms at my request. I would slice them or dice them and sautee them in butter and serve them on buttered toast for my lunch. I was 12. Years later, I realized I was making duxelles and it was not my invention as I had so smuggly thought.
In my early thirties my then husband and I formed a cooking club with a group of neighborhoood friends. One couple hailed from New York City and were of Sicilian descent. He was a wonderful nurturing chef and she was a driven magazine editor. Another couple had moved to New England from Oregon. Both were very creative. The wife was very experimental with food, sometimes deliciously and sometimes not. She later want to the Culinary Institute of America an became a pastry chef. The last couple had returned recently from the south of France after living and working in hi tech. They were both very conversational and he was an excellent chef who roasted his own coffee. They also had a fully stocked wine cellar.
One dinner we decided to do an Italian theme but there would be no pasta. The techi from France had introduced me to procini mushrooms in a pasta sauce he made at another dinner. I had never cooked them before. Since my husband and I were hosting the party I was to provide the entree. I decided on Risotto con Porcini. With difficulty I located dried porcini. When I cut open the bag I remember an intensely musky perfume that I could taste as dark sweetness on my tongue. It was tantalizing.
To revive the dried mushrooms I soaked them, picking through them and removing any funky or hard bits. Carefully I strained the soaking water and chopped the now spongy mushrooms into a dice. Even the soaking water smelled good.
At dinner the risotto was a huge success, served with finishing touches of cream and parmesan. The softly chewy bit of porcini and creamy rice contrasted beautifully and the table was silent as everyone scraped their shallow bowls clean.
Porcini risotto has become a staple now with a salad and a glass of pinot grigio, but every time I eat it I recall that happy evening when food brought us all together as an adventure and as a comfort.
I can still remember the aroma of the beef being seared and yellow onions being added. The kitchen was full of steamy aromas. Beef seemed to have a more distinctive scent when I was younger, wilder and bloodier. When the sour cream was added I asked for a taste. The sweet tang of the soured cream and beef with the aromatic juices of the onion whetted my taste for more.
Then my mother opened a can of button mushrooms. She drained them carefully in the sink before tipping the can into the stew pot. The pot was then left to simmer while she boiled a pot of water for egg noodles.
I recall the moment she sprinkled bright red paprika over the stew before serving. I was entranced with the foreigness of it all. At dinner she spooned the creamy brown goulash ove the egg noodles.I ate a piece of beef, stringy and tender. The sliced mushrooms were slid to the side of the plate before trying them. I pierced one with my fork and nibbled it. I was intrigued with the rubbery texture and the mildly salty yet vaguely tinny taste of the mushroom. I was hooked, mushrooms were my new favorite food.
The first time I tasted a fresh mushroom was when I was around ten.An old family friend of ours, Harold Clapp, was an expert at identifying wild mushrooms. Harold was an interesting man who had done his undergrad at Bates College in Maine and gotten his Masters in French from Harvard. He was a free thinker and an earlier follower of the natural food writer Adele Davis. He believed eggs were poison and canned alot of his own food. He had taught high school math in Hartford, CT and was the only white man in a neighboorhood of color. He only wore grey or khaki utility clothing from Sears and Roebuck having one set for each day of the week. He had white hair and flesh toned plastic rimmed glasses. He was a unique and brilliant individual. He was also the man that taught us all how to play chess on Sunday afternoons.
At the time he took us mushroom hunting he was in his 80's. My family had built a house on a lake in Maine where we vacationed. Harold also had a summer home in Maine that was built around 1920.He was a new widower after the death of his wife, Edith, a devout quaker. After a lifetime of marriage, Edith who wore only black dresses and white caps, had left him alone in his grey and tan.
The day we went foraging there was a group of us ; my mother, brothers, paternal grandmother and myself. Harold carried a basket lined with a linen napkin as we walked through the forest surrounding the lake. With a long stick he prodded through the dead and rotting leaves of the forest floor.The dappled light through the trees leaf canopy made it difficult to pick out the shapes of the mushrooms. The scent of leaf mold and hemlock needles was strong. The sounds of cicadas and blue jays announced the coming end of summer.
Harold knew instinctively where to lift up a clumps of leaves or peek on the other side of a log. Deerflies dodged our heads. Slowly we filled the basket with large tannish orbs, caps that were burnt umber and funghi in the shapes of coral in shades of ivory and orange. He told us the names, in latin, as we went along. Perhaps, more vivdly, I remember him warning us kids which ones were poisonous, so poisonous that touching them would make us deathly ill. These were the big mushrooms out of fairy tales with white stems and orange or red caps with white polka dots. My brothers and I walked in wide circles around them as though being in close proximity would somehow contaminate us.
When we returned home the basket was full.It was late afternoon and the sun now sparkled low on the water and the house was cast in shadows. We children slid out of our clothes and jumped into our swimming suits to take one last swim, to cleanse ourselves of the insect repellant sweat and cool our brown summer flesh.
In the house, Harold instructed my mother to clean the mushrooms carefully because they might contain insects.He left in his tan sedan to return to his cottage because he was a man of habits and rituals. He had promised my grandmother to bring her home and it was time for his dinner.
My mother rinsed the mushrooms of dirt, pine needles and beetles. Slicing a few I remember tiny worms squirming through them. She was at a loss at how to cook them because she had never cooked fresh mushrooms. Remembering canned mushrooms were in water the decision to boil them seemed logical. She also had seen those tiny worms and was worried she had missed a few during cleansing.
The mushrooms were boiled thoroughly and served. They were disintergrated and gluttinous. It was a revolting mass of slime that had a strange taste of dirt. I decided to eat only canned mushrooms.
After a few years, fresh cultivated mushrooms began to appear in the local grocery store. My mother decided to make stuffed mushroom capes for a dinner party and had obtained a recipe. The recipe was little more than the stems chopped and sauteed in butter with minced onions and seasonings and stuffed with bread crumbs back into the caps and baked in the oven. I thought they were nirvana and kept trying to finagle them from the guests. I recall they were succulent and full of mushroom essence enriched with butter.
My mother began to regularly buy mushrooms at my request. I would slice them or dice them and sautee them in butter and serve them on buttered toast for my lunch. I was 12. Years later, I realized I was making duxelles and it was not my invention as I had so smuggly thought.
In my early thirties my then husband and I formed a cooking club with a group of neighborhoood friends. One couple hailed from New York City and were of Sicilian descent. He was a wonderful nurturing chef and she was a driven magazine editor. Another couple had moved to New England from Oregon. Both were very creative. The wife was very experimental with food, sometimes deliciously and sometimes not. She later want to the Culinary Institute of America an became a pastry chef. The last couple had returned recently from the south of France after living and working in hi tech. They were both very conversational and he was an excellent chef who roasted his own coffee. They also had a fully stocked wine cellar.
One dinner we decided to do an Italian theme but there would be no pasta. The techi from France had introduced me to procini mushrooms in a pasta sauce he made at another dinner. I had never cooked them before. Since my husband and I were hosting the party I was to provide the entree. I decided on Risotto con Porcini. With difficulty I located dried porcini. When I cut open the bag I remember an intensely musky perfume that I could taste as dark sweetness on my tongue. It was tantalizing.
To revive the dried mushrooms I soaked them, picking through them and removing any funky or hard bits. Carefully I strained the soaking water and chopped the now spongy mushrooms into a dice. Even the soaking water smelled good.
At dinner the risotto was a huge success, served with finishing touches of cream and parmesan. The softly chewy bit of porcini and creamy rice contrasted beautifully and the table was silent as everyone scraped their shallow bowls clean.
Porcini risotto has become a staple now with a salad and a glass of pinot grigio, but every time I eat it I recall that happy evening when food brought us all together as an adventure and as a comfort.
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