Treacly Treats for Guy Fawkes Night

A loaf of parkin, courtesy of Flickr user Johnson Cameraface

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.

So goes one version of a popular rhyme about Guy Fawkes, whose failed plot to assassinate the King of England in 1606 1605—Fawkes was caught under the House of Lords with barrels of gunpowder—got him hanged, drawn and quartered. Sure enough, 400 years later, the act of treason is still remembered: November 5th, known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night, is celebrated throughout England with fireworks, bonfires and the burning of the traitor in effigy. The celebrations once held an anti-Catholic undercurrent (Fawkes and his co-conspirators were Catholic), but that has all but disappeared today.

I first heard of Guy Fawkes Night in a 1992 cookbook, The Inspired Vegetarian, by British author Louise Pickford. She includes a recipe for “Miff’s Spicy Pumpkin Soup,” which her Aunt Miff used to make for a Guy Fawkes fireworks party every year. She recalls that “all the children would spend hours preparing pumpkin lanterns to hang in the garden. We would watch the fireworks, huddled around the bonfire, with mugs of steaming pumpkin soup.”

I asked my cousin’s husband, who grew up in Exeter, in the southwest of England, whether he recalls any particular Guy Fawkes Night foods, and he couldn’t think of any—with the possible exception of beer. But up north, particularly in Yorkshire, there are a couple of treats that are associated with the holiday. Both revolve around treacle, or sugar syrup.

The first is parkin, sometimes spelled perkin, a gingerbread-like oatmeal cake usually made with dark molasses and golden syrup (a light sugar syrup—the closest American equivalent would probably be corn syrup). One of its features is that it keeps well; in fact, many recipes advise aging the cake for several days to let the flavors develop.

Pinning down food origins is always tricky, but the BBC reports that parkin may have originated with the Vikings and was certainly around by the time of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Why it’s associated with November 5th is unknown—one possibility is that it dates to the Viking Feast of Thor, which was celebrated around the same time of year with bonfires and a similar cake—but some in Yorkshire even call the date Parkin Day. The one place that refuses to serve parkin, though, according to the BBC, is Fawkes’ alma mater in York.

The other Guy Fawkes-related treat, also from Yorkshire, is bonfire toffee, sometimes called treacle toffee. Also made with black treacle (or molasses), golden syrup and Demerara sugar (a light brown sugar), it’s made by boiling the sugars to a very high temperature with water and cream of tartar (other recipes call for butter and/or condensed milk), then letting it cool in a sheet pan until it becomes brittle. The pieces are broken off with a hammer. I couldn’t find any information on why this candy is associated with Guy Fawkes Night in particular. But, for a sweet tooth like me, who needs a reason?

Of course, in recent years another candy-centric fall holiday from America has been creeping into British culture, leaving some people there to worry that, in time, gunpowder and treason will be all but “forgot.”

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Inviting Writing: Thankful for a Tolerant Spouse

Vegetarian bacon tastes good, the author promises. Image courtesy of Flickr user alienghic

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked for stories about thanksgiving, with or without the capital T. Stories about the holiday, being thankful for a certain food, or edible expressions of gratitude. Our first story comes from Hope Yancey, a freelance writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is thankful for a relationship that thrives in spite of food.

The Bacon is Faux, but the Love is Real

By Hope Yancey

The smell of vegetarian bacon aromatizing our kitchen as it steams up the microwave is enough to send my husband running the other way fast. He would probably classify the assault on his nostrils as a pungent odor rather than a mere smell. I heat my strips of veggie bacon for breakfast, sometimes enjoying them accompanied by eggs or arranged on a sandwich roll with a little Miracle Whip and dash of black pepper. Served over toast and sliced tomatoes and topped with prepared cheese sauce, it makes a nice version of Welsh rarebit for an easy lunch or supper.

We have a long and storied history with veggie bacon in our relationship. It was one of the first meals I cooked for my husband after we met about 11 years ago. He kindly pretended to savor it, only confiding much later how truly unpleasant he found my morning meal of choice. I’m sure he wondered what other gustatory delights awaited him in his future. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I like the stuff. I harbor no delusions that it tastes like real bacon, though I wouldn’t really be qualified to say because that’s a flavor I haven’t experienced for myself since at least 1990. It doesn’t particularly bother me that veggie bacon’s texture is such that it fails to crisp, hardening instead. No matter: What it lacks in authenticity, it compensates for in other ways.

Veggie bacon served its purpose, as it proved to be the gateway to a string of other meat substitutes my generous husband would go on to bravely endure in the name of love. There’s been veggie sausage (patties and links), veggie hot dogs, veggie burgers and much more. He views some products more favorably than others. Veggie corn dogs, like veggie bacon, are decidedly not a favorite of his, but for different reasons in each case: “The veggie bacon definitely smells the worst. It’s just outright offensive. And the corn dogs taste the worst,” he said recently. Harsh. Fortunately, he does have an affinity for some of the veggie meatballs he’s tried. All is not lost.

Carnivorous lunches with one of his brothers represent a brief but regular weekday reprieve for him. He indulges in foreign meals that are scarce in our household—things like turkey sandwiches, ham and sausage calzones and delicious Teriyaki chicken, all made with actual meat. While he’s toiling away at the office, I’m able to luxuriate in my veggie bacon with abandon. As I pull the familiar, slim package from the freezer, I can be secure in the knowledge that the aroma in the air should have ample time to diminish before his arrival home. It was a revelation for me that there also are homemade versions of veggie bacon out there; that’s a whole new delicacy waiting to be discovered. It could be a game-changer.

In the meantime, I’m thankful for a husband who tolerates my self-imposed dietary restrictions so gracefully and occasionally even joins me in a meat alternative. I feel like a wife ought to do more to demonstrate her gratitude. I should really bake him a cake. Was that a recipe I saw online for frosted maple-bacon cupcakes garnished with pieces of veggie bacon?

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Where’s the Lunch? Looking at Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Image courtesy of the Phillips Collection.

Mealtimes are fairly well represented in fine art. Wayne Thiebaud had an affinity for deserts. Manet gave us images of Breakfast in the Studio and Luncheon in the Grass. And I think Da Vinci may have a dining scene in his oeuvre as well. And then there’s Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s instantly recognizable scene of a convivial bunch of diners enjoying a summertime meal alfresco. Completed in 1881, Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of the most famous midday meals committed to canvas, but it’s curious to note that in spite of the title, there’s precious little food to be seen. Taking a cue from Clara Peller, I have to ask: where’s the lunch?

“It’s like a painting about the most perfect meal that ever was—but you can’t tell what most of it was,” says Phillips Collection Chief Curator Eliza Rathbone. By the time we see the table, all that’s left are a few not-quite-empty bottles of wine and a compotier of fruit such as grapes and pears, perhaps a peach or two. “It’s the end of the meal. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a beguiling picture. It’s of that time that comes when everyone has had a delicious meal, they’ve all gathered, they’ve focused on the food and now they’re just focusing on each other and this beautiful day and they don’t want it to be over. And we’ve all had those kinds of experiences where you want to linger and those are the best meals we ever have.”

The scene takes place at the Maison Fournaise, an open-air café on the Ile de Chatou where people of all social classes mixed and mingled as they enjoyed their leisure time away from the bustle of the city. In its heyday the Maison was a popular hangout for artists. It remains open for business, although the scenic views have changed a bit since Renoir’s time.

But it seems Renoir wasn’t much of a foodie. In a memoir, son Jean Renoir, who made a name for himself as a film director, remembers his father preferring simple fare, even when finer things—like veal and soufflés and custards—were laid on the table. In terms of food as a subject for his paintings, actual foodstuffs crop up most often in his still lifes, and even then, his attentions turned to raw ingredients instead of finished dishes. “He could paint a beautiful onion,” Rathbone says. “They’re the ingredients in their most natural form, which is their most beautiful moment. Let’s face it, a chopped onion isn’t nearly as beautiful as an onion whole. I think Monet and Caillebotte did more prepared food in their still lifes than Renoir did. We have a wonderful still life in the collection that’s a ham and it’s a marvelous subject in Gauguin’s hands. He makes the most beautiful ham you ever saw.”

Instead, Renoir seems to prefer to focus on the social aspect of the dining experience. “He was a people person, and people love food. So I think the subject came to him naturally.”

Next time you are in the D.C. area, you can enjoy Luncheon of the Boating Party first-hand at the Phillips Collection, which is a short walk from the Dupont Circle metro.

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Salisbury’s Medieval Market

The olive bar at Salisbury Market. Photo courtesy of the author.

From guest blogger Dana Bate:

I knew exactly what the Salisbury Cathedral would look like before I ever stepped foot in Salisbury. In college, I studied under a charismatic professor of British art who lectured enthusiastically about John Constable and his romantic depictions of the English countryside, including several paintings of the Salisbury Cathedral. I knew the spire, completed in 1320, was the tallest in England. I knew the main body was completed in the mid-1200s and that the cathedral itself sat on a lovely slice of countryside in Wiltshire.

What I did not know is that, in addition to housing the world’s oldest working clock, the cathedral sits adjacent to one of England’s oldest working markets: the Salisbury Charter Market. Surrounded by streets with names like Oatmeal Row and Butchers Row, the open-air market began in the early 1200s, at a time when what we now call “farmers’ markets” were merely “markets” and “eating local” was merely “eating.”

Today, the Charter Market (named for its consecration under the city’s charter in 1227 by King Henry III) operates on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., selling everything from local honey to fresh doughnuts and farmhouse butter. Modern tents and food trucks have replaced the medieval food stalls, but most of the customers are still locals, picking up fresh meat, fish and veg as part of their weekly shopping routine.  You’ll also find your share of tourists wandering through the market before or after exploring the cathedral.

Given the history of the surrounding area, the market would be a great place to pick up some food for a picnic before touring the cathedral, to get a taste of Salisbury’s medieval market culture. And, being a mere two-hour drive southwest of London, Salisbury is a fun day trip if you want to explore the English countryside. (It is not, however, the source of Salisbury steak.) If you find yourself in the area and plan on picnicking around the cathedral, here are some options sure to satisfy your cultural cravings.

Pritchetts: You’ll smell this stand before you see it. Owned by the 97-year-old butchery of the same name, this food truck is known for its hog roast: a sandwich of sliced roast pork, onion-sausage stuffing and applesauce, all served on a soft, floury roll known as a bap. The cook, Scott McDaniel, makes all the components from scratch, from the pork sausage in the stuffing to the applesauce. Wiltshire is known for its pork, and McDaniel hails from Austin, Texas, another city known for its pig products. It will come as no surprise, then, that he takes his pork very seriously. The stand sells other items like burgers and bacon butties, but the hog roast is what draws the crowds.

The Olive Bar: It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the many barrels of olives at The Olive Bar. There’s the Sorrento (basil, garlic, hot chili), the Black Maroc (herbs de Provence, orange peel, cardamom), and the Greek Mammoth (basil, garlic), all swimming in huge barrels of olive oil. There are dozens of other olives, too, not to mention the hunks of feta with herbs de Provence and vats of butter bean salad and hummus. Grab a loaf of their ciabatta or focaccia, and you’ll have a filling meal on your hands.

Long Crichel Bakery: Long Crichel is, first and foremost, a bread bakery. Their organic breads, made by hand from locally-sourced ingredients and baked in a wood-fired oven, have won several awards, and the bakery’s Five-Seed Sourdough remains one of the most popular. The stand at the Charter Market also sells pastries and savories, everything from quiche and sausage rolls to the award-winning treacle tart and flapjacks. The latter two would make excellent picnic desserts.

Fonthill Glebe Wines: English wine? You bet. This stand sells everything from Pinot Blanc to fruit wines made from elderflowers, gooseberries and apples. The adventurous among you might want to try the mead, the ancient alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey and water and said to be the ancestor of all modern fermented drinks. A word of advice, however: Steer clear of the booze if you plan to climb the cathedral’s 400-foot spire. The hike is a doozy.

Dana Bate’s first novel, The Dupont Circle Supper Club, will be published by Hyperion. You can learn more about her at http://danabate.com and follow her on Twitter @danabate.

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Five Ways to Eat Cabbage

Stuffed cabbage, courtesy of Flickr user oomni

After potatoes, perhaps no vegetable has kept more bellies full in more places through winter than cabbage. It’s cheap, it’s filling, and it’s available long after a lot of other vegetables have gone into hibernation.

It’s also versatile and is found in cuisines that span the globe. Whether green, red, savoy or napa, here are a few ideas to keep you inspired through spring.

1. Stuff it. Nearly every country between Poland and Lebanon has its own version of stuffed cabbage rolls, each a little different. In Hungary, they’re called Töltött Káposzta and might be stuffed with ground pork and served with sauerkraut, paprika and sour cream. In the Arab countries of the eastern Mediterranean, they’re called Mahshi Malfuf; they’re stuffed with ground lamb and rice and flavored with allspice, cinnamon, garlic and lemon juice. The ones my mom used to make were probably of Polish-Jewish origin, stuffed with ground beef and cooked in a sweet and sour tomato sauce, similar to this version of Holishkes from Epicurious. For a vegetarian take, this Russian recipe stuffed with apples, dried apricots, raisins and spinach and served with sour cream sounds interesting.

2. Stock your soup. I can’t condone eating cabbage soup every day, as one of the crazier (and most intestinally distressing) fad diets has suggested, but the ingredient does deserve a place in your soup repertoire. I like to add shredded napa cabbage, which has thin, frilly leaves, to minestrone soup; this version, from Food52, includes zucchini and green beans, but you could easily substitute fall and winter vegetables. A simple German soup, from Teri’s Kitchen, combines shredded cabbage with onions, rice, nutmeg and a garnish of shredded Swiss cheese. And for a recipe that is defiantly not on the cabbage soup diet, try Closet Cooking’s creamy cabbage and double-smoked bacon soup, which also includes sausage and grainy mustard.

3. Fry it. My favorite way to prepare cabbage is probably to stir-fry it—it’s not mushy or limp, as it can get when boiled, and it’s not dry and starchy, as it sometimes tastes when raw. Plus, it absorbs flavors perfectly—from a simple Chinese-style soy sauce, garlic and ginger mixture to a complex, Indian-spiced dish with potatoes, Aloo Patta Gobhi Sabzi. Or go soul food–style, frying up some cabbage with bacon, garlic and crushed red pepper.

4. Shred it. Slaws are usually thought of as a summer side dish, but they also make a good stand-in for green salads in the colder months. I Really Like Food suggests adding apple, celery, red bell pepper and autumn spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves for a seasonal twist on cole slaw. And, as a transplanted Southern Californian, sometimes I’ve gotta have my fish taco fix, which wouldn’t be complete without a little shredded cabbage and lime juice—like these ones from Koko Likes.

5. Pickle or ferment it. Germans and Koreans independently came up with the idea to ferment cabbage, with very different but equally delicious results. If you’re ambitious—and patient—you could try making your own sauerkraut or kimchi. Or you can do the shortcut version of either, though they will have a less pungent flavor: A quick kimchi recipe on Epicurious takes only 3 1/2 hours to pickle, rather than days, and Brian Boitano (yes—the figure skater—he now has a show on the Food Channel) improvises a quick sauerkraut to serve with Schnitzel by cooking shredded cabbage with German beer, vinegar and mustard seeds.

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Brewing Beer is More Fun With Company

Boiling the wort. Image by Lisa Bramen

I have found that one of the keys to harmony in my marriage is clear division of labor. I’m in charge of food acquisition and preparation (except one night a week, when my husband makes either pasta or pizza so I can write), paying bills, and general tidying. My partner is responsible for doing the dishes, most of the heavy housework (like cleaning the floors and bathrooms), and either mowing the lawn in summer or clearing the driveway of snow in winter. I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the bargain—here’s hoping he never develops an interest in cooking.

But sometimes it can be fun to tackle a kitchen project together, as we found this weekend, during our first attempt at brewing our own beer. After my last DIY food adventure, pickling vegetables from my garden, I was glad I didn’t have to go solo this time. As with the pickling, the process took a lot longer than expected—the better part of Sunday—but it went a lot more smoothly having two heads, and two sets of hands, rather than one.

Which is not to say there were no glitches. We followed a porter recipe from a nearby brewer’s supply store where we bought our ingredients. (There has probably never been a better time to take up home brewing—thanks to the explosion in interest in the past decade or so, supplies and information are readily available at bricks-and-mortar stores and online.)

The first step was to steep our specialty grains—a combination of three kinds of malted barley—in hot water, wrapped in cheese cloth like a giant tea bag. We accidentally spilled about a quarter of the grain in the sink while trying to pour it into the cloth. Everyone, from the supply store owner to the guys on the instructional video that came with our brewing kit to the authors of the book we bought on brewing, had drummed the importance of sanitation into my husband’s head. (After reading the book before bedtime, he actually muttered in his sleep, “It’s all about cleanliness.”) We didn’t dare try to salvage the spilled grain, even though the sink was clean. So we decided to compensate for the lost grain by steeping the remainder longer. I’m hoping we don’t end up with two cases of watery porter.

Next we added malt extract, which looks like the sludge left in an engine that’s overdue for an oil change but smells pleasantly, well, malty. This we boiled, along with the hops, for about an hour. Or, it would have taken an hour, if our 1961 stove weren’t so dysfunctional. The large front burner goes on strike about as often as an Italian train worker. At some point we realized our rolling boil had slowed to barely a simmer. And since the five-gallon pot wouldn’t fit on the back burner under the second oven, we had to move it to the small front burner. Again, we added a little extra time to compensate.

The beer in the early stages of fermenting

Finally we had our wort, which is what gets poured into the fermenter (a glass carboy) along with some yeast. At this point we would have used our hydrometer to measure the original gravity before fermentation—later readings will tell us how fermentation is going, because the reading will get lower as the sugars turn into alcohol—but we didn’t realize until too late that the hydrometer had shipped broken. The supplier sent out a new one and assured us it wasn’t a big deal to not get an original reading.

A couple of days later, our batch appears to be fermenting nicely; it has developed a good mound of foam on top, called Kräusen. By next weekend, it should be ready for racking, or siphoning into another carboy for secondary fermentation without the spent yeast sediment that has settled to the bottom of the first carboy. Once fermentation is complete, we’ll add a little corn sugar to aid carbonation before bottling.

By Christmas, we’ll either have two cases of delicious porter under the tree or 48 bottles to reuse/recycle and some brewing lessons under our belt. Either way, we’ll have a new hobby to share.

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Inviting Writing: Thanksgiving

Sign for Upper Jay, photo by Lisa Bramen

After a month of reconciliation stories, it’s time to move on to a new Inviting Writing theme. For November, we turn to the subject on many minds: Thanksgiving, with or without the capital T. Whether you have a story about the holiday meal itself, being thankful about something related to food, or edible expressions of gratitude, we want to hear it. Send your true, original essays to FoodandThink@gmail.com, along with a couple of biographical details (name, location, personal blog URL if you have one) before November 11. We’ll read them all and post our favorites over the next few Mondays.

I’ll get things started.

You May Find Yourself in Another Part of the World
By Lisa Bramen

Every so often I have a David Byrne moment. I’m referring to the Talking Heads frontman who, in the song “Once in a Lifetime,” asks, “Well, how did I get here?”

One of those moments was a couple of weeks ago, as I sat around a bonfire at the pig roast and potluck dinner being thrown in the parking lot of the local motel, eating deviled eggs and baked beans and listening to my neighbors discuss the merits of various forms of home heating—a frequent topic of conversation in these northerly parts.

Seven years ago, I was still living in Los Angeles, drinking appletinis or mojitos or whatever was then in vogue, in bars where the talk often centered on the machinations of Hollywood. I hated my job in advertising. I hated my life. So, as I chuckled to myself about the strange twists of fate that brought me to an aging motel’s parking lot on a frigid October evening, my follow-up thought wasn’t, as in the song, “My god, what have I done?” It was, “Thank God.”

The motel is one of only a handful of businesses in my small hamlet in the Adirondack Mountains. The others are a post office, an upholstery shop that doubles as a music and theater venue called the Recovery Lounge, and the library (not technically a business, I know). There used to be an antiques barn and a bakery that was open only on summer weekends, but they, along with about a dozen houses—including the home of the widow of late toy designer/theme park pioneer Arto Monaco—were destroyed when Hurricane Irene veered inland this August and caused the Ausable River, which runs through the center of town, to rise some 12 feet above flood stage. Thankfully, no one died in the flood, save a retired amusement park pony named Pickles, who was swept away in spite of the valiant rescue efforts of my neighbor. But in a community of less than 200 people, it was a major blow.

Still, having lived through larger catastrophes elsewhere—I was in college in San Francisco during the 1989 earthquake and in Southern California during the 1994 Northridge earthquake—I can say with confidence that no one does disaster relief like a small town. Since the flood, nearly every weekend has had some kind of aid event: a firewood donation drive, library clean-up parties, fundraising concerts. The potluck and pig roast was one of them.

I’ve lived in this place for two years now, and I already know far more of my neighbors than I did in any of the cities or suburbs where I lived for up to 10 years. These neighbors come from all different backgrounds, many quite different from my own, though most are good company around a bonfire. Many of them know how to do something useful in an emergency—wield a chain saw, fix a generator, bake a half-dozen pies. Quite a few volunteer on the local fire department or ambulance squad; they helped rescue stranded homeowners from the flood.

I sometimes miss things about city life—not least the availability of good, multi-ethnic food. But all things considered, I’m just fine with deviled eggs and baked beans. Even thankful.

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