Colonial Craft: Pomanders

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that you're settling into 2014. I spent Christmas with my family in Ohio, listening to my dad's beloved Ray Conniff Singers and cooking up a storm. We spent many an evening by the fire and even processed maple syrup in one long day of patient boiling and simmering.

I also had a rather crafty evening in front of a Doris Day movie, and that's what I want to share with you now. I made pomanders: fruit studded with cloves and rolled in spices.

Pomanders originated in the Middle Ages, when folks would melt spices and aromatics together and enclose the resulting mass in perforated cases. They then wore these around their necks or carried the cases with them to ward off plague or disguise body odor. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the English began to make pomanders the way we think of them today, poking oranges and apples with cloves and rolling them in a mixture of spices and preservatives. Early immigrants to North America brought this craft with them as a Christmas or New Year's custom, but as oranges were far too expensive (they had to be imported), colonists typically made their pomanders with apples.

In researching the history and construction of pomanders, I was pretty surprised by this last fact. Like many women my age, I grew up with the American Girl dolls, and Felicity (the colonial-era doll) had a book of colonial crafts for girls to make. One of the crafts was, of course, a pomander made with an orange, but it turns out that very few colonial girls could have used oranges for their crafts. American Girl lied to me! Or, perhaps, glossed over the more complicated truth; Felicity very well might have been able to afford an orange, as her father owned a general store and would have had immediate access to imported produce. But her friends? Probably not.

Despite this disillusioning discovery, I enjoyed making the pomanders. I chose to make a "real" pomander out of an apple, spiking it all over with cloves and rolling it in a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and orris root (a preservative that helps it last). The other adhered to my childhood understanding: a simple pomander made with an orange, with only a decorative pattern of cloves. This one won't last very long.

They both make my apartment smell quite nice, however, and I'm looking forward to keeping the apple pomander for years to come. If you'd like to make your own, here's the recipe I used.


Pomander
(slightly adapted from InSeason)

1 apple or orange
several ounces of whole cloves (varies)
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp cloves
1 tbsp ginger
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp orris root

Mix the ground spices together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Press the whole cloves, sharp side down, into the fruit. You can make a pattern, or if you'd like the pomander to last as long as possible, keep the cloves close together and cover the fruit with them.

When you've finished with the whole cloves, roll the fruit in the spice mixture. Store in a cool, dry place, still in the spice mixture, until dry. Make sure to roll the fruit in the spice mixture each day.


Works cited: White Lotus Aromatics newsletter. InSeason: Making Traditional Pomanders.

Valentine's crafts

Dispatch from the blizzard: we survived, with nary a power loss! Others in Rhode Island were not so lucky, and I'm thinking of those wrapped up in blankets or staying in emergency shelters. It's going to be chilly tonight.

We stayed indoors most of the time, watching the snow fall and catching up on shows or reading. After the worst of the snow had stopped Saturday morning, we joined our apartment neighbors in shoveling the two feet of snow out of our shared driveway. Someone turned on a car radio, and someone else made a Game of Thrones joke ("Winter is coming." "Dude, winter came."), and all in all it was actually kind of fun. But today, man, my arms are sore. Also, we have twin pillars of snow on either side of the driveway, which makes getting in and out an adventure. Josh thinks it looks like the entrance to Mordor.


I took advantage of the quiet weekend to make some Valentine's crafts. My sister and I have this funny tradition: every Valentine's Day we mail each other fake cards from celebrities. So in the days leading up to the holiday, I haul out my pretty papers and rubber cement and troll the Internet for a handsome photo of Lissa's latest celebrity love. (Or of someone who could pass for a celebrity love. Sometimes we have to get creative.)

It started when I was in college, when we were both bemoaning our single fates and she was still suffering through high school Valentine's Day frenzies. (There is little that can make you more aware of your singledom than watching other girls at your all-girls school receive flowers from their boyfriends at the front office.) I made Lissa a card from our favorite Norwegian singer, and thus a tradition was born. I have a pile of the cards she's sent me over the years--James Dean, spymaster George Smiley, Rooster Cogburn (sometimes these are more tongue-in-cheek)--and they make me laugh.

This year's card I'm keeping a surprise, but it was great fun cutting out paper and writing silly messages in beautiful ink. No offense, Josh, but this might be my favorite part of Valentine's Day.

If you were stuck inside during the snowstorm, how did you keep yourself busy? Do you have any Valentine's crafts to share?

Dining at Downton: How to serve plum pudding

We had a relatively quiet Christmas here in Ohio, seeing family and telling funny stories and going for long, snowy walks and eating good food. As per tradition, we served plum pudding for dessert on Christmas night, along with a lot of other treats (frosted cookies, red velvet cake, petit fours...). We don't mess around with dessert.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the serving of plum pudding is half the fun. Once you've steamed the pudding so it's nice and hot (2 hours at 350 degrees, back in the mold and the double boiler you set up to cook it the first time), you turn the pudding out into a heat-resistant dish. Heat up a little brandy on the stove, pour it evenly over the pudding, and hold a lit match close to the pudding. The fumes from the brandy should pick the flame right up and set the whole pudding alight. In a darkened room with all the family sitting around a candle-lit table, there's nothing quite like it: blue flames dancing around the dish, creating a magical feeling.

Unfortunately, our evening did not go exactly according to plan.

The brandy we ended up using was just too old, so the flames died out almost immediately. Here is the only picture we could get of bringing the pudding to the table--if you look closely, you might see the blue flames as they dwindled to nothing.

That doesn't mean the pudding wasn't delicious, though! The days it spent ripening in the cold did it good, and the pudding was light and fruity with a citrusy zing. It had a tender, spongy crumb that contrasted well with dabs of rich hard sauce.

If you celebrated the holidays this December, I hope you enjoyed equally delicious food and fun company. (I also hope that your projects went a little more according to plan than mine!)

Previously:

How to make plum pudding

How to steam plum pudding

Dining at Downton: How to steam plum pudding

On Saturday we talked about how to make your own plum pudding, the most classic of British holiday desserts. (Yes, I am still wondering where the plums are in the recipe.) Today we'll discuss the cooking process, which is a rather elaborate steaming method. It requires parchment paper, cooking twine, a water bath, and lots of patience.

My dad was fascinated by the process from start to finish. He's an engineer by trade, and he's the kind of cook who loves the science of the kitchen. He will turn out renditions of his mother's pumpkin pie recipe until he has the ingredient ratio just right (much to my mom's dismay). He will collect recipes for beef bourgignon and combine instructions from each to make the best possible stew. He will then exchange observations on the proper way to brown beef with me over the phone. (He also went to great lengths to find out why the one American manufacturer of plum pudding stopped producing it, which is how I ended up making the pudding in the first place.) Put simply, my dad likes method.

"You should take photos of that!" he said as I removed the steaming pudding from the water bath. "And how did you tie the parchment paper down again?"

As he noted, this is a delicate process. So here are your highly expert instructions, just the way my dad likes them.

Step One
Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Once your pudding is mixed and ready to cook, turn the mixture into a well-greased pudding mold or glass bowl. Remember, a pudding mold looks like a Bundt pan, with a ring in the middle to ensure proper steaming. I got mine at Stock, a lovely little cooking shop that recently opened in Providence.

Step Two
Next, cut a piece of parchment paper to cover the top of the mold. Leave about six inches of overhang on all sides of the mold. Fold the paper twice in the middle to create a slight overlay--this will allow steam to accumulate without tearing the paper.

Step Three
Cover the mold with the parchment paper and use a length of cooking twine to tie the paper to the mold, just below the rim. Trim excess paper.

Step Four
Create a handle for the mold, so you can lift it out of the steam bath. Cut a long length of cooking twine and wrap it around the mold as though wrapping a present, laying the twine flat across the top, bringing it down the sides of the mold and crossing underneath. Bring the twine up to the top again on the empty sides of the mold, and slide the twine underneath the cross line on top of the parchment paper. Tie the ends of the string together to create a looped handle.

Step Five
Pour hot tap water into a large stockpot or Dutch oven (I used the latter) that can accommodate the mold with at least an inch of space on all sides. Fill with water so the oven is about 1/3 full. Place the prepared mold in the Dutch oven and cover the whole thing with the oven lid. Put in the oven to steam for about 3 hours. It will make your house smell like citrus and deliciousness.

Step Six
Periodically check the oven to make sure the water hasn't evaporated completely. You may need to pour in more water. When the pudding pulls away from the sides of the mold (about 3 hours), it's done. Carefully remove from the water bath using the string handle, and lift up the parchment paper to make sure the pudding is ready. Cool in the mold completely before turning out onto a plate.

Step Seven
Now that the pudding has cooked, you can eat it straight away or let it ripen over time. If you choose to let it sit, cover the cooled pudding and store in a cool, dark place (we put it in our 1960s-era bomb shelter) until ready to eat. Pudding will keep for at least five weeks. Be sure to warm it before serving by replacing it in the mold or bowl, then steaming for about 2 hours at 350 F.

The very last segment of this culinary adventure is my favorite: setting the pudding on fire at the table! Check back in a few days for photos of our own flaming pudding. (If you want to serve your own pudding before then, warm a small amount of brandy on the stove, then pour over the warm pudding. Immediately hold a lit match close to the pudding, and the brandy will catch on fire. Bring to the table in a darkened room for maximum effect and applause. Once the flames have died, serve with brandy butter or hard sauce.)

Note: It's possible to steam the pudding with a Crockpot instead of in the oven. See this page for complete instructions.


Works cited: Irish American Mom. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Dining at Downton: How to make plum pudding

This time of year, my family is all about tradition. Previously I wrote about the Brunswick stew we've kept from my mom's side of the family, though I tested out a Williamsburg variation of the recipe. That's still on the menu this year. My sister and I maintain important traditions like decorating the tree while listening to a BBC dramatization of Hercule Poirot's Christmas (because nothing says the holidays like a murder mystery), and she will read the January issue of Vogue on Christmas Eve. Our family is still adjusting to some major changes that took place this year, but we're determined to maintain the key rituals. How else will we know it's Christmas?

Vital to our Christmas Day dinner is the plum pudding. Another hold-over from my mom's side of the family, it draws on our English heritage and recalls the classic Charles Dickens Christmas. If you haven't tried plum pudding before, it's basically a soft cake filled with dried fruit, nuts, and (most importantly) booze. It's so historical that a mention of plum pudding first appeared in 14th-century England. 14th-century! That's 1300. Clearly, England has had plenty of time to perfect the recipe. The "modern" version of plum pudding, complete with dried fruit and suet (beef fat), probably came to England with Prince Albert when he married Queen Victoria in the 19th century.

So the Crawleys definitely would have served this kind of plum pudding at their Christmas feast. Mrs. Patmore would have begun the cooking process five weeks before Christmas, since it's an elaborate pudding (the British term for "dessert") that requires a lot of time and energy. Additionally, it's the kind of dessert that tastes the best when it's been around for a few weeks--that way the dried fruit can absorb the alcohol and the whole pudding gets nice and brandified. The alcohol also gives it a long shelf life, so you just need to let it sit in a cool, dark place. Traditionally, cooks made their puddings on the Sunday right before Advent, known as "Stir Up Sunday." (This is such a tradition that the Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper, published an article a few years ago about how few British citizens make their own puddings now. The horror!)

I am not nearly as well-prepared as Downton's cook, so I made mine on Saturday afternoon. It won't be quite as tasty with only a few days of ripening time, but we'll still enjoy it. You can even make yours the day of. Today you'll read about the preparation process, but I'll save the cooking process for a separate post. (I meant it when I said this was an involved recipe.)

Some notes before we begin:

• You'll need a pudding mold to turn the batter into once it's ready. A pudding mold looks a lot like a Bundt pan, but it's ceramic or glass rather than metal. A Bundt pan, I have been assured, will not work. If you don't have a pudding mold, an oven-safe glass bowl will do the trick.


• I adapted a recipe from a French classic that Mrs. Patmore certainly referred to (what with the Edwardians' obsession with French food). The changes are few but important.


• First, I substituted butter for the suet. I was all set to use actual beef fat, but my mom was hesitant. Butter does just as well.


• Second, I cut the ingredients in half, and it still produced way more batter than I was prepared for. Be sure to have a few glass bowls on hand in case your designated mold is filled too early.

my pudding mold

But don't be scared! Plum pudding just takes some careful preparation, and it's well worth the effort. Think of it as a culinary adventure!


Plum Pudding
(adapted from Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire)

1 cup + 2 tbsp butter (or chopped beef suet)
1 cup + 2 tbsp breadcrumbs (I used leftover bread)
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup peeled, chopped apple
2/3 cup mixed raisins and sultanas
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tbsp chopped, crystallized orange peel (I used leftover orangettes)
2 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup stout (I used Guinness)
1/3 cup brandy
juice and zest of 1/4 lemon and 1/4 orange

First:
Soak the raisins and sultanas in the brandy. You can do this overnight or an hour or two before preparing the mixture.

Second:
Prepare all the other ingredients. If using butter, melt over low heat. If using beef suet, chop it up into small pieces.

Mix the flour, breadcrumbs, brown sugar, and spices together in a large bowl. Then add the apple, crystallized orange peel, and citrus zest. Mix well. Finally, add the citrus juice, butter, eggs, and soaked raisins together with the remaining brandy. Add the stout at the very end, and mix until just incorporated.

Third:
Pour the batter into buttered pudding molds or glass bowls, filling until about 2/3 full. Stay tuned for the next post, where we cook the pudding!


Works cited: The Telegraph.

Dining at Downton: Mulled wine

It's getting to be that time when I start glancing at the calendar to see how many days are left. Not before Christmas (though that's another kind of concern) but before the premiere.

Yes, you know. The U.S. premiere of Downton Abbey Season Three.

January 6! That's less than a month away!

Josh and my sister and I can barely contain our excitement. I will probably need to review the first two seasons before that fated day in order for the story to be completely fresh in my mind. This kind of viewing--leisurely, paced, because I already know what happens--calls for something special to spice it up.

I'm talking mulled wine.

This recipe is particularly appropriate for the Downton Christmas special. I can imagine the Crowleys sipping mugs of spiced, mulled wine by the fire while they discuss the punch-up between Matthew and Sir Richard. Perhaps Mary and Matthew warmed themselves up with a tipple after their mutual declarations of love. It's the perfect thing for a cold, blustery evening, even if your winter's night features only British TV dramas and central heating. (I really do appreciate the modern comforts of home.)

I recently brewed a batch of mulled wine for a holiday party, pulling inspiration from Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire (a cookbook Mrs. Patmore probably used) as well as from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. The Escoffier recipe is fairly mild, calling for only "zest of 1 lemon, a small piece of cinnamon and mace and 1 clove." I suppose a light hand with the spice makes sense, given the famed Victorian aversion to flavor. Since modern tastes are more adventurous, I added a few more cloves, some tangerines, and orange peel to boot. The result, I think, was well worth the tampering.

Mulled Wine
(adapted heavily from Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire and Bon Appetit)

2 750-ml bottles of red wine (it doesn't have to be fancy)
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups apple cider
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tangerines
16 - 20 whole cloves
1 tsp dried orange peel
pomegranate seeds for garnish

Pour the red wine over the sugar in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cider.

While the liquid heats, prepare the tangerines. Press the cloves (by the sharp end) into the tangerines, using about half the cloves for each tangerine. This way you don't have to strain out the cloves later on.

Place the tangerines, cinnamon sticks, and orange peel in the wine mixture. Heat until steaming, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Serve after twenty minutes, garnishing with pomegranate seeds (if using), and keep warm for second (or third!) servings.

Candied orange peel (with chocolate)

Thanksgiving is over. The turkey's been roasted and eaten (or perhaps you tried a duck?), the festive harvest plates have been washed and put away for another year. And now everything in America is telling us it's time for the winter holidays: the pharmacies selling mechanical Santas, the radios playing nothing but Elvis, the twinkle lights and pine garlands draping storefronts.

It's all going a little too fast for me. How is it the holiday season already? We just got into fall! (It doesn't help that my school is rehearsing and producing a play in the three weeks before winter break. December's going to go like lightning.)

I like to move slowly into winter, preferably with something delicious to ease the transition. There's hot chocolate, of course, and mulled wine (more on that soon). But lately I've been craving something tangy, a treat with zip.

This candied orange peel fits the bill. I first learned how to make it a few years ago when my mom decided to bake stollen, a traditional German holiday bread studded with dried and candied fruit. Her grandmother (intimidatingly nicknamed "TuTu") used to bake stollen every winter, and my mom decided that she was ready to take on the baking challenge. So we spent a long, cozy morning cutting up oranges and simmering the peel in a thick syrup, then chopping those candied peels to mix into the bread. It was one of those lovely surprises of the holiday season, when you learn that your parents have these hidden traditions they never told you about.

Personally, I prefer the candied orange peel just as it is, maybe with a bit of chocolate to really make it decadent. The French call these chocolate-dipped gems orangettes, and you can learn more about them from Molly Wizenberg's blog of the same name. They're shockingly easy to make. And they're just the thing to wake up your senses as you settle into a long, cold winter.

Candied Orange Peel (Orange Sticks)
(adapted from The "Settlement" Cook Book)

1 orange, scrubbed
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp granulated sugar, divided
1/4 cup hot water
optional: 1/4 - 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

To make the orange peel:
Score the orange lengthwise into four sections. Carefully remove the peel from the orange, making sure to keep each section in one piece. You should have four sections of peel. Carefully cut each section into narrow  slices, about 1/4 inch wide.

Place the slices in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then drain off the water. Repeat process four more times. This will blanch the bitterness from the orange peel.

Set aside the orange peel. In the same saucepan, mix 1/2 cup of sugar and the hot water and cook over low heat, stirring often, until sugar is dissolved. Place the blanched orange peel back in the pan with the simple syrup and stir to coat. Cook over low heat, stirring often, until the syrup is mostly evaporated, about 20 minutes.

Remove the orange peel from the saucepan and drain off the excess syrup (or pour it into your tea, as I did). Sprinkle the remaining tbsp of sugar over a flat surface and carefully roll the orange slices in the sugar, using tongs or a spoon, until coated. Place on a wire rack to cool.

For chocolate dip:
Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler over medium-low heat. When the chocolate is just melted, dip the ends of the orange peel in the chocolate. Let cool on a piece of wax paper. 1/4 cup of chocolate chips will be sufficient for about half the slices.

The "First" Thanksgiving (III)

Last week we looked at some of the myths surrounding the original Thanksgiving. We've explored how the Pilgrims were not, in fact, Pilgrims, and how the First Thanksgiving wasn't the homey, pastoral scene we're taught in school. Today we'll look at the final piece of the puzzle: the idea that the Native Americans and the English colonists got along splendidly.


The Myth of Anglo-Native Cooperation

In 1621, the English colonists wanted to give thanks for surviving a terrible First Winter in the New World. Governor William Bradford ordered his men to hunt some wildfowl to cook at the feast. Massasoit, one of the sachems (leaders) of the local Wampanoag tribe, heard about the feast and brought a tribute of five deer to present to the governor. This was a sign that the Wampanoag respected the governor, and, by extension, the colonists he governed. Then Massasoit and many of his tribe members joined the English in their feasting, which lasted for 3 days.

Sounds perfectly cordial and lovely, right? Unfortunately, this feast was probably more like a wary meeting than a jolly mixer between ethnic groups. It was probably difficult for the colonists and Natives to communicate with each other, and the colonists were famously nervous about Native American dress, behavior, and habits. Even their methods of cooking food were different.

Similarly, the Wampanoag were probably suspicious of the colonists. In their first few months in the New World, the English hadn't treated the Wampanoag very well: members of their colony had "borrowed" corn and stolen personal items from the Natives. So this meeting between Massasoit and Governor Bradford may have been an attempt towards cordial relations between the two groups.

That's not to say that all interactions between the Natives and the colonists were negative. Earlier that spring, the Wampanoag had helped the English plant corn. This is where Squanto, the one Native we do learn about in elementary school, comes in. He taught the English how to deal with American soil and how to fertilize the corn, as well as what plants would grow well with it. After a long, harsh winter, the English were most likely relieved to have a friendly guide to this new land.

In the end, this 1621 Thanksgiving did not create peaceful relations between the colonists and the Wampanoag. It did not lead to annual feasts between the two groups--we've already seen that the colonists didn't approve of annual holidays. What's more, things steadily deteriorated between Natives and colonists until 1675, when King Philip's War broke out. After a bloody, vicious war, the English soundly defeated the Wampanoag forces and enslaved many of their women and children. The colonists then became the undisputed rulers of the Massachusetts Bay region.

The early conflicts between Natives and colonists were some of my favorite topics when I taught US History. They're a sobering example of how two groups were absolutely unable to understand each other, and therefore declared war on each other. It's heartbreaking to study the true history of the early colonies, because there are so many other stories like this one.

And though the Natives and the colonists were ultimately unable to cooperate with each other, their foodways still influenced each other. Colonial cooking bears the marks of Squanto's early efforts. Whenever colonial recipes call for cornmeal, they call it "indian meal," probably because they associated corn with the Natives who taught them how to grow it. So this pudding is a mixture of Old World and New, of English pudding and Native ingredients.

our full historical Thanksgiving feast (pudding in the foreground)

Indian Pudding
(slightly adapted from Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie)

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 cups milk
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 300 F. Grease a medium ovenproof dish.

Whisk together the cornmeal and water in a small bowl until smooth. Scald 1 1/2 cups of the milk in a medium saucepan (heat until bubbles form on the surface) and whisk in the cornmeal mixture. Boil for 15 minutes until the mixture is thick. Remove from heat.

Beat the egg in a small bowl, and add several spoonfuls of the cornmeal mixture to the egg until it's smooth. Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan. Add the sugar, molasses, butter, salt, and spices. Pour into the prepared dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the dish from the oven and pour the remaining 1/2 cup of milk over the top. Don't stir it; just let it cover the top of the pudding. Bake for 2 more hours, until the pudding is set. Serve warm.

The "First" Thanksgiving (II)

This week and next, I'm exploring some of the myths about the First Thanksgiving. We've discussed how the Pilgrims were not, in fact, Pilgrims (they had much fancier terms for themselves back in 1621). We've looked at a bizarre recipe for sour stewed pumpkin. Today let's talk about the biggest myth of all: the story of Thanksgiving itself.

We like to think of the original Thanksgiving as a homey, elaborate feast out on the grounds of the new Plymouth colony. There are colonists and Native Americans dining together at long wooden tables, and little English children playing games with the Native children in the woods. The tables are groaning with pies, mashed potatoes, and roast turkeys. And at some point during the feast, the colonists thank God for their good fortune and count their blessings.

But that's not how it really went.


The Myth of Thanksgiving

Having survived a dreadful first winter, the English focused on building their village and planting crops. By the fall of 1621, they had a decent harvest of corn and other crops. It was an English tradition to celebrate the harvest with a big feast, so the English colonists probably decided to hold a similar, secular feast. Governor William Bradford decided to mark the successful harvest with three days of feasting somewhere between September and November of 1621. He sent some men out to hunt "wildfowl," or geese and ducks. Massasoit, a sachem (leader) of the Wampanoag, brought 90 of his men and other members of his tribe to join in the feasting at Plymouth, which lasted for three days.

However, this didn't become an annual event for the colonists. Remember, the Separatists didn't believe in traditional holidays. They did believe in the concept of "thanksgiving," a day where they thanked God for sparing them from some specific, dreadful fate, like a flood or a drought. They celebrated by reciting psalms, praying, and listening to sermons. There was probably food involved, but no special emphasis on feasting. So there were probably few Christian undertones to the harvest feast that took place in 1621.

The first religious "thanksgiving" to mark God's favor didn't occur until 1623, when the Separatists thanked God for ending a drought. But there was no feast mentioned in this account.

The original 1621 feast had a stronger spiritual undertone to the Wampanoag, who believed in thanking the Creator for food and good fortune throughout the year. The time between September 21 and November 9 was known as Keepunumuk, or the Wampanoag harvest time. So interestingly, "Thanksgiving" as we think of it today may have had its annual roots in Wampanoag tradition.

But it took some time for Thanksgiving to actually become a formal holiday for Anglo-Americans. It wasn't until the late 18th century that it had become an annual holiday, celebrated regionally. And not until 1863 did Thanksgiving become a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale. Though well-intentioned, poor Mrs. Hale based her campaign on the erroneous assumption that the 1621 harvest feast was the "First Thanksgiving."

So at the heart of one of America's favorite holidays is a giant misconception.

Similarly, no one's certain that the colonists ate roast turkey at the 1621 feast. Yes, they ate "wildfowl," but that meant geese and ducks in the lingo of the day. There were turkeys in the Wampanoag lands at the time, so most historians think it's okay to include turkey in a recreated 1621 meal.

But I'm stubborn, so I cooked the fowl more likely to be at the feast: duck. I'd made duck only once before, and it had come out dry and tough, so I was hesitant. But this recipe, which involves boiling the duck in water before finishing it off in the oven, makes for a tender, juicy meat, mildly flavored with pepper and onion. The red wine sauce adds a sweet note to the rich taste of the duck. If you've never cooked duck before, this is so the recipe to start with.

Roast Duck with Cranberries and Wine
(slightly adapted from Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie)

For the duck:
1 4- or 5-pound duck
2 1/2 tsp salt
10 black peppercorns
1 onion, quartered
1/2 cup parsley leaves and stems, roughly chopped
2 onions, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

For the sauce:
2 cups red wine
1/3 cup parsley leaves, chopped
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup raisins, chopped
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/4 cup cranberries, chopped
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter, divided

Rinse the duck and remove any giblets and/or the neck from the inner cavity. Place the duck in a large pot (6-8 quarts) along with 2 tsp of the salt, peppercorns, quartered onion, and parsley. Pour in enough cold water to cover and bring to a simmer over high heat. Cover and simmer the duck for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Place the sliced onions in a roasting pan and remove the duck from the pot. Reserve the broth.* Sprinkle remaining 1/2 tsp of salt and the ground pepper over the duck and place it on top of the onions in the roasting pan. Roast at 400 F for 25 - 30 minutes, until clear juices run out from the duck when pricked with a knife.

Place 1 cup of the broth in a saucepan, along with the wine, parsley, ginger, raisins, mace, and sugar. Boil over medium-high heat until reduced to a syrupy mixture, about 20 minutes. When sauce is ready, stir in the cranberries. Add the butter one tbsp at a time. Serve the duck with the sauce at the table.


*Department of Not Wasting Food: You can reduce the remaining broth and freeze it as a stock to use later.

The "First" Thanksgiving (I)

With Thanksgiving little more than a week away, I've had cooking on the brain. No wonder--it's the only national holiday entirely devoted to food (plus, well, giving thanks). Is there anything more wonderful? I decided to honor the holiday by investigating its historic roots.

(And, as you know, I can't leave well enough alone.)

The results were fascinating. There are so many myths built up around this holiday that when you strip it down to its historical truth, there isn't much that's recognizable. We might as well call it The Thanksgiving that Wasn't. This week I'll be examining some of the bigger myths, along with recipes I used to cook a historical Thanksgiving for me and Josh (brave man).


The Myth of the Pilgrims

The English colonists who settled on Massachusetts Bay in 1620, the ones who famously landed the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock, weren't Pilgrims. They didn't call themselves Pilgrims at all. Instead they thought of themselves in two separate groups: Separatists, the religious ones who just wanted to worship freely, and "Strangers," the secular ones who wanted a fresh start in the New World. What's more, the Separatists wanted to be so separate from the English church that they refused to celebrate traditional holidays. So they began building Plymouth, their first village, on Christmas Day.

That First Winter in the New World was so awful that half of the original Mayflower passengers died. (There's an excellent portrayal of the harsh New World winters in Terrence Malick's The New World, which is about Virginia.) In the spring, the Native Wampanoag took pity on them and helped them plant corn. Squanto, a Native who'd been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Spain before making his way back to the New World, had learned English during his captivity and helped the colonists communicate with the Wampanoag. With the help of the local tribes, the colonists planted native crops like corn, squash, and pumpkins (called "pompions" back then), as well as English crops they'd brought with them.

Not surprisingly, most of the native crops fared much better than the English crops.

The colonists were actually intimately familiar with pumpkins; the vegetable had been introduced to Europe following the Columbian Exchange. They were sort of obsessed with pumpkins. They even wrote songs about how dependable pumpkins were. I am 100% serious. Stewed pumpkin was a staple in England, and the English just kept on cooking it in colonial New England.

Therefore, stewed pumpkin was definitely served at the 1621 harvest feast, and I replicated a traditional recipe for our own dinner. This version is sort of cheating because you use canned pumpkin rather than stewing a pumpkin over a fire all day, but you get the same effect. However, the strangest thing about this recipe is its liberal use of apple cider vinegar, which lends the pumpkin a sour sort of flavor. Josh and I were not at all sure about this. But you'll have to tell me what you think.

Stewed Pumpkin
(adapted from Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie)

2 cups canned pumpkin
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt

Heat all ingredients in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring to incorporate. Cook until the pumpkin is heated through, about 5-7 minutes.

Works Cited: Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie by Kathleen Curtin, Sandra L. Oliver, and Plimoth Plantation. Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday by James W. Baker.

This meal brought to you by Christopher Columbus

Ah, Columbus Day. I'm not sure there's any other secular holiday more filled with angst and mixed feelings than this one.

When I was little, we learned the basics of Columbus Day. We sang that catchy song, the one that goes, "In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..." and read picture books about the brave Spanish navigator who discovered the Americas. To me, Columbus Day always brought to mind the classic image of a stuffy European man, dressed circa the Renaissance, talking pleasantly with smiling natives who are wearing almost nothing. That's how it was taught in elementary school, at any rate.

Turns out the story went a little differently. It wasn't until middle school that I heard the first rumblings of discontent. We read Joy Hakim's entertaining histories, A History of Us, and she hinted that Christopher Columbus was not the hero he was made out to be. And in high school, I learned the full truth. Columbus treated his crew harshly, lied about who saw land first and what they found there, and kidnapped natives to lead him to gold. Later European explorers carried on his legacy by enslaving the native populations of the Americas, killing those who didn't cooperate, and laying the groundwork for future colonization.

Yet other changes were not as obvious. In the spirit of cultural exchange, European explorers took examples of American food, animals, goods, and people back to their kings and queens. In return, they brought European crops, animals, and goods to their new colonies, hoping to replicate European life on foreign soil. There's a fascinating book about how British colonists in Virginia and New England permanently changed the American landscape, simply by using European farming techniques and importing cows and pigs who dug up the soil. Old World crops and animals mixed with New World in both hemispheres. But perhaps the most devastating change was completely invisible: the syphilis, smallpox, and other Old World diseases that spread silently through the Americas. Without built-in immunity to these diseases, the native populations were decimated. Europeans could conquer the land simply by setting foot on it.

This massive exchange of culture, crops, animals, people, and disease was termed the Columbian Exchange by historian Alfred W. Crosby in the 1970s. Not only did it permanently change the newly-"discovered" lands of the Americas, it changed the Old World, too. Today we grow food and raise animals in lands where they didn't originate. It's been such a long time, and they've adapted so well, that most of the time we don't even notice.

So, because I can't leave well enough alone, I decided to cook a Columbian Exchange dinner. What kind of meal could I make using ingredients found mostly at my farmers' market? What would that tell me about the extent of the Exchange?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

After collecting our goods at the farmers' market and rounding out the ingredients at our local grocery, Josh and I made:

• Roasted squash and shallot salad
• Pork chops with roasted apples and onions
• German chocolate hazelnut cake

Granted, a little fancier than our normal weekend dinners, but none of the ingredients were particularly exotic. But let's look at how those three dishes break down. Where did their ingredients originate?

While our dishes were certainly heavy on the Old World influence, it's telling that some of the main ingredients originated in the New World. There's thought that chickens might have originated in both the New World and the Old World (or, really, developed before the Americas were cut off from Eurasia).

The other interesting thing about this is how many of the above ingredients I was able to get at our farmers' market. Providence is big about buying local, and from the Pat's Pastured pork chops to shallots and onions, from apples to sage, a lot of the "Old World" ingredients are now grown "locally" in Rhode Island. I say "locally" because, yes, they are grown in Rhode Island. At this point, for example, apples are practically a native species. But before the Columbian Exchange, you never would have found them here. And that's a sobering reminder of all the other horrific and massive changes that occurred because of it.

Tell me, is there anything on this list that surprises you? And what do you think of Christopher Columbus?

Works cited: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond. 1493: Uncovering the World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby, via National Center for History in the Schools instructional resource Three Worlds Meet: The Columbian Encounter and its Legacy.

Fourth of July Kuchen tarts

Right now I'm in Cleveland, enjoying a week with family and quiet mornings of blazing heat. While I love Providence, it's wonderful to escape from a city (even a small one) for a time. I get to remember what it's like to walk down the street hearing only the cooing of birds and the rustle of wind through the trees.

Plus, there's nothing like spending holidays with family, the Fourth of July included. We spent yesterday morning with my aunt and uncle and cousins, enjoying the local parade (and trying to stay cool).

Then we escaped back to the dark, cool house and set to the important work of preparing the evening barbecue. And because I can never ignore an excuse to bake, I made kuchen tarts.

My sister Lissa just finished her first year of a master's program in art history, and she spent her June taking German to pass her language qualifications. She is now the German expert of the family, and she tells me that kuchen (pronounced KU-khuhn, not KU-ken) means "cake" in German.

I made cake tarts!

There is absolutely nothing wrong or indulgent about that sentence.

(Lissa also speaks to me regularly in German. This is frustrating for two reasons: 1. I don't speak German, aside from the random phrases I've picked up from war movies. And 2. We used to speak to each other in Franglais, a broken form of French + English. She has left our Franglais behind for more exotic languages.)

Linguistic regrets aside, these tarts are amazing, as one might expect from something called "cake tarts."

They're made from a basic coffeecake-type dough, yeasty and sugary with a hint of nutmeg. Once you've let the dough rise, you can make all sorts of magical kuchen, from cakes filled with cinnamon and sugar to those filled with crushed poppy seeds and fried to perfection. Lissa tells me that modern kuchen aren't very much like those described in The "Settlement" Cook Book, but hey, it was 1903. We're using recipes that came over from Germany back in the 1840s and 1850s.

The kuchen tarts I chose feature a dollop of jam in the middle, perfect for Fourth of July color-coordination. I alternated between strawberry and blueberry jam to make a red and blue theme. Sadly, some of the jam melted off the tarts in the oven.

Later I discovered that you're probably supposed to put the biscuits in a cake pan so they sort of meld together like pull-apart coffeecake. But those are the mistakes you make when you're working from old-fashioned, unclear recipes that say only "place close together in a buttered pan."

But despite these drawbacks, the tarts were still delicious.

And my family only made a few jokes about the pronunciation of "kuchen."


Almost Kuchen Tarts
(adapted from The "Settlement" Cook Book)

For the dough:
1 cup milk
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of nutmeg
1 beaten egg yolk (save the white for another purpose)
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 package active dry yeast)
3 1/2 - 4 cups flour

For the filling:
1/2 cup your choice of jam (I used 1/4 cup blueberry and 1/4 cup strawberry)

Scald the milk over medium heat (this means to heat it until small bubbles form around the edge, then remove from heat). Let cool to lukewarm. In a small bowl, mix the yeast and 1/2 tsp of the sugar, plus 1/4 cup of the lukewarm milk. Set in a warm place to proof. (You'll know it's working when the mixture puffs up like a sponge.)

Meanwhile, add the butter, the rest of the sugar, the salt, and nutmeg to the rest of the milk in the pan. Stir in the beaten egg yolk. Add the proofed yeast mixture and combine thoroughly. Add the flour one cup at a time. You may only need 3 1/2 cups, but add as much flour as you need to make a smooth, elastic dough. Transfer the dough to a large bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in bulk. (This usually takes about an hour, but if it's as hot as it was yesterday, it may only take twenty minutes.)

When the dough is ready, punch down and transfer to a floured board. Roll out the dough to about one inch thickness, and cut with a biscuit cutter. Place the biscuits on a buttered cookie sheet and let rise until light, about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 F and set out the jam filling. When the biscuits have risen, poke a hole in the center of each biscuit and drop in a spoonful of jam. Once you've filled all the biscuits, bake at 425 F for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 F and bake for another 5-10 minutes, until browned.