Carrying On Tradition

Traditions are what connect us to our ancestors and the essence of who we are. Culinary traditions are even more binding, tying us to the dishes our antecedents made. It is more so in the Japanese and Japanese-American communities. They not only revere their ancestors but carry on with ancient recipes.

Hannah Kirschner, the creator of Sweets And Bitters, a combination of blog and cookbook, wrote about the Sasaki family for yesterday's New York Times's Christmas Day Food issue. The Sasakis have been here for over a century, first arriving to the Seattle area in 1908.The city was a boomtown then , catering to young men looking to make a fortune< He only went back to Japan once  to acquire a bride,Hisaye, They raised four kids who carried on their traditions as well as taking lessons in the art of Japanese flower arranging - ikebana as well as taking Japanese lessons. Their lives were disrupted by  the interment camps of the Second World War. Everything related to their nationality was banned, especially the foods.It changed after the war when they could return to traditional foods , using the  laquered natsume, the wooden canisters used in tea ceremonies. Cousins have come over to use their grandmother's fans to cool the rice used in the dishes. For a while in the Nineties , the family stopped with the celebrations yet a cousin , Ron Sasaki, brought it back. He bakes a snapper or rock cod to symbolizing the return to the homeland . His father did the same thing for earlier family dinners

The New Year's foods are comforting as with the ozoni, or mochi soup. Mochi is a big thing right now. The Sasakis use the plain however, not the sweet usually associated with ice cream. There's also Japanese veggies such as mizuna, Japanese mustard greens and golf ball sized satoimo or taro root.Mirin , a kind of sweet rice wine is added along with yuzu the lemony Asian citrus. Chicken and kamaboko, a kind of steamed fish cake add the flavor too and protein. Rice is always present in Japanese cooking.Mochi rice, a more glutinous version is used in sekihan, red bean sticky rice. This dish is usually made the day before with adzuki,, a mung bean that sort of looks like a kidney bean. It is labor intensive with the rice having to be rinsed several times. The Sasakis also make Nishimi  dashi braised vegetables with chicken. This is a light stew that has all the best of Japanese veggies. There is daikon, the long , white radish used generously in Japanese cooking and kabocha squash. Shoyu, or Japanese soy sauce is used here for flavoring.

Culinary traditions define who we are. They have been defining the Sasaki family for 111 years. The dishes, lovingly made with the same ingredients their ancestors used, tell who the family is.

A Christmas Full Of Treats

Happiest of Christmas to my readers from all over the world. Hopefully you h.ave had the best of your family's recipes and a plethora of Christmas treats and goodies.

A Very Merry Christmas

The holidays are for making your favorite foods. I made my Mom's famed tomato sauce with the best pasta in the world - Garofalo's.
Have a very Merry Christmas and always thank the God  you believe in for the good food and good company at your table.

Merry Merry 

Christmas!!!!!!

And Then There's Plan B

Most of the times the best of holiday plans get messed up. That's kind of what happened to me when I just didn't have the time to bake, frost and decorate my Winterscape Cake. What happens when the best of menu plans go awry? Quickly leap to Plan B.

Every home chef should have an alternative plan ready to be deployed. I did, with this

Aldi's dessert saving panettone trio which has three minis : Classic, Tiramisu and Cranberry.  These can easily be toasted and served with marscapone or butter. If I didn't have these I might have tried Nigella Lawson's no churn salted caramel ice cream. This is just mixing dulce de leche with whole cream and flavoring with bourbon and flaky sea salt (think Malden's).I could also whip up a quick chocolate mousse using Cool Whip and Instant chocolate pudding. It's an easy dinner - penne with crockpot sauce so the meal in itself is flavorful. Dessert would only be gilding the lily. Just remember that whatever sweet you have  around can be made into some kind of dessert. Trifle is the easiest. You probably have most of the ingredients. Just add a good slug of brandy and it's a boozy fun end to a Christmas meal.

The same philosophy goes for the main meal. There are ways to fix a holiday cooking mistake. Those hams or beef roasts sometimes get burned. Cut away the burned part , cut up the roast into pieces and continue cooking. If the entire thing is completely charred then first put the pot into a larger pan than it. Fill this with ice cold water  to cool it and after a while taste the meat. If it's still bad, then emphasize the sides as the main meal. Rummage through the freezer quick or ask a guests (Namely family and friends who will help out in a pinch) what they have. You may have to cobble together frozen burgers and nuggets but at least it's something. If you still want to serve the main dish, then cut away as much as the burnt  roast as possible then stir fry it with veggies such as tomatoes from the salad or the Brussels sprouts. Add a dash of some flavorful spice like turmeric or cumin to minimize the burn taste. If your holiday turkey  is too dry then boil up some chicken bouillon with butter and pour over the bird to moisten up the meat. If the gravy is horrible add chicken broth to give it more flavor. Sides nor up to par? Sprinkle with Parmesan to make  them more palatable. Another idea just serve more salad with the along with plenty of bread.

There always has to be a Plan B when it comes to holiday baking and cooking. Just be prepared for whatever your kitchen and fate throws you. You can get through it and still have a pretty tasty holiday dinner.

It's Cookie Time

There's a reason why some home chefs hate holiday  baking. It's just hopping back and forth out of the kitchen every ten minutes to get  batch after batch out of the oven. The end product is worth it though.

I did cheat and use my go to Betty Crocker's Cookie Mix.

As you know I'm more of a Duncan Hines baker than a Betty Crocker one but I find her cookie mixes to be easy to make and delicious too. Of course they're not scratch cookies but you can add your own spins on them. This year is it was a dash of cinnamon. I wanted the cookies to be more festive with red and green sprinkles but couldn't find any . At all. I decided on cinnamon to give them a snickerdoodle vibe without all that extra sugar.

The mix only requires one egg and a stick of butter or margarine. I used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter for a semi vegan cookie. After about ten minutes of a good beating the dough was ready to be dropped onto the sheets.

I used parchment paper which makes the baking process that much more easier (however make it a point to reuse the sheets at least two or three times. Parchment paper is silicon based and does not break down in landfills. Reuse the sheets afterwards anyway you can.).As you can see I dusted plain cinnamon on the unbaked drops.This required pinching cinnamon on each one from a cupped palm full of cinnamon.

This is the first, rather pale batch.

This is what the entire batch looked like.

As you can seen some were more heavily dusted than others. The taste was lovely with the cinnamon on top and I know I'd make them this way again.It was just batch after batch after batch. The end result was thirty-six cinnamon dusted snaps - a pretty good yield.

If you're up to it make your Christmas cookies. If you're using a mix put your own spin on them to make them yours. it'll result in a lot of work with a very tasty end product.

A Slice Of Wine Country Wine Country Table

Amidst all the holiday stress it's nice to escape, especially to a region where wine rules. For those of us who can't take a quick trip there's Wine Country Table With Recipes That Celebrate  California's Sustainable Harvest that salutes all wines and produce Californian,. It is a gorgeous combination of a coffee table book and cookbook. The pictures are amazing . The recipes even more so.

Janet Fletcher wrote this interesting book (Rizzoli Publishing 2019) on the various sections of the California vineyard regions. It is a beautiful collection of pictures worthy of just looking at but also worthy trying out the recipes. Ms. Fletcher has written a variety of other cookbooks, from Yogurt : Sweet and Savory Recipes For Breakfast Lunch and Dinner to Fresh From The Farmer's Market.  She has won  a James Beard award for food journalism as well as teaching cooking and cheese appreciation classes across the country.(She also writes a  column on cheese for Specialty Food magazine and has created her own weekly blog Cheese Planet). Her descriptions of the various regions from the Napa Valley to SoCal are lush and inviting. The accompanying photos are too. I loved just looking at the pictures of the wineries and fields along with the beautifully photographed dishes. Another reason to like the book is that it's not just grapes. Ms. Fletcher also includes sections on pears,plums, asparagus , and even olive oil along with other California crops. These are incorporated in the many recipes too. Flowers are included too,  as mentioned in the Resendiz Brothers Protea Growers. The protea is a spiky pink flower that grows exclusively in the California desert.The book is also good for those planning Spring wine tasting trips because wineries are highlighted in great detail. I would love to visit the Francis Ford Coppola Winery which also has movie memorabilia to view along with good  on site restaurants and a relaxing pool.

The recipes reflect each area and the crops harvested there. The section on pears has an interesting mixed chicory salad with pears and blue cheese. I want to make a variation of this for my Christmas Eve dinner.Since California is home to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, Ms. Fletcher includes a  Gilroy garlic and potato soup, another must make , that has Spanish smoked paprika and saffron perfuming and flavoring it. Of course avocados figure in this as well. There are three recipes, each perfect. One is Dungeness Crab and Avocado Toastados, a nod to California's Mexican past along with Grass Fed Burger with Avocado and Chipotle Mayonnaise and Scallop Crudo with Avocado and Pink Peppercorns. The states multi-ethnic groups are also represented in these recipes. There is pho, the Vietnamese soup, brought by the many Vietnamese immigrants who settled in 1980's California and pizza, a nod to the many Italian vintners who brought the industry to the state. Desserts are here as well. A refreshing dish would be the strawberry sherbet with sparkling wine recipe. It's a frozen slush of strawberries and kirsch splashed with sparkling wine. I would love to try the apple galette with honey ice cream and the Zinfandel poached pears with marscapone cheese. A plus to all the recipes is the suggestion of what wine would go best with them.

Wine Country Table: With Recipes That Celebrate California's Sustainable Harvest is the perfect escape when winter and the holidays become too much. Relish the lush pictures of fields of California's best crops, read about the different recipes and wineries. Enjoy this book - this literary vacation from 
all that stress.

Chiles Under Fire

New Mexico is famed and known for its' chiles. They define the state, and provide it with most of its' income. Unfortunately the crop is now under pressure thanks to climate change. Like so many other crops , it's under the threat of climate change.

Amelia Nierenberg, a regular contributor to The New York Times  Food section wrote about this dilemma in yesterday's Food issue. Chile peppers have long been a New Mexican product, like what blueberries are to Maine and peaches to Georgia. Now climate change is threatening the crops grown in the Hatch Valley area. Excessive heat , a symptom of it, can blister the fruits' delicate skin and interrupt the growth cycle.  The temps have gone from 95 to 100  - too scorching for the plants. They must have hot - but not excessively hot  - day and cool nights, usually 55. Other crops have moved to cooler climates but trying to transplant the chiles will prove hard. The only terrain that can give them a dichotomy of temperatures is a mountainous one which is what the state is. The only other state that comes close is Colorado , which  is directly north and has the highest mean elevation of all the states. Many chili farms have moved there already. However there are problems. Colorado's water and soil are different than New Mexico's. Purists can taste the difference in flavor and texture.  The Hatch Valley grown ones are crisper and more balanced in taste.


The chilis aren't the only peppers in trouble in the state where there are 150 other varieties grown. There have been problems for the Pueblos and Rio Grandes kinds to name a few. There have been droughts. In 2018 the Elephant Butte reservoir  was only at three per cent capacity. Even the Rio Grande which divides the state in two, had its' riverbed cracked in some places. The lack of water has caused crops to wither. Luckily there was a snowy winter and a cooler spring which led to the reservoir to have a twenty-five per cent capacity. It is, however , just a band aid, New Mexico is at the top of what's known as water insecure states.There will be a time when water won't be accessible to the state's population, whether for residential or commercial use. Already eighty to one hundred per cent of the state's water supply is used. Some farms have switched to pumping water from underneath, relying on aquifers. Yet that's too expensive and too salty which could ruin the peppers taste. What will the future hold? Ninety-five year old June Rutherford, doyenne of Franzoy Farms and recently crowned queen of The Great New Mexico Chile Taste Off feels the era of New Mexico chiles is over with. The crops are not as flourishing as they were in her father's time.

Could a crop gain endangered status? That may help the New Mexico chiles. If not they will be  rare   - and expensive - and will chili lovers be able to afford them?