Gherkins & Tomatoes will be back after New Year’s. I wish all of you a happy holiday season, no matter what or how you celebrate!
Categories: Christmas, New Year's Day, Photography • Tags: Christmas, New Year's, Photography
I dedicate this post to the children and the parents, everywhere, especially Newtown, Connecticut. Every year, in December, a marvelous thing happens. At least I think it’s wonderful. And not for the reasons you might think. Christmas comes around, bringing with it a sense of magic in the air, some thing that I felt as a child. And lest you think me not sensitive to the cultural experiences of those who do not celebrate Christmas, I say that no matter […]
Categories: Christmas, Editorials, Festivals, Photography • Tags: Children, Christmas, Gingerbread, Magic
I love Christmas. Yes, I really do. For I see Christmas as a time that allows us – in these rather sterile, rigid United States, anyway – to cut loose and string up gaudy gee-gaws all over the house. To transcend the daily. To feel the seasonal and mythic cycles of past times. To celebrate the sheer miracle of being alive. That, to me, is what festivals mean, be they football games or saints’ days or other special days. All […]
Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Holidays, Photography, Reference • Tags: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Cookbooks, Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas, Great Scandinavian Baking Book, Rose Levy Beranbaum
…visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. ~~Clement C. Moore~~ ” ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors to Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons et Tomates! I will “see” you again on January 2. ‘Tis soon the season to be jolly. And to bake cookies, the sugarplums of today. I’m about to head out to the kitchen to do just that right now. For many Americans, especially those of Northern European descent, Christmas without special […]
Categories: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies • Tags: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, Gingerbread man, Recipes
Photo credit: Robyn Lee A while ago, I promised you a short list of facsimile/translated French cookbooks. The following list represents a number of old French-language cookbooks translated into English that you’ll find freely available on the Internet, something quite helpful when you’ve dropped your last holiday dollar on the fixings for Beef Wellington and a gilty box of exquisite marrons glacés. But I don’t need that box of candied sweetmeats; the words of people long dead taste better than […]
Categories: Christmas, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Paintings, Photography, Reference • Tags: Chestnuts, Culinary History, Facsimile Cookbooks, Food History, Le Ménagier de Paris, Medieval cookbooks
I have to tell you that the cookbook lists that come out every year around Christmas time drive me crazy. Like you’re really going to savor, say, 101 Recipes Using ___________? (Fill in the blank.) Or you’re going to run out and buy another Italian cookbook when you already own somewhere in the neighborhood of 225? (I do. Really.) And since I am an unabashed Francophile, I cringe over the lack of French cookbooks on these lists. So I decided […]
Categories: Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Coco Jobard, Cuisine grand-mère, Culinary History, Food History, French cuisine, Georges Blanc, Giada de Laurentiis, Julia Child, Laura Calder, Lydie Marshall, Marie-Pierre Moine, Mario Batali, Stéphane Reynaud, Wini Maranville
MAY YOU FEAST WELL AND HAPPILY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON…
Categories: Christmas, Photography • Tags: Christmas, Food Photography, Joyeux Noël, Photos d'aliments
David Lebovitz — a whiz of a pastry chef, cookbook author, and food blogger — got me thinking this morning about the meaning of all the glitz and glitter out there, if only I could just get out of my icy driveway. David is giving away a set of Le Creuset cookware, a gift to him from the French cookware company Le Creuset. To sign up for the random drawing, all you have to do is comment on his post […]
Categories: Cakes, Chocolate, Christmas, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bûche de Noël, Charity, Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, David Lebovitz, France, French Cooking, Gateaux, Joyeux Noël, Le Creuset, Partners in Health
With each gust of drafty air from the front door, the candles shimmer, and the flickering light scintillates off blood-red wine glasses and the golden gilt rimming them. Your mouth rounds in an “O” as you see the table for the first time. The sight never fails to cast its spell as, for a brief moment, the magic sweeps through you. All these small moments add up to the persistent memories looming over every Christmas Future. Yes, you might have […]
Categories: Christmas, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, France, French cuisine, French Food Blogs, Lucy's Kitchen Notebook, MyFrenchKitchen
During this Christmas season, Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomates will be in a state of flux, assisting Père Noël and St. Nicolas with the festivities here, as well as hibernating and storing up fat (information) for future posts. Needless to say, posting may become sporadic until January 6 (Epiphany). I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, full of delicious dishes and fine company, no coal in your stockings, and time to enjoy life. Joyeux Noël!!
Fried dough, a universal love. Grease, sugar, what more could you dream of? In the south of France, when you want fried dough, you’ll get oreillettes. As with any traditional holiday dish, each cook has his or her version. The signature taste with these oreillettes is the orange flower water. In New Orleans, oreillettes come with a splash of rum, possibly because it was available and because orange flower water wasn’t. Oreillettes (English version) 3 eggs 2 T. orange flower […]
Categories: Christmas, Cooking, Desserts, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Oreillettes, Provence, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
In France, you’ll find sablés, buttery cookies that originated in Normandy. (You know they had all that butter to get rid of there.) Most sablés are sweet. But in Provence, for the famous Thirteen Desserts of Christmas Eve, cooks prefer savory little disks perfumed with fennel and cumin. Cumin? How did cumin get into mix? Apparently cumin arrived in Marseilles in spice shipments during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Originating in the eastern Mediterranean, cumin didn’t have to travel […]
Categories: Baking, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Spices • Tags: Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Provence, Sablés, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
A Provençal gros souper (Christmas Eve dinner) would not be correct without some nougat noir to challenge the skill of your dentist and possibly lay waste to your dental work. In other words, nougat noir can be a bête [bite!] noire*, if you’re not careful. For nougat noir is a hard candy, not the pillowy stuff you might be thinking of. Several types of nougat exist, thanks to the Arabs and the enterprising people of sixteenth- century Montélimar in France. You will […]
Categories: Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Honey • Tags: Black Nougat, Christmas, Cooking, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Nougat Noir, Provence, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
Gorgeous, huh? Yummy? You bet! And the best part is that, with a quick flick of a switch and your wrist, you too can make these beauties, part of the Thirteen Desserts of a Provençal Christmas. Mendiants au Chocolat Noir ou Blanc Makes about 75 – 100 candies, depending on size of circles 1 pound dark bittersweet chocolate (60 – 70% cacao) or good-quality white chocolate Candied citron Dried figs, cut into small squares Almonds, shelled, blanched if desired, toasted* […]
Categories: Baking, Chocolate, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Les Quatre Mendiants, Provence, Recipes, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
The truth is, the dishes associated with Provence’s Thirteen Desserts abound with religious symbolism. Take the Four Beggars, or Les Quatre Mendiants, which symbolize something that we in the secular West have basically lost, a sense of awe and fear about the natural world and all that is in it. The Thirteen Desserts likely represented a way to ensure a righteous, blessed life, free from the challenges of living in times of strife and great uncertainty. Although today we might […]
Categories: Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Monasteries, Nuts • Tags: Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Monasteries, Monks, Provence, Quatre Mendiants, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
Christmas cakes were baking, the famous pompou and fougasse, as they were called, dear to the hearts of the children of old Provence. ~~ Christmas in Legend and Story A Book for Boys and Girls I’ve always loved the “Jacob’s Ladder” look of fougasse. The lacy leaf-like lattice reminds me of the connection between bread and art, with that unspoken tie to pagan sacrifice, manifested in people- and animal-shaped holiday breads and sweets. And, not surprisingly, fougasse is one of the […]
Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Olives • Tags: Bread, Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, La pompe à l'huîle, Pain, Treize Desserts
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Food Photograohy, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, Provence, Thirteen Desserts
The color certainly captures your attention, doesn’t it? Such a glossy — almost neon — orange. When I was a kid, I always wondered if anyone else ever got a wrinkly tangerine bumping around in their Christmas stocking. At some point along the way, I found out that the Victorians were big on citrus fruit at Christmas and since my great-grandmother was obviously from that era, it all began to make some sense, why my mother seemed to be carrying […]
Categories: Christmas, Citrus, France, French Cooking • Tags: Christmas, Citrus, France, French Cooking, Provence, Tangerines, Thirteen Desserts
Ugh. Citron. I’ll bet that’s what you’re thinking. I know, because that’s what I thought when it dawned on me that citron (Citrus medica) really counted as one of the Thirteen Desserts of Provence. You’ve no doubt seen (and eaten) the chewy, rock-like squares of “citron” sold in your local grocery store, there to be entombed in a noisome Christmas fruitcake. “What on earth were they thinking?” That’s all I could say about those people in the past who added […]
Categories: Christmas, Citrus, France, French Cooking • Tags: Candied Citron, Christmas, Citron, France, French Cooking, Thirteen Desserts
As I watch the sun, feeble in the dark morning skies at this time of the year, I think of the sunflower-yellow oranges my parents just brought me from Florida. What can I do to preserve a little of that sunlight as we head toward the shortest day and longest night of the year? Why, obviously, I should make Vin d’Orange, perfect for the Thirteen Desserts I’m writing about for the Christmas season. As you might guess, a bit of […]
Categories: Christmas, France, French Cooking, Wine • Tags: Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Provence, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts, Vin d'Orange
I love culinary traditions … and usually I don’t mind cooking all the foods associated with upholding those traditions. Like Thanksgiving dinner, for example. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole (from scratch, mind you), pumpkin pie with whipped cream (crust handmade just prior to baking), and sweet potato casserole (no marshmallows). Mac and cheese, too, if you’re a true Southerner. Culinary traditions pin you to your past, or at least allow you to tie your apron […]
Categories: Christmas, France, French Cooking, Paintings • Tags: Advent, Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Provence, Réveillon, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts
The traditional English Christmas goose didn’t really make it over here on the other side of the Atlantic, chiefly because the native (and meatier) turkey prevailed. Neither did the other traditional dish of the English Christmas season — roasted boar — with its tusked furry head, mouth filled with an apple. [That's a pagan custom, incidentally, handed down since the Druids, or so some authors claim. We'll delve into that one later. After all, we have until January 6th, 2010 […]
Categories: Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Middle Ages, Poultry, Recipes • Tags: Christmas, Cookbooks, Curye on Inglysch, Goose, Recipes
“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge’!” “Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. “A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. ~~~ A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens ~~~ OK, blame it on Charles Dickens, that literary […]
Categories: Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Wine • Tags: Christmas, Cider, Eliza Acton, Honoré Balzac, Isabella Beeton, Mulled Wine, The Cook's Oracle, The Peasants, William Kitchiner
Laura Schenone, author of the soulful The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken and the scholarly (and prize-winning) A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, traveled back to Liguria for Christmas in 2007. From that trip came her perpetual Christmas gift to all of us, Pandolce. In an article in the December 2008 issue of SAVEUR Magazine, she teaches us how to make our own Pandolce in the old way, just in time for Christmas and the holiday season. Although the […]
Categories: Baking, Bread, Christmas, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Techniques • Tags: Christmas, Italian Cooking, Italy, Laura Schenone, Pan Dolce
Wassaile the trees, that they may beare You many a Plum and many a Peare: For more or lesse fruits they will bring, As you do give them Wassailing. A foot of snow presses against the front door, the presents glimmer under the Christmas tree, and Aunt Lillie’s sugar cookies lie temptingly in the old painted tin box. And the Wassail punch simmers slowly on the stove, the fragrance of cinnamon wafting through the house. On a dark, cold winter […]
Categories: Christmas, England, English Cooking, Video • Tags: Celtic Music, Christmas, England, English Cooking, Recipes, Twelfth Night, Wassail
[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
Categories: Art, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking • Tags: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Christmas, England, Wassail
We never eat fruitcake because it has rum, And one little slice puts a man on the bum. Oh, can you imagine the pitiful plight Of a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight? A man who eats fruitcake lives a terrible life. He`s mean to his children and beats on his wife. A man who eats fruitcake dies a terrible death, With the odor of raisins and rum on his breath! “Away with Rum,” Temperance Union (Aussie Band) Christmas […]
Categories: Baking, Bread, Cakes, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Fermentation • Tags: Breads, Cakes, Christmas, English Cooking, Fermentation, Fruitcakes
Peppermint flavoring, almond extract, gooey candied fruit, thick dark molasses, perfumey cardamom … the list could go mouth-wateringly on and on. Christmas cooking and Christmas baking demand many ingredients not normally used in everyday cooking. And that’s what makes the holiday season such a sheer delight for those besotted with all things culinary. But one ingredient stands out, essential in many Christmas dishes, and likely resting quietly in just about every refrigerator of every serious cook. Not because of its […]
Categories: Africa, American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Morocco, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Edna Lewis, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Smen, Southern cooking, Sugar Cookies
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton. Telegram from William Tecumseh Sherman to Abraham Lincoln, December 22, 1864 Many authors write about the austerity of American Christmas celebrations prior to the Civil War (1861 – 1865), but that’s because those writers focus on the North’s Puritan heritage. Most of our current ways — mostly Germanic in origin — of […]
Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Accomplisht Cook, American Cooking, Christmas, Civil War, Eggnog, English Cooking, Menus, Robert May, Southern, Thomas Nast, Virginia
George Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, served as the backdrop for many scrumptious dinners, cooked by Washington’s slave cooks. Just reading this menu* makes my lips twitch and my fingers itch for my wooden spoons. Note that even at the relatively late date of 1790 and independence from England, there’s a soup called King’s Soup … . It took our forebearers a long time to cease thinking of themselves as English. At least when it came to the table. An […]
Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Christmas, George Washington, Menus, MOunt Vernon, Southern cooking, Virginia
Now Christmas comes, ‘tis fit that we Should feast and sing, and merry be; Keep open house, let fiddlers play, A fig for cold, sing care away; And may they who thereat repine, On brown bread and small beer dine. Virginia Almanack 1766 To paraphrase former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: There’s the Williamsburg Christmas we ought to have and the Williamsburg Christmas we actually have. And thus are culinary myths born. Modern-day Williamsburg Christmas only faintly resembles Williamsburg Christmases […]
Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Cooking, English Cooking, Oysters, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Colonial Williamsburg, English Cooking, Southern cooking, Virginia
Dey ‘s a-wokin’ in de qua’tahs a-preparin’ fu’ de feas’, So de little pigs is feelin’ kind o’ shy. De chickens ain’t so trus’ful ez dey was, to say de leas’, An’ de wise ol’ hens is roostin’ mighty high. You could n’t git a gobblah fu’ to look you in de face– I ain’t sayin’ whut de tu’ky ‘spects is true; But hit’s mighty dange’ous trav’lin’ fu’ de critters on de place F’om de time dat log commence a […]
Categories: Africa, American Cooking, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, Menus, Pork, Recipes, Southern Food, United States, Virginia • Tags: Booker T. Washington, Cooks, Edna Lewis, Liver Pudding, Plantation Cookery, Slavery, Southern cooking, Virginia
What is now the state of Virginia boasted the first permanent English settlement in North America. Despite its rocky beginnings in 1607, the settlement eventually flourished. The first Africans arrived in 1619 and the tobacco industry began in earnest. Along with the need for cheap labor, provided by slavery, the colonialists desired nothing more than to live as English gentlemen and gentlewomen on the edge of the vast wilderness. That all this transpired thirteen years prior to the Pilgrims’ landing […]
Categories: Christmas, English Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Christmas, Cooks, George Washington, Martha Washington, Slavery, Southern cooking
Black Friday marks the first “official” day of Christmas, er, shopping, that is. (You know it’s almost Christmas when the day after Halloween, the grocery stores start hauling out the red ribbon and fake mistletoe.) A bit premature, but that’s cultural change for you. Used to be that you couldn’t find a bit of tinsel or a reindeer before Thanksgiving was over. But Advent and Christmas will soon be upon us, along with visions of sugarplums and plenty of reindeer. […]
Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, United States • Tags: Black Friday, Book Reviews, Christmas, Christmas Cookbook, Cookbooks, John Clancy, Mimi Sheraton, Reindeer
[Note: I wrote this for Boxing Day of 2008, but it still says what needs to be said.] The day after Christmas passes for a normal day here in the United States, if by normal you mean more shopping (and gift returns. Goodness, when will Aunt Tilly ever remember that I hate the color pink? Another pink sweater this year!). Yet in other parts of the world, from the first days of the Roman Catholic Church and later, December 26 […]
Categories: Christmas, Turkey • Tags: Boxing Day, Christmas, Cooking, Darina Allen, Food, Leftovers, St. Stephen's Day, Stew, Turkey
Happy/Merry Christmas/Hannukah/Holiday Season/Winter Solstice and a wonderful, hope-filled New Year. A big “Thank You” to each and every one of you for reading “Gherkins & Tomatoes.” Seven years before the sonorous words of the American Declaration of Independence rang out in Philadelphia, George Washington ate the following Christmas brunch. Betty, the only sister of his who survived to adulthood, served a very English-American menu: Holiday Egg Nog Virgina Ham Beaten Biscuits Corn Pudding Chicken and Oyster Pie Pumpkin Chips Cucumber […]
Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Desserts, English Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, Food, George Washington, Recipes, Southern cooking
(Continued from December 23, 2008 …) What a feast lay there on the other side of the heavy wooden door, spread out before us on a long refectory table that used to be in one of Puebla’s convents! Tia had covered her table with an antique white-lace tablecloth. Shrimp cocktails, cold meat platters, seafood, pork tamales, tasty bits like tuna-stuffed pickled jalapeños, jicama like the street vendors sold, gleaming crystal glasses, colorful chins plates, and blazing candles covered every inch […]
Categories: Christmas, Mexico • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, Food, Mexico, Posadas, Recipes
