Holiday Goodies

Each year just before Christmas, we had a holiday gathering for all the children and their families at the campus child care center I worked at for several years. Each family contributed a plate of holiday treats.

One year, as I moved around the Center visiting with parents and siblings of the preschoolers I spent time with each day, I happened upon a conversation between two preschoolers. They each held one of those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss in the middle.

“Kiss me,” said the little girl as she looked at the confused little boy in front of her. “You can’t take a bite of your kissy cookie until you kiss me. That’s what my mom and dad do,” she said sweetly. I pictured her young parents sitting on the couch in their living room at home with a tin of Kissy Cookies resting on their laps, sharing a quick little peck as they ate cookies together. I held back a little giggle.

There was a long line at the meat case this Saturday at the grocery store and I was standing with the crowd. I enjoyed asking everyone in line how they make ‘their’ Tortiere pie. I was in the company of experts - it’s a serious subject in Maine.

Tortiere is a meat and potato pie seasoned with sweet spices, similar in flavor and texture to a coarse country pate but made with potatoes as the binding agent instead of fatback and Tortiere is enrobed in a double crust.

One cute older couple told me they were making 20 pies. She told me, “we have the time to make tortiere pies for our family - they are too busy to make it for themselves.” It is the season to make Tortiere pie. It’s a French Canadian treasured recipe and tradition and everyone makes it differently.

Some will only make it with a lard crust - I save my saturated fat calories for something more spectacular. Some sweet little old gray haired ladies insist that the only way to properly make the filling is with finely minced meats, hand done. My family, meaning my mother’s side of the family always made it with ground pork and beef, equal weights. I make my pie with a butter crust - I am a ‘no lard or Crisco’ chick.

I’ve seen wooden molds with delicate designs carved into them many times as I’ve browsed through antique shops and rummaged my way through flea markets. I never really knew what they were supposed to be used for. A neighbor once gave me the light colored rolling pin you can see in the photo above. She’d had it for years and wasn’t exactly sure if she’d ever used it, but she thought it would be a nice addition to the collection of old rolling pins I kept in an old wicker bike basket hanging on the wall in my kitchen. That was years ago. I’ve never used that carved rolling pin. Until last Sunday.

I was invited to join the Oja family in their spacious kitchen for their annual springerle-making day. Snowflakes were falling as another friend and I pulled into the long driveway leading to their house tucked into the countryside outside of Bemidji, Minnesota.

As I stepped into the warm and cozy home, I was immediately hit with the aroma of mulling spices and cardamom. Beth Oja, our hostess, had prepared Finnish Pulla and mulled cider made from apples the family had picked from their trees and pressed themselves. I thought I might be in heaven. And, I knew this was going to be a great day.

One of my favorite treats to have during the holidays is one that I can enjoy with a hot cup of tea. These traditional Scottish shortbread finger biscuits are one of those favorites of mine. I come back to the same recipe year after year, but this time I decided to try something new. Going on a tip from a Scottish woman to use a portion of rice flour for a more tender cookie, I instead decided to use garbanzo bean flour.

I've been meaning to use garbanzo bean flour ever since I purchased a package some time ago. I had intended to use it for making Besan Ladoo, an Indian sweet made from gram flour, which is their name for garbanzo bean or chick pea flour. I haven't had the chance to make that sweet yet, but I took the opportunity to use the flour for the first time. It turned out to be a very good idea. I achieved a much more tender cookie than what I've made in the past. And to gild the lily a bit, I dipped a third of each finger in melted semisweet chocolate and then sprinkled it with chopped pistachios. I must say they turned out great.