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HOLIDAY COOKING
Cooking up memories Jennifer Wing
O
ne thing growing older has enabled me to do is try new recipes, especially during the holidays, now that I play host much of the time. Well, let me rephrase that – growing older has allowed me to revisit, and appreciate in new ways, some dishes from my past. I think it’s safe to say that we all have “food memories” from our childhood. Examples of such memories, for me, include making pizza from scratch with my mother in our kitchen. She used sliced, not shredded mozzarella, and we slid it into our wall-mounted oven, surrounded by brick. It’s funny how I can still remember that oven, although I haven’t been in that house in almost 40 years. The pizza would come out, bubbling, too hot to eat right away, but oh-so-good when you did. I still don’t know how she was able to get the dough so perfect - soft on the inside with a crunchy exterior. Studies have shown that our sense of smell is a powerful driver of memories, and I believe that to be true. I remember the smells in my Baci’s Utica kitchen (Baci being our family’s version of babcia, the Polish word for grandmother.) The house, built in the 1800s, had a dirt floor basement I was afraid of that housed a hand-operated water pump, a coal-burning furnace complete with coal bin and Baci’s ancient wringer washer. The sheets on the beds were soft and fresh, having been dried on the line outdoors when the weather was fine. Baci’s house was the kind of home that felt soft, like a mother’s lap - the stairs gave a little as you stepped on them while holding the banister, which had worn down to a smooth, polished finish, having been grasped by my family’s past generations’ fingers. Us grandchildren would sit on the front porch when it was nice out and play games - the type that are made up, with rules only we understood. When we had family gatherings at the holidays, the men would sit around the dining room table, with a beer and a shot lined up in front of them, talking about who knew what, with the occasional child on one or the other’s lap. The women would congregate at the kitchen table, preparing food, talking of family news, laughing and reminiscing. Oh, and the kitchen - Baci’s kitchen - was the heart of the house. It had a checkerboard tile floor, which had settled so that when I placed a ball at one end of the room it would slowly roll to the lower part on the other side. She had an old-style refrigerator, usually stocked with my favorites such as farmer’s cheese and my not-so-favorites like neopolitan ice cream (I hated when the strawberry or vanilla ice cream would leave a bit of pink or white on the chocolate.)
DECEM BER 2021
I remember the bread box full of babka and Wonder® bread, the bags from which would be placed into my boots in order to keep my feet dry when I’d play in the snow. I have such fond memories of that bread box that I bought a similar version for my own kitchen (You can see it in the background of the photo.) As I mentioned earlier, the smells associated with Baci’s kitchen, that deceptively small room, were, to me, representative of not only my childhood, but my heritage. When she would cook, the room would come alive with the fragrance of Polish cuisine. The table would groan with the weight of periogi cooked to perfection in butter, oven-baked ham and boiled kielbasa, sliced and ready to be layered onto fresh rye bread from the local bakery, then topped with a healthy dollop of Kosciusko mustard, accompanied by relish trays glistening with pickles, olives and the like. At Easter time, the parish priest would come to bless the butter lamb, kielbasa and hard-boiled eggs, and write a phrase in chalk over Baci’s dining room door. I’m still not sure what the significance of that was, unfortunately. Two of my favorite dishes made by Baci were her veal pie, enrobed in a buttery pastry known as “Plotzki” and, of course, golabki (pronounced GWUMP-KI by 5-year-old me.) When my family was in quarantine back at the beginning of November 2020, I attempted to make the latter dish, and had great success, resulting in fanfare from my husband and children. At a time when stress was high for us, I found the comfort of this childhood dish helped to renew my feelings of hope and well-being. This culinary creation, consisting of beef and pork with rice and seasonings wrapped in a sweetly savory cabbage leaf and cooked to buttery perfection in a light tomato sauce, had family written all over it. For me, it underlined the fact that the important things are unchanged, regardless of circumstance, and that the most important of all - family - is there for you, through thick and thin. And, although my Baci is no longer with us, she will never be forgotten, as long as I can reach into my pantry and grab the ingredients for a dish that can take me back to that bright, aromafilled kitchen in the tiny house that sat on Erie Street in West Utica. I can almost hear her hum her favorite tune as she stirs the pots on her stove and tells me the food will be ready soon. So, who’s ready to eat? I’ve included a recipe that I believe is similar to hers - the one I’ve used successfully a few times since that first time in late November of last year. Na Zdrowie! SWM
HOLI DAY/GIVI N G BACK EDITION
