Turkey & Sint

Thoughts from Sunday....our internet was on the fritz. Be forewarned: This post contains cultural bias.

Our Thanksgiving dinner went pretty well last weekend. Here is a picture of our table before anyone arrived. I really meant to take a picture with all of the food on the table, but we immediately dug into the food as soon as it hit the table.

In the end, we skipped the Camembert mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes. I also couldn't find boneless turkey breast halves with their skin still on so we settled for quarter pound boneless, skinless turkey breasts stuffed with herbs that didn't quite hold their moisture as well with their skin.

And Art Smith's root vegetable gratin should have included a warning that not all roots were created equal. Rutabaga, for instance, is Earth's version of a brick shaped just smaller than a bowling ball. So, while the potatoes in the gratin turned out nicely, the oven time barely made a softening dent in the rutagaba. My husband, the good Dutch man he is, quickly announced that the dish was partly cooked, thus, relieving all of us of the need to choke them down.

The green beans with pesto sauce, the pear and sausage stuffing and gravy were really nice. The surprise of the night was how well the eggnog and mulled wine turned out. Here is the eggnog recipe. Just add a few more swigs of brandy...for luck, of course. One guest literally licked her mug clean.

Indulgent Eggnog Recipe

6 eggs

2 + ½ cups heavy whipping cream

2 cups whole milk

1 cup caster sugar

½ cup brandy

½ cup dark rum

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon nutmeg, ground or grated (fresh is best)

Begin with pre-chilled ingredients for the greatest end result.In a medium bowl, beat the eggs together hard until they're very frothy.Add sugar and continue beating.Sprinkle in nutmeg and vanilla.Continue beating.A little at a time, add in the whipping cream, continuing to beat.Again, only a little at a time, beat in the milk.Finally, beat in the rum and brandy.Give your arms a break from all that beating by putting the eggnog in the fridge to chill for 1 – 2 hours.

Serve cold.

Sinterklaas

Yesterday was Sinterklaas Avond (St. Nicholas Eve). Last night, St. Nick rode around on his big white horse so that his helpers, Zwarte (black) Piets, could shimmy down people's chimneys (thus somehow giving them black faces and blackening their tightly curled hair, but allowing them to keep their jester-like colorful outfits and tights spotlessly clean) to fill the shoes that had been left out by Dutch children. To this day, the story goes something like...The good Dutch boys and girls' shoes will be filled with gifts and candy while the naughtier ones' shoes will be filled with salt. And the naughtiest of the lot will be taken in a large, burlap sack and sail to St. Nick’s home in Spain. And they make fun of Thanksgiving! Forgive me for being in favor of the delusion of Native Americans sitting down for a meal with their colonial invaders over encouraging a country’s children to believe in an old, white Spanish man that sends his dark skinned, MC Hammer-panted ‘helpers’ down people’s chimneys to either put things into their shoes or kidnap them.

David Sedaris has written a great critique of the phenomenon that is much funnier than I could ever write so I will leave my description at that. One thing he didn’t realize that is mentioned in the Wikipedia link above is that, as the fairy tale goes, St. Nick originally threw gold coins down the chimney to poor girls so that they wouldn’t have to prostitute themselves out. No, I didn’t make that up. It brings a whole new cultural facet to the Red Light districts made famous here.

I have stopped trying to understand the various foods associated with the holidays and have just decided to try them all. For instance, marzipan in the shape of St. Nick or Zwarte Piet or fruit is a common candy given during the holidays. The most popular shape for marzipan, though, is a pig. Grocery stores sell a small, cartoon version of a pig’s face, but chocolatiers and bakeries here display nearly life sized two dimensional pigs. Customers are sawed off a slice of the pig to do what with I have yet to figure out.

By far, my favorite tradition is the giving of chocolate letters. Dutch chocolate is some of the best in the world. Imagine getting a solid 7x5 inch piece in the shape of the first letter of your name. It is also usually decorated with a hard chocolate frosting to which is affixed candied hazelnuts or a tiny replica of Zwarte Piet’s face in marzipan. They come in white, dark or milk chocolate and are sometimes filled with chocolate mousse. My husband’s mother brings us each one every December 5^th.

A close second is the roomboter amandel letter. It a buttery pastry filled with almond and sugar paste and shaped into an "M". The other things pictured here are kruidnoten (mini-gingerbread cookies), marzipan pieces,