fun in threes, sometimes fours
food and cooking
Some days just seem filled with it.
A little fire, a lot of smoke, and one ends up with peppercorn-covered, smoky tenderloin magic.
A few twigs of evergreen and a sweet helper and one ends up with a charmed Christmas ornament, a mini-tree for the kitchen.
And there's always the magic of dancing.
Baking seems to me, a non-baker who stands at the periphery, like a mixture of science, art, and alchemy. One mixes liquids, solids, and heat to produce temptations and treats. It’s a balancing act, and being one who doesn’t like to follow recipes, it’s no wonder I don’t even attempt to bake.
K, however, bakes. She has a classic love-hate relationship with it, though. Despite living in the States for almost six years, she still hasn’t gotten used to the ingredients available here. The flour behaves a little differently; the cocoa generally available is hopelessly difficult to work with; the yeast and sodas have minds of their own.
As a result, baking here requires more patience than usual. Why she continues to do it is a testament both to her Polish stubbornness and her good and giving soul.
When Dziadek was here a few years ago and built us a rural smoker, we expected we'd be using it much more often than we do. "Think of all the things we can smoke: turkey, chicken, pork tenderloin -- all for great cold cuts that will be tastier and cheaper than anything we can buy."
It was a glorious plan. An idea that lacked only a couple of a few several steps to the dream of complete food cold cut self-sufficiency. Soon, though, we'd be raising and slaughtering our own swine, harvesting our own salt from the sea to mix with our homegrown onions and herbs.
The business of life, though, got in the way.
Still, the infrequency -- Christmas and Easter -- heightens the savoriness.
Pasta has always been a favorite for the Girl, but she's particular about it: sauce of any sort is a no-no. "Bez sosu" is the common refrain pasta is on the stove. The result, of course, is rather sticky noodles,
which can cause problems with long hair.
Being married to a woman who is Polish through-and-through means that food is important in life. It's not something to be squeezed in, willy-nilly, whenever, and it's not something that can be simply plopped out of a can or popped in the microwave. It's something that requires preparation, time, and patience.
For example, if a certain little girl would like to have chicken nuggets for dinner, that's fine. But a Polish woman will not be pulling a package of milled and breaded chicken odds-and-ends out of the freezer. From time to time, something like that is fine, perhaps a couple as a snack. For dinner, however, only real chicken will suffice.
And this requires time, and an apron.
Truth be told, the apron is something in the Polish genetic make-up, I believe. Babcia, in Poland, slips on an apron every morning as habitually as I slip on socks or a shirt. It's simply another article of clothing, and it stays on all day, whether cooking, cleaning, or taking a break. (It comes off when heading out into public, of course.)
But the results of aproned cooking -- who could possibly complain?
Immigrants bring all sorts of things with them when they move to a new country. They bring items of their culture: language, songs, recipes.
They bring a love of native-language literature (even if it's actually translated from another tongue) that excites them beyond words when they find someone else who seems to love a given book as much as they do.
But one thing they must leave behind is the confectionery that brings a smile to their faces and warmth to their hearts.
At first glance, it looks like a bit of cauliflower. It is, in fact, a mixture of bacteria and yeasts — a fungus, of sorts. Kefir grains, used to make what Poles call “kefir,” what Russians refer to as “кефир” (pronounced the same) and what we call, essentially, buttermilk.
Production is simple: take the kefir grains, wrap them in gauze, drop them in a ceramic container, cover them with fresh milk, and let the mixture sit overnight. In twenty-four hours, you’ll have a chunky, lightly acidic buttermilk, that, an added medicinal bonus, has a slight alcohol content.
From there, it’s just a moment’s heating away from farmer’s cheese: mix the buttermilk with some fresh milk, heat, and strain.
In Poland, they do the same essential process with sheep milk, eventually forming it into oblong cheese blocks and curing them in a smoke house.
The Girl is a strange eater. In truth, she’ll eat anything if she’s cooked it. For a long time, as a child, her favorite thing to cook while banging around the kitchen was “blue zupa,” a hybrid Polish and English name (“zupa” is Polish for “soup”) for an imaginary, favorite-colored dish. K and I ate countless pots of blue zupa.
We eventually bought L some realistic play pots and pans at Ikea, and she moved from more imaginary to less imaginary. It’s truly amazing what you can cook from blue and pink Play-Doh.
When it comes to more realistic food, though, the Girl has slightly different tastes. She likes some of the standards: spaghetti and pizza are always welcome on the table. Yet other childhood favorites have always been less popular. For instance, she just ate her first hot dog over the Fourth of July holiday. Granted, she hasn’t had much exposure to hot dogs: we eat them probably twice a year at most, if even that often. Still, she sees them at school, and probably sees how the other kids virtually inhale them. That peer pressure has had no effect (if only that would continue).
Yet non-typical foods she adores. Exhibit A: barszcz. Her favorite food, without exception, is a traditional Polish beetroot soup. She’s absolutely obsessed: she’ll eat it once a week without fail, more if we let her.
She’s also eager to bring her best friend from school to try it.
“What will you do if E doesn’t like it? If he tries it and says, ‘I don’t like it.’? I ask.
“I’ll tell him, ‘You just have to try it,'” she replies.
“But what if he tries it and doesn’t like it?” I press.
Try it and not like it? Unthinkable.
The Girl is a fan of summer snacking — what kid isn’t, I suppose. She always seems most attracted to the foods that make the biggest mess.
But then again, what kid isn’t? What’s the point of eating something sweet if you can’t, at the same time, wear it? That is a convenience born of the fact that watermelon and ice cream taste better in the summer. Who would want to clean up such a mess inside? Better to let it drip and leave a small bit of sweetness for the ants.
Ice cream is a different story altogether, and at the same time, it’s just a variation watermelon. Sweet and sticky, they both leave a trail behind. But only ice cream is affected by the clothes one wears.
Sunday dresses always make ice cream taste best.
