Seasonal Cooking, Holiday Baking

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!  I hope you’ve already had a lovely long weekend with family and friends, and that you’ll have a few more occasions to celebrate the end of this year, the Winter Solstice, or anything else that gives you a chance to eat and drink with your loved ones.

I feel like I haven’t been doing as much cooking as I normally do this time of year – in lieu of planning elaborate meals, I’ve been focused on relaxing and reflecting, simmering big pots of stew to be eaten over several days.  Oh, I’ve baked some cookies and whipped up some eggnog, but instead of my customary Christmas foie gras, I got a capon roast from the butcher, neatly tied with a chestnut-and-liver-sausage filling.  All I had to do was sear it on the stove and let it finish roasting in the oven for a nearly effortless Christmas Eve meal.

And yet, that doesn’t mean I haven’t scored some hits all the same.  I’ve been noodling around with the McCormick Flavor Forecast, and found a couple of great ways to incorporate my very favorite of their proposed flavor combinations: Cider, Sage, and Molasses.  Of all the options, this one seemed to me the most supremely seasonal, with its earthy-herbal sage, bittersweet molasses, and tangy apple cider.  I toyed around with some pear cider ideas, but the apple ideas came out on top.

So I have two recipes to share with you today. One a lentil salad – we ate it once with pan-fried sausages, and finished it off with our capon roast on Christmas Eve; the other an indulgent bar cookie whose touch of sage and dark molasses make it distinctly grown-up (there are plenty of other cookies for the kids, anyway).

Here’s to a year-end filled with love, happiness, and delectable eats!

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Secrets of Fruit Salad

Fruit salad is a deceptively simple dish.  It seems like you could just throw in a bunch of cut up fresh fruits and call it a day, and a lot of people do just that.  I am not one of them.  And I am often complimented on my fruit salads.  So what’s the secret?  I’ve got several.

• Honey. Try drizzling a little honey over your fruit.  An unusual or unique one, such as Tasmanian leatherwood honey or Corsican chestnut honey will make your salad much more interesting.  Taste different honeys and try to imagine them paired with various fruits.  A floral honey is nice with stone fruits or tropical fruits, an earthy or nutty one is great with berries or citrus.
• Salt. A few flecks of crunchy sea salt will really make the flavors sing.  I like to use vanilla salt, which I make by scraping a vanilla bean into a jar of fleur de sel.
• Acid. Particularly lemon or lime juice.  It not only brightens the flavor, but also acts as an antioxydant to keep more delicate fruits from going brown.  Go ahead and throw some zest in there, too, if you like a more pronounced citrus flavor.
• Herbs. Mint, basil, and tarragon are three that compliment fruits especially well.
• No “Kitchen Sink.” It may be cliché, but “what grows together goes together.”  Apples and oranges pretty much never belong in the same salad.  Try to limit yourself to a few well-chosen, seasonal fruits.

Some seasonal suggestions:

• Spring – Early spring still relies on tropical fruits, but later on, strawberries, cherries and apricots steal the show.  Try them with a little crushed dried lavender.
• Summer – Probably the best season for fruit salads, summer abounds with juicy stone fruits, berries, and watermelons.  Summery basil and refreshing mint are natural complements, but a little chili pepper makes for an unexpected twist.
• Fall – Late-season melons, grapes, and plums provide a lingering taste of warmer days.  Crunchy nuts add contrast.  Fall is also a great time for compotes.  Essentially warm fruit salads, think apples or pears and dried cranberries, cooked with a stick of cinnamon to spice things up.
• Winter – Winter is a great excuse to eat tropical fruits that might otherwise cause guilty feelings among the locavore set.  Pineapples, mangoes, papayas, and other exotic fruits combine with kiwis (grown in temperate climates, but in season in winter) to give a splash of color to the earth-toned palette of winter produce.  Lively citrus salads are made intriguing with a hint of tarragon.

Kiwifruit Salad

A simple dressing of citrus, honey, and salt elevates ordinary fruit to new heights.

4 kiwis
juice of ½ lime
1 tsp. Honey (I used Tasmanian)
pinch of vanilla salt

1. Peel the kiwis by cutting the ends off and slipping a spoon between the skin and the flesh. Cut the kiwis into lengthwise quarters, then horizontal slices. Place in a bowl.
2. Add the lime juice, honey, and vanilla salt and stir to combine. Let the flavors mingle for about 10 minutes, then eat.

Serves 2.

On this day in 2008: New Ganga (a now defunct Indian restaurant)

Originally published on Croque-Camille.