When I was a kid, I remember taking a bite of mince meat pie wondering why this would be a dessert, and being very surprised at how yummy it was. I am sure it was some frozen store-bought version, but I thought it was just so amazing that they had made meat taste like fruit and spices. (Little did I know it had no meat whatsoever in it.) The mixture of fruit and meat with strong spices was brought to England from the Middle East during the crusades. It became a Catholic custom to eat it at Christmas, and during the English Civil War, was outlawed by Puritan leaders. According to an excellent wikipedia page on Mince Pie, in his History of the Rebellion, Marchamont Needham wrote…
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When it came to Christmas cookies in my family, there were traditions upheld out of the sheer belief that we needn’t make any new cookies because the ones we made year after year had risen to the top of the cookie food chain, and were clearly superior to all other cookies, hence their being elevated to a Christmas cookie, from just an any-old-time-of-year cookie. Some of these cookies required a good deal of extra labor, but they were not overly complex endeavors. In fact, what made them so impressive was their simplicity. The end result is something that requires work, but is deceptively elegant in ingredients and flavors. Last year, tsp’s first Christmas season, I introduced you to the greatest cookie recipe ever devised, and it…
Categories: recipes, vegetarian
Tagged: apple, baking, cardamom, carrot, christmas, cookie cutter, cookies, dessert, food, holiday, recipe, semolina, shortbread, whole grain
