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FOOD HOLIDAYS: National Lager Week For Beer Lovers

Love your lager? This is the week to celebrate: It’s National Lager Beer Week.

Lager (the German word for storage) refers to any beer made by bottom fermentation. It is usually golden in color but sometimes can be dark.

Lager requires a longer, colder fermentation than ale (which is a top-fermenting beer), and uses a different species of yeast that tolerates cold temperatures well. The result of the cold fermentation is a lighter, crisper, smoother beer.

Ale is the favored beer style of England, and as the British colonized America, it became the beer of the Colonies. Lager beer was introduced to the U.S. during the German immigration of the early 1800s. It was immediately adopted and the country switched from being an ale-drinking country to a lager-drinking country.

The only challenge was that brewing lager required a colder environment, 30°F to 40°F.

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Tip a glass to National Lager Week! Photo by Duncan Tidd | SXC.

Brewers in the days prior to refrigeration would brew the beer in caves or burrow into sides of mountains to create the right environment (in Germany as in the U.S., hence the word for “storage place”). Thankfully, in modern times, countries with no mountains or caves can brew lager. That’s another reason to celebrate National lager Week.

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TIP OF THE DAY: Exotic Fruit-Of-The-Month Club

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Divide a dragonfruit at the dinner table.
Photo courtesy Melissas.com.

Dragonfruit, Korean pears, pomegranates and cinnamon persimmons are just four fruits in season now that most people have never tried. Others, like cherimoya, jackfruit and coquitos are available year-round.

You can give these fruits as gifts (Melissas.com has individual boxes and monthly “club” gifts). But give them to your own household, too.

Pick a specific day of the month—the first Monday, the third Sunday, e.g.—to be Exotic Fruit Day in your home. Have your featured fruit for dessert or at brunch, experience different tastes and build your knowledge base.

If there’s no market in your town where you can pick up exotic produce, Melissas.com is happy to oblige.

 

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Mince Pie Tarts For The Holidays, With A Cup Of Tea!

In the British tradition, mincemeat pie—often called mince pie for short in the U.S.—is as customary at Christmas as egg nog. Colonists brought mincemeat to America, and the tradition continued. Yet, have you ever had mince pie? To some people they’re almost myth-like, in that they’ve never seen one. Nor do they have any idea what mincemeat is. But Americans do have a mincemeat holiday: National Mince Pie Day is October 26th. Here, an overview of mince pie.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF MINCE PIE (MINCEMEAT PIE)

Mince pie dates back to medieval times, when it was a meat pie (as were most pies of the time) based on minced venison, and known as mincemeat pie.

The recipe did include dried fruits, sugar, and spices. These sweet ingredients were commonly added to savory dishes.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the meat began to disappear from the recipe, which retained the fruits and spices. Mincemeat pie evolved into the sweet and tangy mince pie we know today.
 
 
MODERN MINCE PIE (MINCEMEAT PIE)

Recipes typically include candied and fresh fruits, nuts, sugar, spices, wine, and suet. (Suet is raw beef fat or mutton fat, particularly the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. Vegetarian suet is made from palm oil and rice flour.)

You can purchase jars of mincemeat; but if you don’t want to bake, The Walkers Shortbread folks sell boxed Mince Tarts during the holiday season, which contain a very traditional fruity and tangy filling. They’re very yummy. It’s difficult to eat just one.

Instead of buying and slicing a whole pie, consider these tarts, sold in regular (about 3″ diameter, six tarts/box) or mini sizes.

The tarts are available at retailers nationwide and can be found online.

Whether pie, tart or tartlet, minced pie is delicious warm or cold. You can serve them plain or British-style, with clotted (Devon) cream, custard sauce, or brandy sauce.

If your tastes run to American pie toppings, try vanilla ice cream, classic whipped cream, or bourbon whipped cream (you can substitute brandy or rum).

Serve mince pie or tarts as a snack, at tea, or as a traditional dessert during the season. The Walkers mincemeat contains apples, currants, sultanas, and candied citrus peel. It’s sweet and lemony rather than heavily spicy, in a crisp crust.

Legend has it that mince pies were a favorite food of Father Christmas, so pie was left on a plate at the foot of the chimney as a thank-you for well-filled stockings. Perhaps you should hedge your bets by leaving a tart or two, with or cookies.

 


[1] Mincemeat pie, often called mince pie for short. Here’s a recipe (photo © Pillsbury).

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[2] For the holidays, there’s a proliferation of individually-portioned mincemeat tartlets. It’s easy to serve a warm mincemeat tart from Walkers with a cup of tea. Very British, very seasonal. You can find them on Amazon (photo © Walkers).

 

  

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TIP OF THE DAY: Deck the Hors

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How festive are these! Stuff peppadews
with feta or goat cheese. Photo
courtesy PeppadewUSA.com.

Be “seasonal” and include some red and green hors d’oeuvres at your holiday party. Some crowd-pleasers are very easy to make.

  • Skewers. Take long toothpicks and bocconcini (1″ mozzarella balls—the word means “mouthfuls” in Italian) and stack one ball with a piece of red roasted pepper, a small basil leaf and a pitted picholine olive. (We love the bocconcini from Mozzarella Fresca, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.)
  • Canapés. Spread thin slices of baguette or flatbread with soft goat cheese, top with a marinated roma tomato (more tender and mild than a sundried tomato, which can be marinated and substituted), and garnish with baby arugula.
  • Winter Caprese Salad. Roasted red peppers and mozzarella with green basil leaves (or mozzarella balls with pesto dip) are simple to organize on a tray.
  • Bruschetta. Bruschetta is naturally bright red and green—and easy.
  • Peppadews. Bright red peppadews can be stuffed, skewered or used to decorate cheese and canapé plates. (See photo above.)

And don’t forget those holiday mix shuffles!

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RECIPE: Real Visions Of Sugarplums

Make sugarplums this Christmas!

What exactly are sugarplums, visions of which danced in the heads of the children in Clement Moore’s famous poem, “The Night Before Christmas?”

The original sugarplums were sugar-coated coriander (the seeds of cilantro). Tiny seeds coated with many layers of sugar were a popular confection known as a comfit (not confit); aniseed and caraway were other popular comfits. According to FoodTimeline.org, the earliest known mention of sugarplums is in 1668.

You’ll see sugarplums referred to as “a small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavored and colored.” That could sound like any hard candy, but it is, in fact, a comfit, and not a plum dipped into sugar.

Later, small pieces of fruit were used. In Victorian times, the word “plum” referred to raisins or dried currants, not plums as we know them.

Modern recipes are more complex, with dried fruits and nuts. Here’s a recipe courtesy of Wholesome Sweeteners, manufacturers of organic and Fair Trade sugar and agave syrup:

SUGARPLUMS RECIPE

Ingredients

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Vision of a modern sugarplum. Photo courtesy of
WholesomeSweeteners.com.

  • 2 cups whole raw unsalted almonds, walnuts or pecans
  • 1/3 to 1/4 cup Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Amber Honey or Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blue Agave (measure according to your sweetness preference)*
  • 2 teaspoon grated orange zest
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1 cup dried plums, finely chopped
  • 1 cup pitted dates, finely chopped
  • 1 cup Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Powdered Sugar, Turbinado or cocoa powder


*Agave is our favorite sweetener, just as tasty as sugar and less than half the glycemmic index.

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Arrange nuts on a baking sheet in a single layer and toast in oven for ten minutes. Set aside to cool and then finely chop.
3. Chop the dried fruit into bits the same size as the nuts.
4. Combine honey or agave, orange zest, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Add the chopped nuts and fruit. Mix well (very clean hands work best).
5. Use a melon baller to scoop the mixture into balls.
6. Dust the sugar plums with powdered sugar or cocoa and refrigerate in single layers between sheets of wax paper in airtight containers for up to one month.

Please feel free to substitute your favorite dried fruits for the plums and dates—apricots, dried cherries, figs, and raisins work well. Pecans or walnuts can be substituted for the almonds. Just use an equal ratio of fruits to nuts.

While you prepare your sugarplums, play “The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite.” You can download it for 99 cents.

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