Column Don’t want to serve classic Thanksgiving food? That’s just fine.

Since it’s Thanksgiving week, I figured we’d tackle the topic of Thanksgiving food.

For the latter part of November, all food media, be it print, web, radio or television, turns into a “Hey You, Don’t Forget It’s Thanksgiving” feeding frenzy. Feature articles and episodes are devoted to recipes, tips and tricks that will help you ensure that this Thanksgiving is the Official Best Thanksgiving Ever.

Feel that pressure rising?

This will be the second year in a row that I’m not in the US for Thanksgiving. And this year I am so far removed from the realities of North American holidays that had I not seen a bunch of Thanksgiving themed food articles in my newsfeed, there’s a high chance I would have forgotten all about it.

My family was never one to do the traditional Thanksgiving roll out. In terms of Thanksgiving food, there was always some concoction of sweet potatoes, a cranberry salad of some sort and a rendition of a pumpkin pie, but only because those foods made seasonal sense; that’s why they’re Thanksgiving classics to begin with.

In an attempt to try to make Thanksgiving more official, one year my mother and I committed to cooking a turkey just for good measure, and the process was so time consuming and the result so boring (I mean really, of all the meats, turkey is not the most exciting) that it came to be lovingly referred to as The F*ing Bird. We never attempted to cook a turkey again, and these days I’ve gone mostly vegetarian.

And yet, I’ve always loved Thanksgiving. Not for the exact dishes that we eat, but simply because I get to sit around for a few days off with my parents, drink some good wine, eat some good food and just spend time unplugged. It’s not about what we eat, it’s the fact that we’re doing it together.

Over time I have found that there is a certain genre of Thanksgiving related stories that comes from people spending the American holiday abroad. There’s the account of trying to find a turkey, or if that’s impossible, something that will replace it. There’s the humorous tale of trying to bake a pumpkin pie when you don’t know how to translate the word pumpkin, and when you do, realizing that it’s not squash season wherever you are. There’s the embarrassing story of inviting a bunch of people around to experience a Truly Authentic Thanksgiving dinner, only to realize that you burned the pie, the bird and the stuffing (but the guests just ended up drinking more wine, so in the end, things turned out alright).

I always shy away from these stories with a hint of annoyance. Not because they shed light on the triumphs and tribulations of living abroad and trying to build community when far from home. My frustration has always come from the obsession with getting all the food elements exactly right. There’s no room for error and no room for creativity. If it’s Thanksgiving then a turkey has to be served and that’s that.

The same goes back at home, and yet our obsession with doing Thanksgiving “right” comes at a cost. According to the USDA, the average American family wastes about 35 percent of edible turkey meat. With around 248 million turkeys raised for slaughter in the United States, that waste comes out to about $282 million. Keep that in mind when you’re debating what size bird you “have” to get.

Food is a beautiful vehicle for transporting us back to certain memories. We bake pumpkin pie because it’s a reminder of a certain place and time. The smell invokes a sentiment, no matter where we are in the world. We stick to certain recipes because they remind us of the people that taught them to us in the first place. We’re reminded of our family and friends.

But in a quest for the appropriate dinner spread, we lose track of the goal at hand: to be thankful of what we have, to be present and spend time with people we love, to give to those less fortunate than ourselves.

No matter what food you put on the table this Thanksgiving, I ensure you that you will gather around it with your friends and family and have a wonderful celebration. Take the stress out of Thanksgiving food and you’re left with a wonderful dinner party. Cook in season, and cook what feels good, not what you feel obligated to serve. Create your own memories and traditions. And if you feel like baking a pumpkin pie a week after the Thanksgiving holiday, have at it. Seasonal food is comfort food for a reason; eating in balance with what the earth provides us is what we’re meant to do.

Food shouldn’t feel constricting, it should be a celebration. And that’s what I hope you get this Thanksgiving.

Related on Foodie Underground

Thanksgiving Food for Thought: Foodie Underground

To Eat is Not a Task, The Argument for Slowing Down: Foodie Underground

Good Food Takes Time: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Satya Murthy

The post With Thanksgiving Food Traditions, It’s Not the Food That Counts: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Celebrate Fat Tuesday Swedish style with this classic recipe.

By nature, I am not a follower of recipes. This is most likely my mother’s influence. Just as creative in the kitchen as she is with her artwork, the most common response to “What’s in this? It’s delicious! Can you write down the recipe for me?” is “Oh, I don’t really know exactly what I put in it.”

She does of course have some standard recipes that she can recite off the top of her head, but for the most part, she is a student of serendipity and chaos theory.

As it turns out, like mother like daughter.

When friends ask for recipes I actually have to go home and remake whatever food they’re looking to add to their cooking repertoire, simply so that I can figure out the exact measurements. Apparently “just enough of [insert ingredient]” doesn’t work for most people.

But there are those dishes for which I throw habit out the window, and commit to taking time to being a diligent cook that sticks to a recipe. Sometimes, there is no room for error.

If there’s one baked good that has to be made perfectly, it’s the Swedish semla. Also known as fastlagsbulle or fettisbulle, it is a flour bun filled with almond paste and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar. Historically it was made for fettisdagen, Fat Tuesday. But we live in the modern day Western world, where eating decadent food doesn’t usually come with too many restrictions, so in Sweden, you can find semlor decorating the bakery shop windows just after the New Year all the way through Easter.

Having learned last year the danger of trying to tweak a recipe to my own standards – even my mother still cringes that I thought using whole wheat flour instead of pastry flour would be a good choice – I pulled out my copy of Swedish Cakes and Cookies, the modern and translated version of a classic that you can find in any Swede’s cookbook collection.

I was committed to making a good semla. Which meant of course measuring perfectly. But you can only veer from regular habits so much. I soon realized that the recipe didn’t call for cardamom.

Fail.

I added in two teaspoons.

Oh, there’s no recipe for almond paste? I certainly wasn’t going to trek to the gourmet food store and buy some (I do have my limits after all). So I made my own, purely guessing on what almond to sugar ratio I should use.

Plenty of mixing, rising, kneading and oven to cooling rack transfers later, I had a kitchen table full of semla buns and a full French press. If there’s one baking production that pays off, it’s a semla. Especially one made with ample cardamom and homemade almond paste.

Note that this recipe makes 10-12 buns. Unless you have a crazy coffee get together for an army planned, don’t make the semlor all at the same time. The buns store well in the freezer, and can be defrosted for when you want to fill them with almond paste and whipped cream. Which means you can make one now for yourself, and serve your friends later. Smaklig måltid!

Classic Swedish Semlor
Ingredients

• 100 grams butter (7 tablespoons)
• 1 ¼ cups milk
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 4 cups flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup sugar (if you want a sweeter version, you can use up to a ½ cup)
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons powdered cardamom

Filling

• 2 cups blanched almonds + ¼ cup sugar blended in food processor
• Inside of buns
• ½ – 1 cup milk

Topping

• Whipped cream
• Powdered sugar

Directions
1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add the milk. Heat until the liquid is warm to the touch.

2. In a bowl beat the egg and add in yeast, salt, sugar and milk mixture. Combine baking powder and flour and mix thoroughly. Cover the bowl and let rise for 30 minutes.

3. Place dough on lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Form into round balls and place on greased pan. Cover with tea towel and let rise until double the size.

4. Brush the balls with a beaten egg. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 450F. Let the buns cool.

5. Cut off a circular “lid” off of each bun and set aside. Scoop out inside of bun with a spoon or fork. Mix in a bowl with almond paste and add enough milk to make a smooth mixture. Fill buns with mixture and top with whipping cream. Place lid on top of whipping cream and garnish with powdered sugar.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

The post Celebrate Fat Tuesday With Swedish Semlor appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhy we have to stop thinking of the “foodie” movement as a trend.

Luxury continues to inspire the culinary world, and its eager diners. From $3,000 dinner reservations to a select list of the world’s 50 best restaurants, the top tier of the food chain is elevating the art of eating with price tags to match. In contrast, the general public faces rising food prices (which is even worse for the developing world).

The foodie echelon is always looking for the latest and greatest; those concerned and engaged with what they eat are often branded as pretentious fools who care too much about food. Tell your friends you’re thinking about checking out the new artisan charcuterie and you may earn an elevated eyebrow.

When did caring about food become food snobbery?

First, we have to remember not to take ourselves too seriously. Toothpaste for Dinner has a wry comic poking fun at food pretension:

We can all find a little humor in poking fun at our gustatory obsession with local-this, organic-that, but, as self-described foodies, are we aspiring to become the kind of food snobs people do poke fun at or are we just creating healthy attitudes?

When I think foodie, I envision a person equally as interested in getting their hands dirty in a bed of their own homegrown kale as they are in throwing down a couple extra dollars at the farmers’ market to score the best chanterelles; a person concerned with real food who is willing to spend their hard-earned money to buy and enjoy it. Only equating foodies with luxury or upscale concoctions is simplistic. For sellers to elevate the prices of whole or organic food, it essentially privatizes it, taking out of the hands of the people willing to defend it and use it daily, not just for frivolous occasions. But as we have learned in the past year of the Foodie Underground column, this is fortunately not the case – despite mainstream media hype.

Despite how easy it is for mass media to focus on $3,000 dinners and $600 cookbooks, food culture isn’t changing because of shock value. It’s changing because of markets where shoppers can talk to their farmers. It’s changing because of friends who get together and see how many ingredients they can source locally for their dinner party. It’s changing because schools are starting to think about the benefits of serving organic to children. It’s changing because there’s a new media world full of food-savvy individuals who are encouraging others to contemplate their relationship to food.

With a love for what we eat, we have to stop thinking of good and creative food as a trend and start thinking about how we make it a resilient American tradition.

The underground markets featuring the DIY products of urban-dwelling bakers. The apartment windowsill herb garden turned full-blown balcony vegetable garden. It’s reveling in taste. It’s getting our hands dirty. It’s engaging with our community. It’s ensuring that everyone can be involved. And that is no trend.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones, Toothpaste for Dinner, Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: From Trendy to Tradition appeared first on EcoSalon.

The past month has been a whirlwind, and I’m sure I’m not alone. The holidays have a knack for making a full month seem like only a week. But somehow we all find the time to cram in parties, celebrations and festive attire.

Staying far away from any commercial establishments, I’ve been able to avoid the general stress that most people associate with December. Instead, the last few weeks have been completely devoted to honoring childhood traditions that make December feel like December. And all of those traditions involve food. It might be because I’m from a family where eating well was always a priority, but much of the holiday season and the emotions that come from it are associated with specific dishes.

I’m not alone. This time of year there’s a resurgence of classics; taking us all back to our roots. Those recipes that evoke the feeling of being with family, being taken care of or even just enjoying a simply moment.

The New York Times Sunday magazine often features the Recipe Redux column, taking a classic (most often from sometime between the 50s and late 80s) and putting a new spin on it. We love these recipes because they’re a reminder of something. It’s not just about the food; it’s about the feelings that come from eating it.

So what are the tradition staples that have been gracing my apartment this month?

The best part about food traditions are that most of the time, it has nothing to do with fancy ingredients or underground methods of preparation. Think about it: how much do you love eating green bean casserole? Or your mother’s traditional meatballs? There’s nothing classy, chic or avant-garde about them, but recipes like this have a place at the table.

Earlier this year, a group of friends and I launched what we lovingly call Supper Club. Every month we choose a theme and take our foodie obsessions and turn them into new creations. The results are impressive. Over the last month we’ve had everything from pureed butternut squash soup to chantrelle quiche to ceviche. But last night we went for “childhood holiday traditions.” There were sausage balls and mayonnaise on pumpernikel bread squares. Not the culinary finest, but delicious. It happened to be one of my favorite Supper Clubs yet.

So maybe it’s because this season makes me want to hunker down, cook a bunch of comfort food and share it with friends, but this week I’m celebrating all things classic, no matter how simple or unrefined they are.

And in honor of celebrating tradition, here’s my favorite childhood Christmas recipe, taken straight from my mother’s Swedish Sju Sorters Kakor cookbook, a hardcover favorite that she has had since her own high school years and who’s pages are barely attached anymore.

Franska Pepparkakor – French Gingerbread Cookies

• 1 cup almonds, chopped
• 200 g butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tsp. ginger
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. black peppar
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 3 cups flour

Cream butter, sugar and molasses.

Mix dry ingredients with almonds, then combine with butter, sugar and molasses. Knead together with your hands.

Roll dough into cylinders, about 12 inches long and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cut dough into 1/4 inch slices. Bake at 380 for 10-12 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Celebrating Tradition appeared first on EcoSalon.