Posts Tagged yule
Vegetarian Stuffed Cabbage
Posted by Steven Posch in Recipes - Hotdish & More on October 26, 2009
Another dish it just wouldn’t be Yule without!
1 large head cabbage
1 cup brown basmati rice
½-1 teaspoon salt
olive oil
1 large onion, minced
2 carrots, shredded
2 stalks celery, shredded
1 bunch parsley, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 package soysage (LiteLife’s “Gimme Lean” is the best, in my opinion)
½-1 cup roasted almonds, chopped
2 large cans tomatoes (or 3-4 pounds fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped)
tamari
turbinado sugar
lemon juice
black pepper
To prepare the cabbage:
Give the bottom of the cabbage a good solid thonk on the floor and, with a knife, remove as much of the core as possible. Steam the cabbage, whole, in a covered pot with about 1 inch of boiling water in the bottom. As the outer leaves soften, remove them (you can usually take off 3-4 at a time) and set them aside to cool. Watch your hands on the hot steam and be careful not to tear the leaves. When the leaves get to be smaller than the palm of your hand, take what’s left of the head out of the pot, halve and core it, and shred it into sauerkraut-sized shreds. Reserve the cabbage water.
When the leaves have cooled a bit, pare off the big vein on the outside, being careful not to cut through the leaf itself.
To prepare the rice:
Dry-roast the brown basmati in a skillet until it begins to toast and pop. It will smell delicious. Cook as usual with 2 cups water (you can use some of the cabbage water here) and salt, if desired.
To prepare the stuffing:
Saute the onion in olive oil until it begins to wilt. Add shredded carrot and celery and sauté until they begin to brown. Crumble soysage into the pan and continue sautéing a few minutes. Add the rice, parsley, oregano, and almonds, and stir until everything is well-mixed. Add 1-2 cups tomatoes, with juice, and stir until most of the liquid is absorbed. Season to taste with pepper and tamari.
To stuff the cabbage leaves:
Put a cabbage leaf in the palm of your hand, with the outer side down. Dollop 1-3 tablespoons of filling into the middle of the leaf (the amount will depend on how big the leaf is.) Pull the stem end of the leaf over until it completely covers the filling. Then fold in the sides, and roll towards the top of the leaf. You should have a nice, tight little package with no stuffing showing at all. Place in baking dish or casserole (be sure to use one with a cover) and continue until you’ve used up all of the filling or all the cabbage leaves, whichever comes first. (There’s no need to oil the baking dish.)
If there are extra cabbage leaves, shred them now and strew them with the rest of the shredded cabbage over top of the cabbage rolls. If there’s extra filling, eat it for lunch.
To prepare the tomato topping:
Mix the remaining chopped tomatoes with sugar, lemon juice, tamari, and pepper to taste.
It should be fairly juicy; add cabbage water if it’s too dry. Pour over top of the cabbage rolls. Bake, covered, at 350° for 1½-2 hours. Check periodically towards the end of the baking period; add water if necessary.
The cabbage rolls are done when you can pierce them easily with the tines of a fork.
Serves 13 (of course).
World’s Oldest Yule Recipe?
Posted by Steven Posch in Recipes - Hotdish & More on October 26, 2009
This is my personal version of what might just possibly be the oldest Yule recipe of all. In one form or another, this dish is ritually served literally Europe-wide—from Ireland to Armenia, from Russia to Sicily—and virtually always at some occasion constellated around the Winter Solstice (Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany, St. Barbara’s Day…).
The form that it takes is simple: whole grains (wheat, barley, rice) boiled in liquid (milk, water, almond milk), sweetened with honey, enriched with nuts and/or dried fruits. In Poland, it’s said to date from the time “before there were mills to grind the grain.” Ancestral to England’s plum pudding (frumenty, as it was called, was an invariable part of the medieval English Yule-board), the origin of Scandinavia’s Yuletide rice puddings, the recipe surely dates back to—if not precedes—the advent of agriculture.
Remember that the ancestors didn’t get sweets very often, and probably reserved them for the highest of holidays (such as the Winter Solstice, a date of major significance to agricultural communities virtually everywhere). Then the standard boiled-grain pottage that everyone ate everyday would be embellished with a hoarded lump of honeycomb in honor of the occasion. Bear in mind also that virtually everywhere religious ritual tends to preserve archaic cultural forms that have otherwise died out in everyday usage.
So it’s more than possible—likely even—that this dish may date to Neolithic times, perhaps to the very discovery of cereal agriculture itself, more than 11,000 years ago.
Below is the version that my coven serves on Midwinter’s Eve, based originally on a Russian recipe. It’s the first dish in our thirteen-course Yule feast (one course for each moon of the coming year). By the light of a lone beeswax taper thrust into the middle of the pudding, we ritually renew our familial solidarity by together eating from the shared central bowl, just as our ancestors did more than ten thousand years ago.
Kutyá: Yule Wheat
1 cup wheat berries
2 cups blanched almonds
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup whole blue poppy seeds
3-5 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon rose water
Soak wheat berries overnight in water to cover. In a separate bowl, soak 1½ cups of the almonds in 3 cups of water, also overnight.
Next day, puree the soaked almonds with their soaking water. Add 3 more cups of water to the puree and strain through a cloth, wringing well to extract as much almond milk as possible (I use an old pillowcase). Discard almond pulp.
In a non-reactive pan, bring drained wheat berries and almond milk to a simmer. Lower heat and continue cooking until wheat berries become tender (this is likely to take 2-3 hours, depending on the age and variety of the wheat berries). You’ll need to stir frequently (sunwise only, please!), especially towards the end of the cooking as the almond milk thickens. When the wheat berries are tooth-tender, add poppy seeds and salt, and cook 15-20 minutes more.
During the cooking, dry roast the remaining ½ cup almonds until golden brown, either in a skillet (stirring constantly) or in a 325° oven; this will take approximately 5 to 7 minutes.
Sweeten the kutya with honey to taste, and stir in rose water. Turn out into serving bowl, and garnish with dry-roasted almonds. Serve hot, room temperature, or chilled.
Serves 13. (Of course.)
© Steven Posch
Jolly Wassail – History and Brews
Posted by Kari Tauring in Art & Culture, Recipes - Hotdish & More on October 26, 2009
By Kari Tauring and Jim McGuire
When we think of wassail, the songs of England may come to mind. “Here we go a wassailing upon the leaves of green…” It summons the smell of cider, spices, and ale. But where did this tradition come from?
The tradition, like the word, was brought to England by Viking settlers. The word comes from Middle English waes haeil, which comes from Old Norse ves heill meaning be well. Ves (imperitive singular of vera to be) + heill healthy, 13th Century. According to legend, King Vortigern (circa 425 AD) was the first person to be “wassailed” in England. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain” describes Vortigern being entertained by Hengist the Jute (who, along with his brother Horsa, was amongst the first Saxons to settle in England). Hegist’s daughter Renwein entered the room with a goblet of ale. As the Lady of the House, she would offer the drink first. Approaching Vortiegern, she curtsied and called out “Lavert king, was hail!” (Lord king, to your health). He was told that the proper response was “drink hail!”
This formalized ceremony is practiced today as blot or symbel within Heathenry. The formal order is that the head woman in a house would begin the toasting and bring the horn from the highest to the lowest of the household guests. She would assure that there was enough in the horn for each guest, that their toasts were properly said, and that there were no oaths or binding words spoken into the horn without further formality. No causal words can be spoken, no lies, and no words of enmity. The horn represents the well of wyrd of the household and of the world tree.
The concept of formal drinking ritual called “wassail” grew and changed in the passing centuries and wassailing became synonymous with any festive occasion or meeting with much drinking and pledging of healths, drinking bouts and carousing. The liquor used on such occasions, especially around Christmas or the New Year became known as wassail.
Many merry drinking songs and poems became known as wassails and the wassailer as one who wassails; a merry maker; a reveler.
Wassailing became a seasonal tradition surrounding fruit trees throughout the English countryside. With the first pressing of the apple harvest the trees are blessed with the juices of the first harvest. The date that this begins depends upon the climate, usually sometime in September. Apple traditions continue with caramel apples and the game “bobbing for apples” at Samhain.
By Yuletide, the cider has generally turned hard, or (as my great-grandmother would say) “hoopy hoppy” and the apples in the cellar are shriveled and sad looking. There are recipes for “Wassail” which include warming the hard cider (taking the edge off of its potency), adding spices and floating baked apples in the punch bowl, renewing their life. Wassail bowl is a good way to use up some of the dried and stored foods and the Yule feast includes an abundance of preserved meats, puddings which use dried berries and nuts, baked goods which use up last years flour, and the cider which has begun to turn. Spices were a rare and heavenly addition to the meal.
At Yule, the wassailing ritual was three fold. To wassail the hall is to hold a formal toast at the table, with guests and family around you. To wassail the house was to go from door to door with the drink. The revelers would receive food and more drink from neighbors and then bless each house with a wassail. Wassailing the orchard took the revelers and probably the whole community out to the orchard where the trees would be blessed, sung to, and libated. This last wassailing often took place on Twelfth Night, January 6th and signaled the end to the Christmas “days of feasting,” a last hurrah. Or should I say a last wassail?
In my family, we like to wassail the hall, house, and orchard on Twelfth Night. It gives us hopefulness as we ask the trees to bear well in the spring. The following are some old rhymes, songs, and recipes for you to enjoy this season.
To your health!
Kari and Jim
The Rhymes of Apple Wassail
1.
Wassail the trees, that they may bear
You many a plum, and many a pear:
For more or less fruits they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing.
-Robert Herrick (1591-1674) “Ceremonies of Christmas Eve”
2.
Here’s to thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mayst bud
And whence thou mayst blow!
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel–bushel–sacks full,
And my pockets full too! Huzza!
South Hams of Devon, 1871
3.
Huzza, Huzza, in our good town
The bread shall be white, and the liquor be brown
So here my old fellow I drink to thee
And the very health of each other tree.
Well may ye blow, well may ye bear
Blossom and fruit both apple and pear.
So that every bough and every twig
May bend with a burden both fair and big
May ye bear us and yield us fruit such a stors
That the bags and chambers and house run o’er.
Cornworthy, Devon, 1805
4.
Stand fast root, bear well top
Pray the God send us a howling good crop.
Every twig, apples big.
Every bough, apples now.
-19th century Sussex, Surrey
5.
Apple-tree, apple-tree,
Bear good fruit,
Or down with your top
And up with your root.
-19th century S. Hams.
6.
Bud well, bear well
God send you fare well;
Every sprig and every spray
A bushel of apples next New Year Day.
-19th century Worcestershire
Source: The Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton
7.
Blowe, blowe, bear well,
Spring well in April,
Every sprig and every spray
Bear a bushel of apples against
Next new year’s day
-Painswick in Gloucestershire
8.
Health to thee, good apple tree,
Well to bear pocket fulls, hat fulls,
Peck fulls, bushel bag fulls
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel – bushel – sacks full
And my pockets full too! Huzza!
-1791 The Gentleman’s Magazine South Devon
9.
Old apple tree, we’ll wassail thee,
And hoping thou wilt bear.
The Lord does know where we shall be
To be merry another year.
To blow well and to bear well,
And so merry let us be;
Let ev’ry man drink up his cup
And health to the apple tree.
Apple Tree we greet you now
With highest honors to endow
As you lay sleeping this winter’s day
Dream of bud and fruit
Full branches and deep root
10.
Apple, plum, and pear tree grow
Your roots are warm beneath the snow
When springtime does appear
Sprout leaf and bloom call honey bee
Oh loving tree, we will greet thee
And honor you once more
- Tauring, Minneapolis 2000
Wassail, Tauring ©1999
1. F, C
Wassail Wassail all over the town. The snow it is white and the Ale it is brown.
The mistletoe’s hung and the oak log is round, so sing we this Solstice around and around.
2.
The pudding is baking the turkey is fine. The ham is all smoked and there’s fish on the line.
The tree is all dressed with the candles sublime. So now all we need is the Wassail and Wine.
Wassail
Recipes
Jim’s Quick Wassail
Take any good hot spiced non-alcoholic cider and mix 3 parts cider with 1 part cinnamon schapps.
Kari’s Quick Wassail
Same as above only add 1 shot of dark rum.
Wassail
1 gallon hard apple cider 12 small apples, peeled with cores removed
½ cup sugar if cider is tart 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg 2 cups heavy whipping cream
¼ tsp powdered cinnamon ¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp powdered ginger 2 Tbsp. brown sugar
In a large enameled pot, slowly heat ¾ of the cider until warm but not boiling. In another enameled pot, pour remaining cider and add apples, sugar, spices and bring to a boil.
Vigorously simmer the apples until they lose their shape and become “frothy”. Combine the two liquids and pour into a heatproof bowl. Whip the cream with salt and brown sugar until it peaks. Spoon the cream onto the wassail or add the cream to each tankard as it is served. Apple cider listed can be substituted by dry white wine, light ale or stout beer.
Glogg
The Scandinavian mulled drink – if you want to get back to the roots of the occasion!
2 (750 milliliter) bottles red wine
2 ounces dried orange zest
2 ounces cinnamon sticks
20 whole cardamom seeds
25 whole cloves
1 pound blanched almonds
1 pound raisins
1 pound sugar cubes
5 fluid ounces brandy
Pour wine into a large pot. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Wrap orange zest, cinnamon sticks, cardamom and cloves in cheesecloth, tie with kitchen string and put into pot. Let boil for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in almonds and raisins and continue to boil for 15 more minutes. Remove from heat.
Place a wire grill over the pot and cover with sugar cubes. Slowly pour on brandy, making sure to completely saturate the sugar. Light sugar with a match and let it flame. When sugar has melted, cover pot with lid to extinguish flame.
Stir and remove spice bag. Serve hot in cups with a few almonds and raisins.
Glogg (less fancy kind)
1 1/2 cups Brandy
1/2 bottle Red Wine
4 Hole Cloves
2 Cardamom Pods – crushed
1 Cinnamon Stick
1/2 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Blanched Almonds
3/4 cup Sugar
2 tsp. Brown Sugar
Combine everything in a saucepan. Warm over medium heat, stir often to dissolve the sugar.
Once heated thoroughly reduce heat to low. Serve Warm.
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