Solstice Lefse Madness

Holiday baking and cooking traditions are often ones that are specific to cultures and ethnic groups. Growing up in Green Bay, we had alot of Belgian, German, Polish foods that showed up around the Christmas holidays that we learned to make. When I joined my husband's family, Swiss delicacies were introduced. Other traditions have been shared by and learned from friends.

The equipment - borrowed from Lloyd's mom

Our newest foray into foods from another tradition is lefse. I am a huge potato fan and so lefse has long called my name. This Norwegian flatbread is most easily made with specialized equipment (a grooved rolling pin, flat griddle and turning stick) - none of which we actually owned. Although we had made this delicacy once or twice with Lloyd's family, it has been decades since we did this. We often promised ourselves we would give it a try.

the results

A local community education class this fall got us going. Two Norwegian-American sisters took 17 of us eager lefse-makers-to-be under their wing. The sisters had peeled, boiled, riced and incorporated cream and butter into the potatoes the night before. We added flour by the cupful and used our hands to fold it in until we achieved a firm, non-sticky consistency. During the rest of the class, we all had plenty of opportunities to hone our rolling and griddling skills. And each of us proudly took home the results - twelve soft, goldeny rounds that last a week in the fridge or can be frozen. They are eaten plain, with butter, with sugar and in place of tortillas. Oh and the family recipe. I mean, really, what's not to love?

Madison lefse crew

When my friend Lynne saw our Facebooked class excitement, she extended an invite to join a band of friends and family who have long gathered (decades!) annually in Madison to crank out a leviathan's share of lefse. 40# of potatoes, four griddles, three rolling stations, one lesfe-ball-maker and seven makers worked five hours to crank out 194 lefse rounds.

Lynne mixing the lefse dough

It was mad fun! Flour everywhere, who could roll the thinnest round, disasters at the rolling station (if there isn't enough flour, that dough loves to stick and rip as you lift it off;  a cloth up in flames but quickly doused), strategizing how to improve the process next year (another annual tradition) and stowing lefse rounds under card table-sized cloths after baking to keep them soft. Much laughter and talk. Oh and moo shu pork lefses for lunch!

Working with this crew helped me feel confident about our own solstice lefse making planned the next day with Lloyd and me. We made 5# of potatoes and got about 50 smallish rounds. Enough to share with our families and set a few aside for our own lefse love. We think next year we should use two griddles.

I think we have another annual holiday tradition!

What's Cooking as the Year Ends and Begins

Tourtiere - French Canadian meat pie

I asked friends to share some of their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day epicurean traditions on Twitter and Facebook. Saying goodbye to the old and blessing the new can bring out deep and complex traditions of delight.

One of my fondest New Year's memories was when I was living across state in Menasha. A friend, born and raised in Europe, invited us to share a meal of New Year's lentils for luck. Beyond the warm friendship and sharing of a meal, the subtle flavors she coaxed from the lentils brought them from legume to legendary. 

I blogged about our tradition last year - cassoulet shared with friends.  What else are people preparing?

Cheryl: We are having a New Year's Eve homemade pizza, and a New Year's day breakfast. Jim calls the breakfast a "lumberjack breakfast;" I don't know why. (Eggs, potatoes, onion, cheese, ham or sausage or Canadian bacon, sometimes breadcrumbs, all together in a skillet.)

Melissa: Homemade pasta for New Year's Eve and homemade pierogis for New Year's Day....oh,and Bailey's cookies on New Year's Eve!

Ally: On new year's day, everyone I know eats black-eyed peas for luck. I've been informed that this is very southern. :)  My grandmother also insists on collard greens!

Jennifer Ann (in response to above):  SUPER Southern. This WI girl had never heard of such a thing until she married a Texan. Oh, a Cuban friend of mine makes us eat 12 grapes at midnight (1 for each clock-stroke) and you make 12 wishes!

Roxane and Steve: Venison/veggie stew and Bloody Mary's with our own pepper infused vodka. 

Meagan: Collard greens, black eyed peas & ham on New Years are a Southern tradition for luck & prosperity. I'm slow-cooking a soup with collards, peas and a crunchy bacon garnish...hopefully it will trick my husband into liking greens!  

Sue: Some day I'm going to get a taste of that cassoulet! But I do have my jar of herring ready for the stroke of midnight!

Stacy:  We do tourtière on New Year's Eve.

I can't help but want to share in all that delightful food. Happy New Year, my friends!

 

The Art and Play of Candy - The Recipe

After our family history and a bit about the process, here is the recipe and sources! We keep the house cool during the process (65F or less) so the chocolate can cool without streaks.

Turtles
2# small pecans (Trader Joe) 
2# small unsalted, unroasted cashews (Weavers Country Market, Fall Creek, WI)

Spread nuts on parchment paper-covered rimmed baking pans (I use six 12"x17" pans purchased from a restaurant supply store).

2# Wilbur milk chocolate (in blocks) (Weavers Country Market)
2# Wilbur dark chocolate (in blocks) (Weavers Country Market)

Caramel (from Pearl Vonyx, a neighbor from our childhood)

Mom's beat-up old 2 c. measuring cup
for the syrup. Gotta use it!

• 3 1/2 sticks of salted butter
• 2# light brown sugar
• 2 cups Karo syrup
• 1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
• dash (or more) salt - this is my secret - I go towards the more so my caramels aren't as much sweet as interesting!
• 1 T. vanilla

Melt butter over medium heat. Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir constantly for about 45 minutes until the temperature reaches 247F. Let cool for a few minutes. Then drop small amounts of caramel on the nuts, using a spoon or candy funnel. Cool completely.

Chocolate

Cutting the chocolate blocks

Melting the chips

Hand dipping the chocolate onto the caramel pecans

Chop into small chips and place in small metal pan. Put the pan in a non-reactive skillet with 3/4"-1" of water held at just below simmer (keeps the chocolate at a temperature of between 110-112F). Add water when necessary. Stir chocolate until melted, pour onto a marble and temper (push back and forth over the surface of the marble) to 87F for milk and 89F for dark. Using spoon or hand, drop chocolate onto the cooled caramel-nut clusters. Cool and pack into boxes or tins, using wax paper or parchment paper between layers.

And that's how a batch of turtles gets done - an hour to make the caramel and get it on the nuts. An hour to cool. Two hours to chop, melt, temper and dip. An hour to cool. An hour to pack.  Then a chance to test the result and decide if these little beauties are good enough to give away (YES!!).

Each and every time I repeat this annual holiday ritual, my mom is close to me in thought and heart. I hear the echoes of the laughter, the chatter and the warmth of my sisters and aunts and cousins who worked at the prodigious task of making the candy. Each sweep of my hand and squeeze of chocolate brings back a sense of home and holiday. And I am so grateful for this beautiful skill my mom shared with me. Happy holidays!

The Art and Play of Candy - The Process

In the last post, I talked about how I got to be a candy maker.

Whenever I do something so infrequently, I worry that I will have lost the knack of it. But somehow, making turtle candy always comes back. My hand remembers. That and the sheets of brief notes that document the process and history of our candy journey. Mom learned long ago not to trust her memory, and daughter of my mother, I rely on these previously written jottings.

Candy making is an adventure. Each year something is introduced into the formula - a better way to melt the chocolate; a new source of nuts to buy; a "never-buy-that-brand-again" epiphany; an introduction of an instant read thermometer or a way to keep the sticky caramel from clinging to the pan (line them with parchment paper!).  The early notes from the eighties, written in my Mom's tiny handwriting - how many pounds and what kind of chocolate and nuts - include who came to make candy and how many days the candy was made. Notes on temperature, clues on sources for ingredients and even prices might show up in each yearly paragraph.

For us, candymaking is about tradition but also innovation and experimentation. How would those dipping chips work (not so well)? What if we first did a batch of caramels to wrap and then did the batch of caramels for turtles (oooh, that was a keeper in terms of kitchen efficiency and helper energy)? What is the perfect temperature to make sure the caramel isn't too sticky of too hard (I know!  Who could believe how many times that has changed!!)?

One such innovation? In the last post, I described how mom and helpers would use spoons to drop quarter size dollops of hot liquid caramel onto the nuts spread over the pans. This was quick and almost frantic work. Once the caramel was done, we had about fifteen minutes to work with it before it began to stiffen and harden. We had to wait a few minutes to begin because it was too hotly runny to set. So it was a race to get it onto the nuts in distinct small pools and not burn ourselves or have it harden too much to slide off the spoon.

A casual conversation one year about how Al poured the caramel at Seroogy's (through a big funnel with the flow controlled by a wooden stick) led us to our biggest innovation. That and a visit to the Vanilla Bean, a Madison candymaking and baking supply store which stocked this helpful tool. Pouring the caramel into this little white funnel with a ball-ended stick let us quickly - and safely - drop just the right amount of caramel on the nuts by quickly lifting the stick up and down to control the caramel flow. It was lightning fast.  From three or four people pouring the caramel, one can easily do it.  While a small detail, it took alot of the unpleasant labor from the day. Oooooh. Innovation!

Stirring the caramel

This year's fun was provided by our new instant read thermometer, an unexpected addition. I usually use two other methods - my old candy thermometer and our cooking timer/temperature probe. I use the stove time probe to get a general sense of the temp but have never trusted its accuracy in candymaking where a few degrees difference in temperature means a batch of candy lost. The candy thermometer was the final arbiter of caramel doneness.  I could rely on the probe to beep when we were near the right temp and use most of my 45 minute caramel-stirring time playing games, daydreaming or reading.

Tools of the temperature trade

But this year, my old dog candy thermometer lagged 8 degrees behind the probe and I knew I was in trouble. I grabbed the instant read, popped it in and got a close reading to the probe. Saved! I also used the instant read thermometer to see what temperature my tempered chocolate was. I never used a thermometer for this, just the feel of the chocolate and look of the drips. I was delighted to find the temper at a perfect 87F. Cool!

So, in the process, I get a chance to wrap myself in tradition and experiment like a mad scientist.  No wonder I look forward to candymaking each year.

In the next post, the recipe!