Some thoughts about Christmas this year. Many of us are facing the prospect of being separated, involuntarily, from those we have always been with at Christmas. There is no doubt that it will be poignant; we will miss them.
About this there is also no doubt: the holidays will come and go on schedule, and we can either mourn the absence of our usual celebrations or look for a new way to make the season enjoyable.
When it comes to food, may I suggest that this is an opportunity to do something different? It can be – as it always is, although we don’t necessarily recognize this – a design-your-own Christmas, a time when we can hold onto the features that we love, whether it be fish dinner on the 24th or a celebratory buffet at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and also be as non-traditional as we wish.
Do you get stressed about buying, stuffing and roasting a turkey? Would you be happier roasting a chicken? Or maybe trying a plant-based entrée? Maybe you love curry, or lobster, or sushi, or roast beef. Think about building holiday meals around favourite foods, whether they are part of your family tradition or not.
That, of course, does not exclude a roast turkey dinner with dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes and vegetables. If that, for you, is the best of Christmas, then by all means do it, and make it an intimate and very special meal for two, or however many you’re able to safely celebrate with.
We don’t have to do the same thing in the same way every year. While we might be nostalgic for the old way, we could just as easily discover that a different way, a different recipe, a different menu, a different schedule enriches celebrations in unexpected ways.
I don’t know yet what we will be doing at our home for Christmas, but I do know that travel restrictions will make things different for our family than they have been in previous years. This past week, I was baking cookies to mail to someone who won’t be home for Christmas. Since food is such an important part of holiday festivities, sending cookies, as well as a bottle of a favourite jelly, seems like a way to reach out and include someone who isn’t physically here.
It always takes awhile for me to decide which cookies to bake for sharing. This time, in keeping with my thoughts on doing things a bit differently, I abstained from baking any type of shortbread cookies. (I may still change my mind and bake some, as they are particular favourites of mine.)
After studying the pages of dozens of magazines saved over many years, as well as a number of cookbooks, I decided on chocolate spritzer cookies, thumbprint cookies (a family recipe), a pistachio-based Lebanese cookie called Barazek, and English currant cookies.
Leafing through so many holiday recipes gave me a renewed appreciation for the women and men who develop, test, update, retest and perfect them. A shoutout to all of them.
This recipe for English currant cookies comes Margaret Fraser’s feature called From a Victorian Kitchen, printed in Canadian Living’s 1997 special Holiday Baking issue.
English Currant Cookies
from Canadian Living: Holiday Baking. Telemedia Publishing, Toronto, 1997.
- 125 mL (½ cup) butter
- 175 mL (¾ cup) icing sugar, sifted
- 1 egg
- 5 ml (1 tsp) grated lemon peel
- 2 ml (½ tsp) vanilla
- 375 ml (1½ cups) all-purpose flour
- 2 ml (½ tsp) baking powder
- 2 ml (½ tsp) freshly grated nutmeg
- 75 ml (⅓ cup) dried currants
In bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy; beat in egg, lemon rind and vanilla. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and nutmeg; stir into butter mixture in three additions. Stir in currants. Gather into ball; flatten into disc. Wrap in plastic wrap; refrigerate for at least one hour or until chilled. (Dough can be refrigerated for up to three days.)
On lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 3 mm (⅛ inch) thickness. Using 5 cm (2 inch) cookie cutter, cut out shapes, rerolling scraps once. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake in centre of 180 C (350 F) oven for about 12 minutes or until light golden. Transfer to rack; let cool.
Makes about 48 cookies.
Margaret Prouse, a home economist, writes this column for The Guardian every Friday. She can be reached by email at [email protected].
