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Sharing The Flavors Of Our Lives

Food, like music, is a universal language. It can reach across years and distances. The foods we use to celebrate are a mirror of the cultures and communities that created us. In this world where families and friends are increasingly mobile and span countless miles, we can feel connected to the ones we love by sharing the flavors of our lives. You never know when the thing you bring to the table will become a part of someone’s cherished memories. I do know that I am forever grateful to those who have become a part of mine.

As a person who looks to food as a lens to learn about the world, I am blessed with friends and loved ones who come from many places. Their foods and traditions have brought so much to my life, and I feel more deeply connected to each of them by experiencing these things. I’ll never forget the first Christmas my Aunt Wendy spent with our family. She brought along a taste of her native Canada in the form of Tourtière, a spiced meat pie that is traditionally served after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. It was sweet and savory and completely new, perhaps my first peek into traditions different than the ones I had always known. By sharing it with us, my new aunt was offering a piece of herself.

Not long after that Christmas, when I was 13 years old, I got a new brother. He was a tall, brilliant, and sweet Bavarian 17-year-old named Manuel who came to live with our family for the school year. My parents, brother, and I all adored him instantly and folded him into our big, noisy, extended family. We have yet to allow him to leave it, though he has long since returned to Europe.

Manuel introduced us to the joys of German Christmas delicacies. My first bite of lebkuchen was a revelation; the sugary icing shell gave way under my teeth to the soft cookie beneath, the flavors of nuts, citrus, and spices dancing on my tongue. The sensations were new and intoxicating and felt like an invitation to a wider world. I love lebkuchen because they are delicious, but also because they take me back to that joyful day in my parents’ house, my brothers and I rolling out sugar cookies and having an epic flour fight as we nibbled the precious imported treat.

A few years ago, Manuel and his family added a new tradition to my family’s Christmas. He and his wife Esma sent a beautiful book on the foodways of her home country of Georgia, sending me racing to find ingredients for the cheese bread khachapuri. Though we have not met in person, I was eager to get to know my bonus brother’s wife and daughter through this emblematic food of the Caucasus. In the most basic version of khachapuri, a simple dough is filled with a simple mixture of cheeses (intended to stand in for the local cheeses of Georgia), and either griddled or baked. It is warming, decadent, and almost unreasonably good on a cold winter night. As I mix and knead the dough each Christmas Eve, I think fondly of my German-Georgian family as my Connecticut one waits hungrily for the khachapuri to bake.

This time of year, I also prepare the New Mexican bizcochitos that my husband’s Aunt Alice taught me to make in her Albuquerque kitchen. The delicate, crumbling texture and whisper of anise and cinnamon set the iconic cookie apart. Daydreams of piñon smoke and sage, luminarias, and adobe fill my mind as I bake. When sharing these with family, friends, and neighbors, I hope to conjure a small piece of my husband’s childhood holidays in the Southwest.

This year, my 9-month-old nephew will join our family tradition of Christmas morning peaches, preserved by my parents in their Connecticut kitchen and shipped across the globe to my brother in Japan. I doubt my grandfather foresaw his American-Chinese great-grandson’s first holiday breakfast in Osaka when he taught my young, newlywed parents his mother’s canning techniques so many years ago. I can almost see the smile of joy and pride it would have brought to his face.

I haven’t yet had the courage to try to recreate my sister-in-law Eichan’s transcendent dumplings. But it fills me with joy to see my children vie for the matcha and red bean treats that their aunt and uncle send each December. They look forward to them but find them not at all intimidating or exotic. To them, like khachapuri, bizcochitos, and Grammy and Papa’s peaches, these foods are simply part of the tapestry of their own Christmas traditions. The flavors need not hold the promise of a wider world for them because that world is already theirs. And I hope, in every corner of the world, they find the warm embrace of family.

Imeretian Khachapuri

or Georgian Christmas Bread

Adapted from Tasting Georgia by Carla Capalbo

For the dough:

Ingredients

Put the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and process briefly. Pour in the warm water and process again. The dough will come together and form a ball. Continue processing for about 2 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Dust your hands with flour and knead the dough for another 2 minutes. It should be slightly sticky and not too firm. Spread the oil around the bottom and sides of a large bowl. Place the dough ball in the bowl, turning it once to pick up some of the oil. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and place it in a warm place for 90 to 115 minutes.

When the dough has risen, punch it down, turn it out onto a lightly floured board and knead it for just a minute to form a smooth ball.

Place a flat, heavy iron baking sheet on the center rack of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees. Fill and shape the bread while the oven heats up.

For the filling:

Ingredients:

Mix the four cheeses in a small bowl. Season with pepper. Reserve the beaten egg to paint the top of the bread.

To shape and fill bread:

On a lightly floured sheet of parchment paper, roll the dough into a 12-inch square. Shape the filling into a diamond shape in the center of the dough.

One at a time, fold each corner of the dough towards the center, pinching the seams firmly to seal the dough. Turn the dough over so that the seams at facing down on another piece of parchment, make a small air hole in the center (I use the bottom of a piping tip for this) and paint the top of the bread with beaten egg.

Slide the bread and its parchment on to the heated baking pan already in the oven. Bake 25-30 minutes, until the top if golden and the filling bubbling through the air hole.

Remove the bread to a cooling rack and immediately rub all over the top with a bit of salted butter. Cut into wedges and serve hot.

Bizcochitos

Recipe courtesy of Alice Simms

Ingredients

Preheat oven tp 350 degrees. Combine ¼ c. sugar and 1 T. cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter, sugar, and anise seed until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat until mixture is homogenous. Add dry ingredients and brandy and mix until a smooth, stiff dough forms. If dough appears too dry, add more brandy one tablespoon at a time until all flour mixture is incorporated.

Turn dough onto a floured board and roll out ¼ inch to ½ inch thick. Cut into desired shapes with a cookie cutter. (The fleur de lis is a traditional shape, but I like to make mine round with a scalloped edge or in the shape of a roadrunner.)

Dredge each cookie in the cinnamon sugar mixture and bake on parchment-lined sheets approximately 10 minutes or until tops are lightly browned. Cool cookies completely before serving.

Jillian Simms, the Apron Strings food columnist and feature writer for Shore Publishing can be reached at apronstringsct@gmail.com.