Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

We literally just walked in after spending our Labor Day afternoon at the annual WIADP (West Indian American Day Parade) on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, but to describe what we just witnessed as simply a parade would be akin to saying that scotch bonnet peppers are sometimes a little spicy, i.e. an enormous underestimation. The parade is the largest in New York City with upwards of 2million people flocking to it annually.

It was an unbelievable assault on the senses - the sights (thousands upon thousands of dancing people all decorated with their national flags and some astonishing costumes), the sounds (hundreds of different sound systems all turned up to 11 and all competing with one another as they slowly rumbled by on floats, accompanied by the ever-present encouragements for the dancers from some very vocal MCs), the smells (a myriad stalls selling Caribbean favorites, some better known that others), and the atmosphere (it is about 90F here today and there were some enormous smokers pumping out clouds of jerk-scented smoke, as well as many other “personal” smokers pumping out clouds of the other kind of smoke Jamaica is famous for).

Of course, apart from soak up the atmosphere, we did our best to sample the wares from as many of the stalls as possible. Sadly, our eyes were bigger than our bellies, and we frequently had the unfortunate experience of having to walk past many a stall not physically being able to eat anymore. Let’s face it, Caribbean food is not exactly light at the best of times, and on a scorching summer day, goat curry with roti, fish cakes, bake and salt-fish, all smothered in fruity hot pepper sauce, and washed down with spicy ginger beer, then shaken up and down with booming soca and dance-hall, is a recipe for a lot of sweating and the need for shade and a sit-down. Intense. Seriously intense.

My only touchstone for a carnival like this, is, well, carnival – the Notting Hill Carnival in London to be precise. And, not to offend anyone involved with that fun, enormous, crazy and, occasionally, violent Caribbean festival, the WIADP is a major step-up. The food, the sounds, the people, the culture, it’s all as much as you can take and more. It’s as close to being in a foreign country as I’ve ever experienced in America (note that, for me, America is a foreign country). It’s such a radical departure from what the area around the Brooklyn Art Museum usually looks like and where you usually see white couples jogging along behind three-wheel baby-chariots, that at first it takes you aback. Then, and suddenly, it just sucks you in, but, just as quickly, it spits you out again. It’s a lot to take and we had to retire for some shade and cold water, but we’ll be back. You should check it out next year, for once a year is enough to last you a while. That said, we’ll definitely be exploring more of our local Caribbean restaurants and trying to recreate some of their dishes and the ones we ate today now we’ve got a taste for it.

The most popular ways to serve classic Romesco with vegetables is with the famous Spanish calçots. Calçots are a variety of longer, thicker and sweeter scallions that are also grown in Tarragona, Catalonia (a perfect local pairing!) and are produced in a very specific and time-consuming way with a season lasting only from January to March. Every January or February the calçots are harvested and many Catalonians celebrate this with a huge calçotada or a kind of calcot fiesta. At this big party, Catalonians sit at long tables and consume pounds of calçots which have been charred on a grill of burning vines and then wrapped in newspapers in order to finish cooking in steam. The participants dip the fleshy, sweet insides of the calçots into romesco and wash it down with copious amounts of red wine. Meat and bread are often grilled right after the calcots are. I am hoping to one day taste these beauties but mostly I’m excited to one day be part of a calçotada.

If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the festivities of a calçotada, check out this great YouTube video. You don’t need to understand Spanish to understand it.

Anyways, back to the meal we made. Earlier I mentioned that I called my sauce a Romesco-esque sauce because I kind of was forced to use what I had in my kitchen. I did not have any of the dried sweet peppers called nyora which are normally used but that was probably because they are very hard to come by here in America. In fact, I didn’t even have the substitute that is often used here such as an ancho pepper, so I used what I had (and, purists, I know you’ll kill me because Romesco should never be spicy but I needed to use up a half of salmonella-free jalapeno). Also, Romesco should always be made with fresh tomatoes and I didn’t have any so out came the jar of crushed tomatoes. I also decided to thinly slice some fennel and an onion and sweat them down slowly in a pan with some olive oil. After a half hour of slowly sweating down, you get the sweetest most delicious “relish” which I topped our grilled fish with as well.

In the end, all the flavors melded together perfectly. Maybe it was the crunchiness of the grilled trout skin, possibly the moist trout flesh mixed with the smokey, sweet and nuttiness of the Romesco-esque sauce or it could have been the bliss of having a bit of crunchy potatoes with the moist fish along with the sweetness of the onion/fennel relish? Whatever it was, this meal was a homerun. I hope you try your hand at making Romesco and maybe you have a good story of attending a calçotada?

Feel free to check two of our good blogger friends version of Romesco – Kalofagas, Nuria’s and Michelle’s.

GRILLED RAINBOW TROUT WITH ROMESCO-ESQUE SAUCE AND FENNEL-ONION RELISH – serves 2

Ingredients for fish and fennel-onion relish:

• 1 whole rainbow trout, gutted and cleaned
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• salt and pepper
• 1 fennel, thinly sliced (use a mandoline – it’s easier)
• 1 onion, thinly sliced (I used vidalia onion for it’s sweetness

Ingredients for Romesco Sauce:

• 6 tablespoons crushed tomatoes (or 4 roasted tomatoes)
• 2 tablespoons Spanish sweet pimenton (or sweet paprika)
• 10 Marcona almonds (if using other type of almond, make sure they have been pan-roasted for a minutes and the skin is removed)
• 1 piece of toasted white bread (crust removed)
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1/2 of a pepper, traditionally a dried red pepper (I used jalapeno – not traditional at all, but gave it a little kick)
• 1/2 head of roasted garlic
• 1 sprig of mint
• olive oil
• pinch of salt

What to do:

1. Heat about 1/4 cup of olive oil in a pan and on medium to medium-low heat, cook your onions and fennel down for about 20 to 30 minutes until very soft and translucent. Do not let them brown and make sure you stir every few minutes.
2. Roast your 1/2 head of garlic in a 475 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes (or until soft inside). Allow to cool before using.
3. Make your Romesco by adding the bread, almonds and pepper first and grind up finely in the food processor. Next add the other ingredients (don’t forget to squeeze the roasted garlic out of the skins!) except the olive oil and salt. Blend until smooth. Finally, with the food processor going, slowly add the olive oil in a slow stream until the Romesco is thick and fully emulsified. Taste for salt and add to your liking.
4. Rub your whole fish with the butter and season inside and out with salt and pepper. Throw on a hot grill and cook until firm on both sides (about 5 to 7 minutes per side depending on size of fish).
5. Eat fish whole or fillet the fish and top with some romesco sauce and a tablespoon of the onion/fennel relish. Serve with greens or crispy roasted potatoes. Drizzle some olive oil all over before serving.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• SPANISH (ASTURIAN) OXTAIL WITH FRIED POTATOES
• FUSILLI WITH SALSA DI NOCI AND MUSHROOMS (WALNUT PESTO)
• BRAISED PORK CHOPS WITH LIME AND OLIVES
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Daily Bread: Still Eaten Daily In Some Parts

A few summers ago we were very fortunate to spend a long vacation traveling through northern Spain and southwestern France. It was our first real vacation alone since Amy and I had met, and was especially well-deserved because we had spent the previous 12 months going through the traumatic process of immigrating me to the United States and all the crap that goes along with moving to a new country and finding gainful employment. Even now, after ten or more trips overseas in the interim, we still look back on that wonderful trip with great nostalgia. In fact, so formative was it for us and our relationship together, that we might not be so passionate about food (or even have this blog) were it not for having driven those rural highways and byways eating and drinking our way through the small towns of Spain and France. So this post and podcast are a sort of belated paen to the mental tranquility we rediscovered on that trip.

As we planned it, we read-up on destinations en route from Barcelona to Bilbao and decided that Carcassonne should be amongst them. Quite apart from its culinary pedigree of being one of the three towns in that part of France which lay claim to having been the birthplace of the famous pork and bean dish cassoulet, it also, reputedly, has the best Bastille Day firework display anywhere in the country outside Paris. Judge for yourself in the video below.

Bastille Day or Fête de la Fédération (July 14th), is the French equivalent of the American Independence Day, and marks the storming and fall of the Bastille (Paris’ central prison where French political prisoners and fictional characters, including Dumas’ The Man In the Iron Mask were imprisoned) during the French Revolution that signified the ‘birth of the modern French nation’. It’s the biggest national holiday in France with celebrations and demonstrations of fidelity to La Patrimonie all over the country.

However, like many national holidays around the world, in spite of the ostensible patriotism of the day, good food, amazing fireworks and fun, drunk times are the thing that most people focus on. So, to line our stomachs before a night of drinking wine out of the bottle on the street (like everyone else), we, almost like Moses in the wilderness, followed the pillar of smoke towards the heady smell of grilled meat. There we found a lined, toothless, Algerian man, squinting against the smoke and spitting fat of his blackened grill, cooking huge merguez sausages (a spicy North African sausage made with beef or lamb) over hot coals. In exchange for a couple of euros, he nestled a couple of these sausages snugly into a crusty baguette alongside a load of salty, golden french fries, and smeared the whole thing with dijon mustard and ketchup. That’s what I call street food!

The sandwich is exactly what you’d imagine, and after a couple of drinks, it’s even better. The spiciness of the merguez along with the salty, crispy french fries, well, it just doesn’t get any better. We’re not actually going to post a recipe for this one, only a quick pictorial step-by-step below – you’ll have to listen to the podcast for a detailed how to – but anyone with half a brain (and we firmly believe our readers are in possession of somewhat more than that) should be able to make their own sandwich de merguez with ease. As you can see from the photos, we added some fried leeks as a topping in what can only be described as a petty bourgeois touch, which the French revolutionaries of old would certainly have disproved of, but that’s freedom for you, right? In a similarly middle-class stylie (or sans culottes for those of you who’ve fought your way through Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen), we attempted to make our own version of a harissa sauce, combining ketchup, 1 clove of roasted garlic, 1 fire-roasted habanero (yes, the sauce was a f***in’ wildman), and a pinch or less of ground coriander, cumin, mustard powder, black pepper and kosher salt in a food processor, but you could use dijon mustard and ketchup as your condiments, as we did that hallowed night in Carcassonne. Enjoy the sandwich whenever you like, but why not give it a try during the next national holiday wherever you are. After all, you don’t have to be French to appreciate spicy sausages and fries in a crusty roll!

Thanks to Zach at Serious Eats for featuring this sandwich in his weekly Serious Sandwiches column. THANK YOU!

SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ – A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1. Grill some merguez sausages on an indoor or outdoor grill.

2. Thinly slice some leeks.

3. Toss thinly sliced leeks in 2 tablespoons of flour PLUS 2 tablespoons cornstarch and fry in some veggie oil for about 1 minute.

4. Thinly slice 2 or 3 potatoes.

5. Heat up some vegetable oil and double fry your thin-sliced potatoes until golden brown. Allow to drain on some paper towels and sprinkle with salt.

6. In a fresh baguette, brush some dijon and spicy ketchup on each side of the bread. Add your grilled sausages, nestle some french fries between the sausages and the bread and then top with some fried leeks. ENJOY and feel free to keep dipping sandwich in some more mustard and ketchup.

Now that you have the background of the event I can tell you a bit about my experience. The first time I went 5 years ago it was basically the same at it was 2 days ago – a genuine cheese-fest. I felt like I was walking down the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ! But, I later learned I should have felt like I was walking down the boardwalk in Sleezeside Seaside Heights, NJ which, if you don’t know, is basically a mirror image of the Wildwood boardwalk. The reason for this, we were told, is that many of the vendors at the festival also own stores in Sleezeside. Just to paint a picture for you, the festival (and the boardwalk) is a nice mix of iron-on t-shirt shops (see pics), pizza/zeppoli restaurants, crappy, ‘disposable’ clothing shops and old-school arcades where you can attempt to win an ugly, highly flammable stuffed animal. In fact, within the first 2 minutes walking through the festival, Jonny was swindled by a woman manning a game booth who just kept handing him darts to throw and then told him his ‘game’ cost $35… right.

The one thing that people get excited for at the San Gennaro festival is the food – mainly the Sausage and Peppers. My grandmom made her sausage and peppers different from the ones at the festival which are just grilled with some oil and put in a nice hero roll (Grandma’s recipe to follow). The Italian sausage was delish and spicy but the guys working the grill were a bit shy on the peppers (in fact there were barely any left to give us). The other thing that was interesting about the festival was the presence of Mexican vendors. Now, believe me, I LOVE Mexican food, but at an Italian festival? If you put mozzerella cheese in an arepa it doesn’t automatically make it an Italian treat… right? It would’ve made more sense if there were Chinese vendors because Little Italy in NYC is really no longer – it is more like Little Italy/Chinatown. The whole thing kind of left a strange taste in my mouth and made me wonder what the original San Gennaro festivals were like.

The night at San Gennaro ended on a bad note as we discovered that Jonny’s crappy ‘came-free-with-the-plan’ cell phone was stolen from the side of his bag. It used to be thought that the festival was actually planned by the mob so maybe it was inside job. I hope they can even resell that piece of sh$t for more than 2 bucks!

All in all it was an interesting night. Not quite what we were hoping for, but still a Northeastern cultural event that I probably will not be attending again.

In memory of my lovely grandma Anna Norcia, I offer you her recipe for Sausage and Peppers. Very different from the one at San Gennaro but, in my opinon, much more delicious. Note that the original really calls for no measurements of ingredients. You kind of have to ‘get your Italian-mama’ on and just keep tasting till it tastes good. I tried my best to give measurements, but I would still continue to taste to see if you think it needs more ‘ummmph’. Enjoy!

ANNA’S ‘MAKE A LOAD FOR THE GRADUATION PARTY’ SAUSAGE & PEPPERS

Ingredients:

• Spicy Italian Sausage Links (2 lbs.)
• white wine (maybe 1/2 cup?)
• pork gravy (of course homemade would be great, but store-bought will be fine)
• green and red peppers (3 peppers total)
• 2 onions – sliced
• 2-4 cloves garlic (to taste)
• olive oil
• good quality hoagie/hero/sub rolls

1. Slice your sausage into 1-inch pieces. Brown.
2. Slice up your peppers (into strips) and onions (into thick slices) and saute until semi-soft then add chopped garlic. Don’t let them get too soft cause you want them to have a bit of chew.
3. Add the pork gravy and the wine and simmer on low for about a half hour.
4. Add some salt and pepper to taste.
5. Using a slotted spoon, spoon the sausage/pepper/onions into a sliced hoagie roll. Top with some of the gravy. (Note: You can also eat this on top of rice or noodles if you prefer).

Maybe this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it reminds me of home (as well as every family party we ever had!).

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS RELATED TO THIS:

• FETTUCCINE FRA’DIAVOLO WITH CRAB AND SHRIMP
• FRITO MISTO DI MARE (FRIED MIXED SEAFOOD AND VEGGIES)
• Striking Over Pasta?
• PERFECT BROCCOLI DI RAPE/RAPINI
• In Defence of Sandwiches (White House Subs, Atlantic City)