cooking

How To Serve A Season: Winter

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If you go through world folklore- from places where winter is a thing- you’ll find the connection of Winter and Death.

In Norse Mythology, Idunn, goddess of youth, falls from the branches of Yggdrasil while picking the apples she feeds to the gods to keep them strong. She plummets- like a falling leaf- all the way to Niflheim and Hel. Niflheim and Hel are at the very bottom of the tree, the realms of ice and the dead, respectively. When the gods find out and Hela (goddess of death) refuses to let her go immediately, Odin gives her husband Bragi (the god of poetry and song) a white wolf skin to keep her warm until Hela lets her go. Odin (the sky) sends a white blanket (snow,) song and poetry to keep Youth comfortable until she is freed.

We can see it again in the well-known story of Persephone and having to stay with Hades for part of the year, during which her mother Demeter won’t let anything grow.

The trees lose their leaves. The snows, rains, and winds come. Animals hibernate, and wait for the world to live again.

Fall slowed everything down. Winter is when we are meant to stop and rest. Humans aren’t so good at that though, so we adapted. When the Earth retains and nurtures its bounty, we have gotten VERY good at relying on when it didn’t.

Photo by Adriaan Greyling
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An Object Lesson in What Matters

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I was sitting in the break room at the winery, having just finished my lunch. It was a chilly, sunny day, and the break room has a really nice window that looks out on the terrace, the waterfall feature on the grounds, and beyond that over the valley.

I was debating how to best pull off the rest of the week, crank out a new bread recipe for my chef’s latest special, and what kind of desserts I should do for the seasonal menu change. I was grateful for the distraction. The toxicity of social media around the Israel-Hamas War was still trickling through despite me pulling back. When that many lives and that much culture is on the line and the generational trauma of two entire peoples is simultaneously triggered, there’s too much at stake for it to be managed through TikTok videos, memes, and idiotic flame wars- but here we are.

It made my heart hurt, and my mental health required me backing off, so I’d resolved to do what I’d always done when feeling pained and powerless- feed people, and put good things into the world that weren’t there before.

Then my phone rang. It was my wife, nearly in tears. Life was about to provide an object lesson in Pain, Powerlessness, what we do in the face of it, and the things that mean more than posting “the right things” on social media.

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The Secret Ingredients of Good Baking

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Coming into a new restaurant to take control of an existing menu and program is an interesting experience if just because of the line that gets walked between tradition and innovation. Telling a new cook who keeps talking about “the way it was done at their old place” that it doesn’t matter- they’re here now, we do it this way, you will too- gets a twist when you step in at a level of creative control. “Make it new…” but not too new.

The house bread at my winery cannot be radically changed- too many people love it, it’s too embedded in the menu. Well and good. The cookie recipes, however, and especially a Canele recipe that only one person could ever make work well? Those required the addition of creativity and craft to make them work better and BE better.

No fancy new ingredients. No strange chemical or additions. The best “secret ingredients” are techniques- and the very best ones aren’t even that.

A baker in a black apron and with a black background dusts flour over a lump of dough on a small baking bench.
Photo by Klaus Nielsen
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How To Serve A Season: Autumn

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It took growing up for fall to be something I looked forward to. Growing up on the Jersey Shore, itt meant the start of school, the tourists going home after leaving all their money and trash behind, the streets becoming cold and quiet, and the beaches being empty to enjoy any stray warm days after Labor Day.

In college, I got to see the legendary “Hartford in the Fall” and enjoyed the changing leaves, the coziness of hot beverages and fire pits at night, and the death of all the bloodsucking insects that swarmed in the summer.

Now, in the PNW, I get to experience and enjoy autumn on my own terms. I get to wear warmer, fuzzier clothing more. Evenings spent drinking whiskey in my cozy rocking chair are the constant rather than a treat, and IPAs finally start to vanish from taplists to make room for the darker, maltier beers I love.

AND the mosquitos drop dead. Wins all around.

It is Pie Time.
It is Stew Time.
It is Scarves and Hoodies and Shawls and Tweed and Not Making Excuses for Wanting to Stay Home and Be A Hobbit Time.

I’ve still gotta go to work though, so I’m working on sharing as many of those vibes as I can through food.

Basque-Style Pumpkin Cheesecake with Candied Squash, Pomegranate, and Corn Cranberry Florentine. Seasonal dessert I created for Amaterra Winery.
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Cooking Like Yourself

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You might think it’s odd for a baker to go out and find other bakeries on their day off. I bake all the time, and surely I can make anything I want at home for a fraction of the price. Why should I go check out other bakeries in the city?

You might as well wonder why musicians go to other peoples concerts. Baking is my skillset and profession, and I definitely make a commodity, but it’s also a craft- and I like seeing how others practice it.

The same as there are different genres of music or literature, there are different cuisines. Within those genres, everyone has their own style. A way they practice their art that’s all their own, or a kind of art that they just vibe with and respond to.

There’s lots of ways to do this cooking thing, after all.

Animated GIF of The Stranger from The Big Lebowski sipping his drink and saying “I Like Your Style, Dude.”
I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to make another Big Lebowski reference.
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