WINTER FOOD

This past November and December in Seattle have been wet, rainy and windy months. What warms us up and cheers us up? Food and drink! Here are some of the dishes that particularly warm the hearts and stomachs of our crew during the holidays and deep dark of winter.

Every year, I make fruitcakes! Can you believe it? Well, I can't either but the recipe by Paul Bertoli in Chez Panisse Cookbook is wonderful. It has pine nuts, dried figs, apricots and you pour espresso over it while it is cooling. This one will knock your in-laws socks off! I also make gingerbread houses - when I was seventeen, I made a house following the instructions from Martha Stewart's first cookbook. It was beautiful, with colonial pillars and caramelized sugar windows. Then I gave it to my boyfriend's family and they displayed it in their entry way.
- Melinda Burdo, Human Resources Manager

I don't need much cheering up because late fall/early winter is my favorite time of year. I love making long simmering stews, stocks and fragrant roasts that fill up the house with their delicious scents. I also make batches of cookie dough which I freeze so that I can bake fresh cookies on the spur of the moment. Every year we have Christmas Eve at our friend's Peter and Peggy's's house and I so look forward to this fabulous dinner. The menu changes every year except for a few "must haves", including oysters on the half shell with vintage champagne, Peter's oeufs a la meurette and Peggy's grand finale, a steaming persimmon pudding. My father is just the opposite to me and dislikes this cold, gray period immensely. He celebrates winter solstice and the end of short days with a lavish fish chowder and great champagne (well, we are alike in some things.)
- Jackie Cross, Owner

My family is Polish so we always try to make our traditional food. My dad is famous for his duck soup. Family members come from miles away just to get a bowl. I enjoy making homemade Bailey's Irish Cream. And lots of cookies, especially chocolate peanut butter balls.
- Mikel Czajkowski, Palace Kitchen Cook

Christmas isn't Christmas to my family without two sacred foods. The first, eaten Christmas Eve before church, came from Switzerland with my mother's grandparents. Raclette is more ritual than sustenance. A huge chunk of good Swiss is held over a fire until crusty brown and melting, and then scraped onto as many of our baked potatoes as possible before being sent back to the flames. There's never enough for everyone at once and the anticipation is as much a part of the meal as the cold potato cake that no one ever eats, but everyone misses if it isn't on the table. The second, served during our Christmas morning breakfast with tangerines and eggnog, was introduced to the family by a displaced Latvian family my grandparents took in after WWII. I'm sure there is a proper name, but in my family these sweet, yeasty rolls full of savory bacon and onion are simply known as bacon buns. If I bake nothing else at Christmas, I still always make these because no matter how far from home I might be, when I wake up Christmas morning and take a bite of a bacon bun, I feel surrounded by my family once again.
- Martha Francis, Pasta Queen

Homemade holiday egg nog; its official season starts at Thanksgiving sometime between 10-11 a.m. and goes until about 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve. No holiday party is complete without it. I make mine with organic cream and eggs from The Creamery in the market. I buy whole nutmeg at Market Spice to grate on top. And I add copious amounts of liquor.
- Jenni Mae Miller, Dahlia Bartender

When we first came to the United States, the transition from our Tibetan culture to American culture was not easy, but we felt it would be fine as years went by. But the hardest part for a new immigrant, and especially for my family, was the adjustment in food. We also knew that while it may be difficult, it would also be fun to experiment. First, knowing where to find the ingredients to make our traditional foods was a daunting task because most of the regular food chain stores didn't carry them, or we didn't know where the specialty food stores were. But we have seen significant changes for the past couple years and now there are more oriental products on the shelves of regular markets.

Seattle sometimes tends to be as cold as Tibet, but it is certainly more rainy here. Especially these days when the winter weather is gloomy, you want some quick and easy dish to make in order to keep the holiday spirit running in your family and to lure yourself away from the daily hectic life in order to spend quality time with one's family every night. The easiest way to come around this challenge for my family is to make a simple Tibetan noodle dish called "thithuk", meaning "pull noodles". This dish originated in the Amdo province of Tibet where most people were nomads and traders. It is one of the simplest and the easiest food anyone can make. This is made with the right amount of spice, salt, meat and onion seasoned to a perfect balance to make a delicious beef soup. Next thing is the dough; we make it into small rolls and pull it as we go flattening it. When the soup boils, we pull the flat dough into small pieces and start throwing it in the soup, while not spilling any soup out. It has become an art form with my two sons. Then we add fresh radish, tomatoes and parsley for perfect Pull Noodles. This whole process takes only ten minutes and so we have an ample amount of time with our family together. My younger son once said that if he were stranded on a cold island, he would be happy as long as he could find bowls of pull noodles.
- Dekyi Thonden, Dahlia cook

What cheers me up? A big pot of Navy bean and ham hock soup with a loaf of crusty bread at my own kitchen table with my husband and kids… and a bottle of Syrah, of course!
- Barb Hills, Etta's Ass't Manager

I always make potato latkes at least once during Hanukkah. My goal, never fully achieved, is to make them as delicious as Grandma Pearl's. Hers were crisp and lacy on the edges with a bit of moist, potato-oniony softness in the center. Of course, she hand-grated the potatoes and onion - which does make them better somehow, but I'm lazy and use the food processor. As kids, we would sprinkle the latkes with sugar and eat them with applesauce, but now I like to serve them with sour cream. When I bring a dish to Christmas dinner at a friend's house, I often make the Brussels sprouts gratin from my favorite cook book of all time, Richard Olney's Simple French Food. Chopped sprouts sauteed with butter and bacon, then baked in a hot oven with cream, Parmesan, topped with buttery, golden breadcrumbs. People love Brussels sprouts if they have enough fat on them - I always get asked for the recipe. My husband and I like to think we have a winter tradition of hosting a Champagne and Gumbo party. Even though we've done this only once - serving a huge pot of seafood gumbo and many bottles of Champagne - it was a big success and seemed the perfect winter feast. Maybe this February we'll repeat our "tradition."
- Shelley Lance, Cookbook Co-author.