Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jan 04 2021
Christmas, Yule

Quiet Time, & Preparation

TENTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Titus’s and St. Gregory’s Day, Handsel Monday

With no particular customs associated with this, the Tenth Day of Christmas, I always take it as good day to prepare for the celebrations to come in the next couple of days: Twelfth Night and Epiphany. To that end, I’m going to include today the recipe I give you most years on the blog ahead of Epiphany: our recipe for Three Kings Cakes, steeped in the ancient flavors of that old desert land where the Christmas story first unfolded.

As for today, this Tenth Day of Christmas brings the Feast Day of St. Titus and St. Gregory, and it’s also St. Rigobert’s Day and St. Ramon’s Day. Titus was a disciple of St. Paul in the first century, and Gregory was a bishop in the sixth century. Rigobert had a trying time of it as an early Archbishop of Reims––political matters mostly––and he is held up as a model of patience. He kept a goose as a pet; that would take some patience, too. Ramon is particularly difficult to know; he was a bishop and he appears in the Chambers Bros. Book of Days on January 4 for the year 1869, but I have found no mention of him since in more contemporary sources.

Those same Chambers Bros. resided in Edinburgh, and in Scotland in ages past this First Monday after New Year was known as Handsel Monday, a day not so unlike Boxing Day in England. Servants and workers were given a hearty meal and a gift in hand (that’s the handsel), as well as the day off from all labor. It was the traditional day to bestow presents upon the mail carrier and the newspaper boy. In more rural areas the day was often kept at its Old Style date, celebrated on the Monday after the 12th of January and called Auld Hansel Monday (like our New Year’s song Auld Lang Syne). If there are readers in Scotland (Carolyn, I’m talking to you!), I’d be curious to know if any celebration of Handsel Monday continues today.

So, take today as a day of quiet, or, if you still have it in you to celebrate another grand event or two (I told you at the start that the Twelve Days of Christmas are extraordinary days that reside outside ordinary time) then let’s start preparing, for tomorrow evening brings Twelfth Night and the next day, Epiphany. In this house, we sometimes mark these closing days of the Yuletide season quietly, and sometimes with a big meal and a gathering of family and friends. This year, obviously, it will be quiet. With Twelfth Night and Epiphany, our focus shifts outward––toward the Magi who traveled to see the child and outer yet, to the star they followed on their journey. Stars make us think of larger things: far distances, light, the galaxy and the universe beyond. Christmas itself is close to the heart, but with Epiphany, the heart expands, as the universe, too.

Here at home, we bring out the illuminated paper star lanterns come Twelfth Night and we make Christmas sweets that, no matter how much we try to make earlier, we never seem to get made until the last few days of Christmas. Maybe it is a subconscious decision, for these baked goods feel older, more influenced by ancient flavors, flavors old and familiar to the Magi: Baklava flavored with honey and walnuts, and our friend Paula’s Kourambiedes cookies, each studded with a clove, and our Three Kings Cakes, flavored with honey, rose water, currants, and dates––flavors of the desert, of our ancient past, of that very first Christmas. The cakes are contemporary riffs on old flavors, but the Baklava and the Kourambiedes have a much longer history, the stuff of time immemorial. It’s easy to imagine that our friend St. Macarius, the fourth century confectioner that we celebrated on the Eighth Day of Christmas, was making these very same things in his shop in Old Alexandria.

So, while there are no particular customs for this Tenth Day of Christmas, mine has become the making of these delicious Three Kings Cakes, so they are ready for Twelfth Night and Epiphany, and perhaps this is the best custom of the day. The recipe yields three cakes, cakes you will prepare in three loaf pans. You will end up with one cake for each of the Magi, who have traditionally been called Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, though no one knows who they were really. As the story goes, it took the Magi all this time to travel through the desert, and seeing the child lying in the straw was their great epiphany. Rose water is the main flavoring, mysterious and familiar all the same. We happen to sell a wonderful rose water made at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine. If you’re local and you need some to bake these cakes, and if you don’t mind coming by for a pick up at our front porch here in Lake Worth Beach, use discount code PICKUP when you check out at our website; the code will deduct the $8.50 shipping charge. I’ll also be happy to make a free bicycle delivery to you if you live in our 33460 zip code––be sure to include your phone number when you order so we can arrange a pick up or delivery time.

This recipe began with Jeff Smith, who loved Christmas, but I’ve altered it over the years and this year, I updated it a bit more: I’ve cut down a bit on the currants, but added in some chopped dates. Again, more of the flavors of that desert land. Yule love these cakes! (Sorry, I get a big kick out of that. You can rest easy now that that’s probably the last time I’ll get to use yule that way this Christmastime.)

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T H R E E   K I N G S   C A K E S
makes three cakes

For the Batter
1 cup butter
generous 3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2  cups currants
1 cup chopped dates (pits removed, of course)
3 cups applesauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
4 cups flour

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cream together the butter and the sugar, then add the eggs and vanilla. Beat smooth before adding the remaining ingredients. Grease 3 loaf pans (about 8″ x 4″ x 3″ or so) and divide the batter amongst the pans. Bake for one hour, or until a toothpick poked into the center of each cake comes out dry. Let the cakes cool in their pans on a rack.

For the Syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
2 tablespoons rose water

Once the cakes are baked, combine the syrup ingredients, except for the rose water, in a saucepan over medium heat. Once the sugar dissolves, add the rose water. Remove the cinnamon stick and the cloves and then pour the hot syrup over the cakes in their pans, divided equally amongst the three cakes. The syrup will soak into the cakes. Allow to cool completely before unmolding from the pans. Serving the three cakes on three platters makes for a nice presentation on Epiphany Day or on Twelfth Night.

 

Image: “The Three Magi,” an illustration from the reproductions of Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus Deliciarum by Christian Moritz Engelhardt, 1818. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. The original book, known in English as The Garden of Delights, was made by Herrad of Landsberg, a 12th century nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey. The original perished in the burning of the Library of Strasbourg in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, but luckily we do have Engelhardt’s 19th century reproductions.

 

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Jan 03 2021
Christmas, Yule

Joyeux Noël

NINTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Genevieve’s Day

Francophiles will find it très bien to learn that today is St. Genevieve’s Day. Genevieve, sacred to Paris, that fair city’s patron saint, lived in Paris in the fifth century as a nun and is credited with saving the city from an attack by Attila and his Huns in 451. This she did through fasting and prayer, encouraging the residents of the city to join her. And around 475, she founded Saint-Denys de la Chapelle in Paris, which stands today as part of the Basilica of St. Denis.

I knew a Genevieve when I was a boy. She was an old friend of the family––a neighbor of my grandparents in the old neighborhood––and she was feisty and independent and she often wore a bandana on her head. Even in her old age, when I knew her, she would go up on the roof of her house in Fort Lauderdale and fix things that needed fixing. I like people like this. St. Genevieve strikes me as feisty and independent, too, and certainly someone who was not afraid to fix things that needed fixing, whether it be a leaky roof or dealing with invading Huns or getting a church built.

As the patron saint of the City of Light, I like to think of Genevieve as another of the midwinter saints who are light bearers at this dark time of year and who encourage us to be light bearers, too. She is often depicted holding a candle. As the story goes: the devil would time and again blow out her candle as she went to pray at night. Genevieve, however, relit her candle without need of flint or fire, always overcoming the darkness. (I picture her rolling her eyes each time, too.) As our wheel of the year goes, we are now thirteen days beyond the Midwinter Solstice; already light is increasing as we begin the journey toward summer’s warmth once more in the Northern Hemisphere. The light of St. Genevieve promises to never be snuffed by the darkness.

And while there are no particular customs (that I am aware of, anyway) associated with this Ninth Day of Christmas, there are plenty of you out there who love the food and culture of France. I think today, this Ninth Day of Christmas, is a fine day to enjoy those things fully. Joyeux Noël et bonne année!

 

Seth and I saw the house in the photo on a walk through our Lake Worth neighborhood on New Year’s Eve. I took the four letters for what they are (Leon), but Seth is convinced the folks inside were trying to spell Noel. Either way, it seemed a fitting image to use. Joyeux Noël from us, and from Leon.

 

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Jan 02 2021
Book of Days Calendar, Christmas, Yule

Something Sweet

EIGHTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Macarius’s Day

Could be lunch, could be dinner, could be hot dogs or the most elaborate meal ever… in my family, the words that someone always utters afterward are the same: “Have we got something sweet?” We are a dessert people. A demitasse of espresso and a little something sweet puts the proper finishing touch on any meal. Here at home, Seth is even known to partake in what he has dubbed Breakfast Dessert.

This Eighth Day of Christmas is given to such things as we remember St. Macarius of Egypt, who earlier in life was a confectioner in Alexandria. Truth be told, he was not much fun in his later years: He left his confectioners’ trade and he left Alexandria to live an ascetic lifestyle as a hermit in the desert, where his sustenance came from a simple diet of raw vegetables and, only on the most special days, a bit of bread dipped in olive oil. (I can picture my grandmother, holding up her thumb pressed against her index and middle fingers, begging him to just mangia something more than carrots.) Be that as it may, and as completely un-fun as Macarius the Hermit became, it is Macarius the Confectioner we remember most these days, and this is why he is a patron saint of cooks, confectioners, and pastry chefs. And for certain his is not the easiest name to pronounce; for this reason he has also been known over the ages as St. Macaroon (perhaps St. Macaron in France?)––fitting enough for a confectioner, I’d say. Anyway, his feast day, falling as it does within the extraordinary time of the Twelve Days of Christmas, has become a day for sweets.

But first, before we go further, today’s post comes with a gift: it’s the January edition of the ongoing Convivio Book of Days calendar. Click here for the PDF, printable on standard US letter size paper. Cover star this month: a burlap sack of chestnuts, imported from Italy, for the humble roasted chestnut plays such an important role in our midwinter celebrations this month. I imagine Macharius the Confectioner knew this, as well, all those centuries ago. Good things remain constant.

Now, back to our saint. There is a rather nice story attributed to St. Macarius, a story he is said to have told his fellow monks in the monastery, who were interested in leaving the desert for the city. (They claimed it would help them reach more souls with their message, but I suspect they may have been tired of eating carrots and radishes all the time.) Macarius responded with a parable. He spoke of a barber in a small town who earned a small but decent living by charging three coins for a shave. He earned enough this way to sustain himself and his family and to even save a little extra for his old age. But he heard a rumor that barbers in the nearby city were charging a lot more than three coins for the same service. He thought long and hard about this, and finally, he made the decision to sell all he had in the small town and move to the city and set up shop there, where he could earn a larger profit for his services. And so he did.

Sure enough, at the end of his first day in the city, he had earned more than he had ever earned in the small town, and the barber was quite elated. And after closing up shop, he headed for the market to buy food and provisions for his family, but he found that everything in the big city market was much more expensive than it had been in the small town. Indeed, he ended up with no money at all in his pocket that day––a trend that continued each day after. Finally, the barber decided it would be best to return to his native town, where at least he made a small amount of progress each day in his savings.

Macarius and his fellow monks stayed in the quiet solitude of the desert. And of course there is a lesson in this story for all of us: a lesson of quiet patience, the understanding that sometimes what is best for us is right where we are. Which maybe is a good lesson for us in our particular time, too, when we are urged to just stay home. If you’re going to, you may as well enjoy something sweet this Eighth Day of Christmas.

 

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