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A New Love: Jacques Pépin's Fast Food
Talking Him Into It - Feeding The Guy
Another Change, and Two Summer Shortcakes
« Review: Biscotti and Truffles from Bon Appétit | Main | Sugarplum Centerpiece »
The best recipes are the ones that you get from your family, the ones that are handed down through generations and are still culturally viable and yummy for generations. When you make these recipes they remind you of your family history and the relatives you miss, and when you adapt the recipe to your own tastes, adding or substituting flavors, you contribute your own chapter to the family history.
In our family, this dish is the Christmas Salad. Begun by my great-great grandmother, this recipe has evolved through the generations, each cook making a version that fits her environment and taste buds. The first Christmas salad was made of slices of grapefruit and avocado, artfully arranged in a flower pattern, on top of a bed of lettuce (I have no idea what kind). Her daughter, my great-grandmother, and her daughter, my great-aunt, all stuck relatively close the original salad, to the great dismay of my second cousins, who couldn't stand the sight of the bitter grapefruit and unfamiliar avocado on their plates every Christmas. My grandmother inherited the Christmas salad recipe from her mother-in-law when she married, and made the first substantial change to it, substituting slivers of tangerine for the grapefruit. When my mother moved from the Midwest to the sunny beaches of Southern California, she brought the idea of the salad with her, but altered it further, replacing the traditional citrus with slices of hachiya persimmons (the soft ones) and adding long, thin slivers of green onions and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.
I first began contributing to the traditional family salad when I was in college, bringing fuyu persimmons from NYC's Chinatown to substitute in for the slimy hachiyas that some members of our family didn't like, and then, a couple years later, introducing everyone to the wonderful crunch of endive, which my mother and I added to the traditional flower pattern of the salad. A couple years later we experimented with adding crumbles of gorgonzola to the mix, giving a little pungent, salty flavor to the mix of fruits and vegetables.
These days our salad bears very little resemblance to the pinwheel of grapefruit and avocado that my great-great grandmother first served, but every year when we make it we think of all the women who came before us and tell the story of the salad and its history to any guests who haven't heard it before.
Posted by georgia to Kitchen and Cooking on December 19, 2005 11:00 AM | permalink | Email this post
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This sounds absolutely delicious - in all its variations! I will have to try some of them out.
We have a family Christmas salad too, but it's one that may not be "culturally viable" any more: Begin by making a crust by mixing pretzel crumbs (stale, if possible) with a few tablespoons of melted butter, and baking until firm. Prepare red jello (any flavor, so long as it's red) and add canned fruit and mini marshmallows. Pour the liquid jello over the pretzel crust and chill. Cut into generous square portions and serve on a single leaf of iceberg lettuce.
Delectable, no?? My husband cringes at the very mention of jello salad. HE obviously didn't grow up in a classy family like I did.
Posted by: Cassie at December 19, 2005 08:52 PM
And now all my readers know why I think Cassie is the funniest person I know!
Posted by: Georgia at December 20, 2005 11:25 AM
