As far back as I can remember, I hate fudge, that dull symbol of the holiday season. I think of my grandmother Alvine’s, garnished with rancid walnuts bought in sachets from Steinberg. In fact, I have always thought that the “sucàcrèm” was the henchman of diabetics. I replaced it with caramel with fleur de sel – hardly better for our blood sugar levels -, which has become a classic for my B who claims “a little batch »Every December. Christmas caramel is little Jesus in velvet panties.
On the other hand, when I take out the cookbook of my native grandmother of Cap-des-Rosiers, I find Christmas in odorama, her famous Christmas cherry cake with three cups of “ordinary flower”, a “box Of powdered sugar, a cup of “Grisco”. I think I’ll cook it this year, for my B to taste it, for the pink maraschino cherry juice frosting. On the left page, his “Christmas pie”. One did not go without the other.
Anyway, rice vermicelli is a very bad symbol. It is like the Arabs worse the couscous, the French worse the baguette, the Russians worse the vodka, the Americans worse the junk food. Worse Quebeckers? Quebecers and poutine.
I had each page of this grimoire nibbled by the “Grisco” remodeled. The binder used Japanese paper, assembled the culinary memory in cardboard and fabric with bookmark and golden title: Alvine’s recipes. It is the most fragile and precious memory that my grandmother left to me.
All my Christmases are engraved there, smells, sounds, cigarette smoke, fruit punch, decorated fridge cookies and frosted donuts, yellow mustard saturated with onions, cretons under a layer of fat, and its famous Gaspé cipâte cooked in a large roasting pan rectangular aluminum too bulky for the fridge. The “blackout” waited on December 24 on the balcony, outside, in the old fashioned way, whether it was snowing or “wet”.
Cut the pan and melt in the pan. Remove the fat and pass through a chopper.
A row of hare, a row of partridge, a row of pork, a row of deer, a row of love, a row of gin. Lord-Jesus-Marie-Joseph, but no, not gin! Just a little white wine. Alvine took off her rings and rolled up her sleeves to stir the meats in the marinade. She was up to her elbows. “Would you pass me the salt, dear?” I have my hands full! You couldn’t be more true than that, on a slightly offbeat vibe of curlers and Avon perfume.
Be reassured
My Capian grandmother was all that in a kitchen: the durability of the handmade between two sips of chilled black tea, muted CKAC and The Journal of Montreal not very far to check Mini tickets. But all Loto-Québec’s gold could not have bought us a cipâte or replaced its pickled herrings or beets.
I also miss his spice cake, which smelled of the old days, without flafla mousse and stuffy crumble. I miss the simplicity of these Christmases, made up of transmission and repetition. As reassuring as the durability of a jingle against the background of aerosolized snow when love outweighed ordinary cheesy.
Basically, my grandmother was an expat from the Gaspé who had carried her taste memories in her luggage. I had the same feeling when I visited the Fattoush Girls last week, that of finding reassuring smells, like that of roasted cumin floating in the air. These ten Syrians, many of whom landed here with the wave of immigrants in 2016, bring their Christmases to life through a thousand and one spices. From the pomegranate molasses that they import to the flavors found in their salads and dips (at Lufa), sumac or zaatar made from thyme, there is a reassuring bubble in this industrial kitchen in Town of Mount Royal. . I even found the 7 spices that my grandmother Alvine used in her pies. Not the same same, but similar.
Adelle Tarzibachi, co-founder of “Filles Fattoush” (their trade name) with Geneviève Comeau, tells me about midnight masses at the Armenian Catholic Church in Ville Saint-Laurent where she goes with her family. The Christmas menu consists of leg of lamb, stuffed vine leaves, hot and cold mezze, makloubé (inverted rice with eggplant and beef with seven spices), baba ghanouj with eggplant, potato salads or beets. The olives are always there. Black tea with cloves too.
Les Filles Fattoush miss the taste of “real” figs or ripe peaches whose juice runs down their arms. They are in need of a massacred country, the one before. But through sun-dried mint and lemon (they squeeze more than 500 a week), they regain their memories intact. “Here, no frozen lemon or citric acid”, slips me Adelle, landed in Quebec for almost 20 years. “It takes on the real lemon taste.” “
La ferlouche pis moé
Les Filles Fattoush have just published a cookbook where they tell each other a little, anecdotes and Syrian cuisine intertwined. Adelle talks about her grandmother Joséphine, always ready to receive unexpectedly. “The teta (grandmother) is a figure of primary importance to us. She sees her grandchildren on an almost daily basis. “
We all need the bosom of a tet, or at least, memories of his cooking, all needs a parenthesis, to find our bearings, to bury our heads in our grandmothers’ aprons, no matter their origin. Especially when the planet is not spinning any more. My Facebook friends have listed the dishes that brought them back to childhood at Christmas, leg stew, logs, thirteen Provençal desserts, cabbage cigars or broad bean soup. I even saw the words “tarts a la ferlouche”. That of my grandmother, raisins and molasses, for me embodied all the misery of Quebec made for dessert. I preferred his candy drawer.
Yesterday, leafing through his recipe book to be in tune with The Daraîche family celebrates Christmas, I came across the cheesy pig’s head that never contained cheese. Just by reading it: “Remove teeth and ears. Grill well. »Yuck.
What is practical with the transmission is that you can choose what to keep and cut into the bacon. I will not inherit the pig’s head.