Here in immigrant-rich America, we love to eat every culture’s celebration foods. For better or worse (for our waistlines), we think of them as everyday meals. Let’s take a bite of those celebrations as we take a dive into several dishes to delight the season.
Onion Roll – Latke flight
Hanukkah spans Dec. 14 to 22 this year. The eight-day festival commemorates when the Maccabean Jews regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple. They only had enough olive oil to burn a lamp in the Temple for one night, but it stayed lit for eight nights.
“In order to remind us of the oil, Jews eat a lot of oily foods during this holiday,” Ryan Rosenthal, co-owner of The Onion Roll, said. “The Ashkenazi’s, which are a group of Jews that only had potatoes and onion, so they got very creative and made potato pancakes.”
Latkes, as they are called, are popular in many Jewish delis. At The Onion Roll, they start with Idaho potatoes, chopped fine with a bits of onion, salt and pepper. Panko crumbs are added as a binder. Formed into patties, the pancakes are slipped into olive oil and fried until they are crisp on the outside and soft and warm on the inside.
This North Avenue deli goes a step further. They serve a latke flight – like you’d have a flight of wine or beer tasting.
“One pancake will have applesauce. A second pancake will have sour cream and chive, and the third pancake will be a Nova pancake,” Rosenthal said.
The Nova is topped with hand-sliced lox, rolled around cream cheese and topped with chives. As it’s been said, bet you can’t eat just one.
River Forest Chocolates – Peppermint bark
A candy cane is said to symbolize a shepherd’s staff. The crook evokes the shepherd of men that the baby Jesus will become. River Forest Chocolates owner Donna Slepicka remembers that connection and putting candy canes on her Christmas tree, but at her shop on Lake Street in River Forest she transforms them into another treat of the season: peppermint bark.
“We crush peppermint, candy canes,” Slepicka said. “My chocolate is couverture. that is very high in cocoa butter, which is the most expensive ingredient in chocolate. It’s creamier and it just has a better flavor.”
To do justice to that quality of chocolate, it is tempered in-house. That means melting it, then raising the temperature higher, then lowering it in a way that aligns the confection’s crystals. This creates the distinctive snap of high-end chocolate.
At River Forest Chocolates, they add a touch of peppermint oil to batches that will become peppermint bark.
“That makes it a little more special than what you get at the grocery or big box stores,” Slepicka said. “When you say Christmas, it is all about peppermint. In the winter I think mint because it’s cold out. It is just all the more appealing because it’s minty and it’s fresh. This is just my own take on it.”
Spilt Milk – “World Peace” chocolate cookie
This time of the year, we see many cards, signs that encourage, even implore Peace on Earth. What ingredients are needed to make that happen? Butter, flour, cocoa powder, egg, sugar, vanilla – mix them together in the right portions and cookies emerge. A cookie with the power of world peace?
“It’s just a small statement,” Nikos Liargovas, owner of Spilt Milk, said. “What holidays is, is about people putting their best efforts to be as cheerful as possible, to be as positive, maybe trying to forget some of the problems that we all have.”
In the fractured and crummy world that we are inhabiting at the moment, the new owners of Spilt Milk bakery figure that chocolate cookies can’t hurt.
“It’s a very simple recipe, it doesn’t have secret ingredients,” Sandra Liargovas, wife and co-owner with her husband Nikos, said. “Something so simple can have such a big name. It’s small things that can make this season and make people’s life better with some small effort.
“If you put some effort in to give some positivity out, somebody else takes that and returns it back to someone else,” Nikos Liargovas said. “Maybe that’s why the holiday season feels better all over. Just a little bit of effort from everyone.”
Most of us can agree on a love of cookies and a love of chocolate. So that’s a start.