My first encounter with pomelo was in high school in Taiwan, when I saw little kids running around during the Moon Festival wearing its thick peel as a hat. While everyone was spending the holiday stuffing their faces with moon cakes, I was busy tearing apart its thick green skin and marveling at the deliciously firm citrus flesh. Though now somewhat common, back then this grapefruit relative (the humble grapefruit is actually a hybrid of Indonesian pomelo and Jamaican sweet orange) was an addictive novelty that rivaled even the mighty bell apple for my interest, and since then it's become one of my favorite fruits - something I look forward to each winter, when, along with the pomegranate, it's actually in season. So the other day when I was looking at a poor, lone bulb of fennel sitting in my fridge waiting to be used, I immediately thought of this ideal partner.
There is something I adore about an old, worn recipe - whether it's hand written or typed, on plain or lined paper. So much is expressed by the yellowed, acid-stained sheets. There's also something in the knowledge that it's been held dear by so many and changed hands under potentially interesting circumstances. In this case, the recipe above was obtained by my father-in-law from Baptist missionaries in Cameroon in the early 1960s when he was there as part of the Peace Corps. This (and pages for many other dishes) was prepared for foreigners working in isolated areas and called for ingredients available in local markets, the only alternative to the highly overpriced French stores that were found occasionally in some capital cities.
It's been quite some time since my last post - as it happens I tend to get absorbed in the food aspects of the Holiday Season and was spending what would otherwise be my blogging time cooking and baking as if preparing for a deadline. For four days my husband quizzically observed me hauling grocery bags from all corners of Brooklyn and Manhattan. "Relax, it's the holidays. Why are you making this so hard on yourself?" he asked. This would be met with an irritated, "What do you mean? It's tradition!"
But in all honesty, for me, the Polish pre-Christmas tradition of Wigilia (Christmas Eve dinner), which was historically a 12 dish "meatless fast" (now more like a coma-inducing mushroom, sauerkraut and fish filled feast), is a hugely importatant and very necessary part of my year-end celebrations. And so after all the preparation, I feel it necessary to share a small part of these adventures with you.
