Food Seasonal Food Items You Look Forward To

Honeycrisp apples. The only seasonal item that I truly long for and absolutely can't be found.

 

I really love apples, and the excellence of the apples are almost the sole redeeming factor of living in the Midwest (I'm a California boy through and through otherwise). Honeycrisp are probably my favorite, but I also love Swiss Gourmet, Gold Rush, Mutsu, Fuji, Pippin, and occasionally some other varieties as well. If I can find very well-grown, organic, small-orchard Golden Delicious, I like them, too: they're absolutely nothing like the Golden Delicious that you find in supermarkets, which I loathe-- mealy, sugary, pieces of crap that they are. Real Golden Delicious have a lot of russeting on the skin, are firm, and have a very pleasant hit of tartness in the finish.

One of my favorite things at the High Holidays is eating apples and honey. Honey on challah, too.

I do also enjoy some pumpkin around this time of year. I like to roast it along with some butternut squash and some carrots, mash it all together with a little butter, some rum, some salt and pepper, a little orange zest, some ginger, some cinnamon, some cardamom, some honey, and a pinch of Aleppo pepper.

I like fresh cranberries, too. I make a raw cranberry relish, with raspberries, limes, pomegranate seeds, sugar, a little raspberry jam, and some sweet spices. Very good with chicken or duck, but also not bad with a little vanilla ice cream.

When I lived in Israel, I loved getting sufganiyot at Chanukah. They're basically like filled doughnuts, except they aren't glazed, and usually aren't so coated in powdered sugar, and they have a someway sturdier yet flakier consistency than American filled doughnuts. Traditionally, they're filled with jam, but these days you can get them filled with chocolate pastry cream, or whipped cream, too. I've even seem them filled with halvah cream, although I think that's weird. You can get things called sufganiyot at a lot of stores in Jewish areas or kosher bakeries here in the States, but they just aren't as good.

 

Cranberries. They don't hang around long, so you have to enjoy them while you can (it helps to freeze a few bags along the way). Homemade cranberry sauce absolutely rocks!

 

Mallomars.

Mallomars - Things You Didn't Know about Chocolate Covered Cookies from Nabisco

 

Pico de gallo, reserved mostly for the summer. My homemade Pico (moms recipe of course) goes great with a pilsner and a boxing match.

 

I have noticed that I dislike many popular seasonal/traditional holiday foods. Cranberries, pumpkin anything, yams, and ham all rank nearly dead last on the list of food I would choose for any celebration. Those first three are hardly edible to begin with. A delicious hearty lasagna with cheesecake sounds like the perfect meal for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
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I believe I have heard of these at least once in my life, but definitely never seen a box of them or tried them.

 

Yu sheng. It's a raw fish salad that they serve in Singapore during Chinese New Year. All of the components are laid out on the plate and then everyone gathers around to toss the salad (yep, that's what I said). The key is to get it high as possible and shout, "Lo Hei" (auspicious wishes). The higher the more prosperous you will be.

Each ingredient has meaning and typically symbolizes things like wealth, good luck, prosperiety, long life, etc.

The practice is about as cheesy (or lovely) as any custom and how you feel about them. That said, the salad is very tasty and is only available during the 15 days of Chinese New Year.

 

Carmel apples. While you can get them year round, they're better in the fall.

 

We do love our honeycrisp apples, but I wait all damn year for my mutsus to come in. Bought a full bushel of them this past weekend.
For the most part I just eat them straight up, but I have so many this time I'll probably make some apple sauce, and I put some in a spiced apple rice pudding the other night.

 

Snowy makes me want to do a cranberry rice pudding....

 

Hearty soups with chunky fall veggies.

I had soupergirl's Curried Red Lentil Cauliflower this week.