Halloween: Culinary Traditions And Simple Meals

"Trick or treat" - what is not the motto of the culinary show? But no, this is the main issue of All Saints' Eve in the US and Canada.

"Trick or treat" - what is not the motto of the culinary show? But no, this is the main issue of All Saints' Eve in the US and Canada. Historically, relatively young countries do not have many holidays that characterize the mentality of the people. But Halloween is definitely one of them. And although its history goes back to the Old World, the current tradition of celebration has left little of the past centuries, except perhaps for the external and culinary surroundings of the scariest fun day of the year.

 

The history of the holiday, or where the pumpkin came from

The tradition of Halloween dates back to the time of the ancient Celts. They divided the year only into summer and winter, and on the night of October 31 to November 1, according to their ideas, the seasons changed. They called it Samhain or Samhain, it was both the New Year and the harvest festival, because it ended the harvest period. The Celts believed that at that time the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead, evil spirits, sorcerers became thinner. It was on the night of Samhain that all evil had the right to come out to people and harm them. Hence the tradition of dressing up as scary characters - an attempt to confuse, impersonate the same representative of the undead. Catholicism, seeking to absorb Celtic beliefs, introduced the celebration of All Saints' Day, but although the new name stuck, the rites remained pagan.

Sweets were treats for the spirits of ancestors, just like kutya in the Slavic tradition at Christmas. It was a way of family unity with deceased relatives and at the same time paying off evil spirits.

 

The Halloween pumpkin is actually called Jack O'Lantern. According to legend, the blacksmith Jack twice managed to deceive the devil, but when he died, he was not accepted into either hell or heaven, and he wandered, lighting the way with coal from the underworld. Once the blacksmith placed it in a pumpkin, from this belief the tradition was born to create a Jack Lamp, so that the evil spirits, seeing it, thought that the deceiver-owner himself was somewhere nearby, which means it’s better to leave until he circled around his finger again.

To create a Halloween pumpkin, you will need to perform the following series of actions:

Choose the right vegetable. It should be of a “classic” rounded shape, with puffy sides, slightly flattened at the top and bottom. Wash it off. With a sharp knife, cut off the top-hat, and clean the insides, removing seeds and pulp. Draw a face - a triangular nose, sinister eyes, a toothy mouth. Cut them out with a short knife. Insert a thick wax candle inside, preferably lit in a church. Do not return the top, otherwise it will heat up and cause a fire. Although this can be avoided by using a battery powered lamp rather than live fire.

Traditional Halloween Recipes

pumpkin pie

 

After the Jack-O-Lantern is made, a lot of pumpkin pulp remains and it would not be rational to throw it away. Therefore, we propose to cook a pie.

It will take 0.5 kg of pumpkin, 70 g of honey, 4 eggs, 150 g of butter, 200 g of flour, 0.5 l of milk, 10 g of lemon zest, 50 g of sugar, 3-5 g of salt, cinnamon, ground ginger and nutmeg.

Add salt and 100 g of butter to the flour, grind with your hands into crumbs, beat in 1 egg, pour in 20 ml of milk and knead the dough, put it in the refrigerator. After half an hour, roll it out, put it in a baking dish so that it covers the bottom and sides. Return to the refrigerator for 45 minutes.

Then cover the dough with parchment, pour dry beans on it and send it to a preheated oven for a quarter of an hour. remove, remove paper and beans, and return the mold to heat for 5 minutes.

Send the pumpkin to the oven for half an hour, and if the pulp has already been removed, then bake it for about 15 minutes. Then grind with a blender, add liquid honey, sugar, 50 g of melted butter, all spices and beat with a mixer, gradually adding 3 eggs. Pour the resulting filling into the prepared dough and put in the oven for 40-45 minutes.

Apples in caramel

 

For 6 apples you will need 100 g of butter, 200 g of sugar, 100 g of ground nuts / colored powder / coconut / poppy seeds / sesame seeds.

Remove the core from apples so that you can insert a wooden skewer and the fruit does not fall from it. Melt the butter in a tall narrow saucepan, add sugar and boil until the mixture darkens and turns into caramel. Dip apples in it, then roll in the selected powder (you can use a mixture of the proposed options). The apples must dry out before they can be consumed.

Irish Raisin Bread

 

Ingredients: 300 g flour, 1 egg, 150 g butter, 30 g sugar, 10 g yeast, 5 g salt, 50 ml lemon juice, 50 ml water, 200 g raisins, 10 g ground cinnamon and cardamom.

If desired, chopped nuts and other dried fruits can be added to the dough.

Pour yeast and sugar with slightly warmed water and leave in a warm place, after 15 minutes add flour, beaten egg, salt, 50 g of melted butter. Knead the dough, cover with a towel and put in a warm place.

Mix water and lemon juice, pour raisins over them, leave for an hour. Drain the liquid and add the raisins to the dough.

Melt another 50 g of butter, grease a bread pan with it. Transfer the dough into it and let stand in a warm place for 25 minutes. Preheat the oven well and bake for about half an hour.

Shortly before cooking, melt the remaining butter, add cinnamon and cardamom to it. Cover the baked bread with this mixture.

Vampire hand

 

You will need: 0.5 kg of minced meat, 2 eggs, 1 carrot, 2 onions, 50 ml of ketchup, 100 g of hard cheese, 10 g of dried herbs, 10 g of ground hot red pepper, salt.

Grate the carrots, chop one onion, disassemble the other into plates. Mix minced meat, chopped vegetables, herbs, pepper, beat in eggs, salt, mix thoroughly.

Spread the resulting mixture in the shape of a hand on a baking sheet covered with foil. From 5 plates of the bulb, cut off the excess so that they begin to resemble nails in shape. Divide the cheese into thin plates. Put the onion "nails" on the tips of the "fingers". Cover the entire “hand” with ketchup, place cheese on top, but without covering future vampire claws. Bake this terrible dish for 35-45 minutes, transfer to a plate with a wide wooden spatula.