Here is an interesting take on Halloween by my friend
Ramya Menon
Zombies roaming the streets in blissful abandon, vampires stalking their
prey in broad daylight and the deviousness of the Devil celebrated a
million times over. It's that time of the year, when every family is
transformed into the
Addam's Family.
Halloween is here!
Everyone has that one festival, that they wait for all year long. Making
elaborate plans and deciding plate settings, way before the festival is
even around the corner. For me, its
Halloween. The one time of the
year, I can bring on the crazy without being mistaken for a mental
asylum escapee!
And like most celebrations, food is right on top in my list of
priorities.
If you think of it, I am not being greedy here. Festivals and food have
an undeniable connection, that has lasted the test of time and tide. Can
you think of Thanksgiving without the bird, Christmas without the
pudding, or Easter without the egg?
What are these traditional recipes of Halloween? And where did they go?
How did a menu that featured potatoes, apples, turnips and nuts, mutate
into platters of bloody edible fingers, and sinister cookies, glowing
maliciously in the light of the
Jack-O'-Lanterns?
I am going to take you through the evolution of the Halloween menu.
Click on the dishes to find the recipes, and take your pick, from this
old-meets-new list of Halloween treats.
The traditional feasts before the tricks
Halloween traces its roots back to pagan festivals in Ireland and
Scotland. And the focus in the
early editions of Halloween was on the local produce, and certainly not
on the fear factor.
Not many people realise that Halloween is a harvest
festival.
So, the original recipes centred on the main harvest around this time.
And the popular products were potatoes, turnips, apples, cinnamon
and nuts.
And it would totally surprise you to know that, the most traditional of
the Halloween recipes is actually savoury, has nothing to do with
pumpkins and is nowhere near scary.
Trick or treating: Going Old School
Ever wondered where the tradition of trick-or-treating began? Well, read
on to find out more.
Soul Cakes
Halloween was a festival to honour the departed souls. In Ireland, there
was a time when the children were designated the role of praying for
these souls. So they would go from house to house and collect 'soul'
cakes as a token for praying. Slowly the association with death, caught
people's imagination, and the spooky angle became a Halloween mainstay.
The praying part has almost gone out of the window. But the part with
children going from house to house, looking for treats, stuck. The only
difference being that, now, it's about scaring the person who opens the
door, and demanding lots of candy.
Caramel Apple
The trick or treat theme continues with the Caramel Apples. Being a
harvest festival, Halloween was big on apples, which were abundant
around this time of the year. When kids started coming around for
treats, the adults must have figured out a creative way to make use of
the them.
So they began making taffy apples, toffee apples and caramel apples,
coated in nuts as enticing munchies, for the trick-or-treaters.
But there was a sinister angle to these offerings, which put a stop to
the tradition. Apparently, a few children were given apples with needles
inserted, harming them. Because of the bad press, despite the fact that
the actual number of people who did something so heinous was minuscule,
the practise stopped altogether. Now, the Halloween that we know of is
creeping into the picture slowly.
Did you know the original Jack-O'-Lantern, was actually made out
of turnips?
Halloween, has its roots in Ireland and Scotland, where turnips were in
plenty during autumn. When the Irish moved to America, they took
Halloween with them. And the succulent, ripe and versatile pumpkin,
local to the US, captured their imagination.
That, my friends, is the real reason, the Jack-O'-Lantern became such a
widely recognised symbol of Halloween.
Of course, they did not use the pumpkin to just carve out a spooky face.
The ripe parts of the versatile veggie was used to make the pumpkin pie.
And just look at this one! Sigh!
Getting the spooks on in the kitchen
With the sinister looking Jack-O'-Lantern entering the picture and the
pre- existing gothic aspect of death helping it along, Halloween soon
became a captivating festival, celebrating death, ghosts, zombies and
all things frightening. Then, the recipes evolved too. What was
originally a harvest festival, became an opportunity for cooks to become
mavericks of monstrous recipes, showcasing their most gruesome creations
at dinner parties.
So it would be incomplete, to talk about food and Halloween without a
little ode to the deliciously wicked recipes that have become the norm
of today's festival of pumpkins, trick-or-treating and fear.
Since Halloween was traditionally a vegetarian festival, let us start
off this scary list, with the veggie friendly, Halloween Teeth recipe.
We made these at work and the expressions on my colleagues face after
one biting into these teeth, (yes we can say that without sounding like
Hannibal Lecter's cousin), was comical. Tuck into one of these for
dessert and save yourself from the candy invasion!
Now if you have adorable little monsters of your own at home, scurrying
about in Halloween frenzy, get them involved in a recipe project that is
sure to keep them occupied and far away from the bags of Mars bars.
These Monster Face Pizza's are truly the working mom's quick fix
Halloween recipe.
Halloween Severed
Finger Sausages
Now the next one pulls out all stops to get the scary, spooky effect.
All in a matter of a few minutes. So get some 'finger-licking-good'
compliments with these super creepy, but extremely delicious Halloween
Severed Finger Sausages.
This one is sure to be a hit with the trick-or-treaters. So get these
yummy mummies done, just in time for the tired tots to gobble up, after
getting their yearly haul of candy.
Any recipe with 'devil' in it is obviously perfect for Halloween. And
these will get the healthy angle sorted out for the worried mommies out
there. Yes, there is the mayonnaise, but hey, better than packing the
sugar, don't you think?
What's on the menu for this Halloween?
This, in a nutshell, is the story of how the recipes of Halloween have
transformed over the years. It is fascinating, how the human imagination
can engineer such frighteningly delicious recipes. Of course
pop-culture, literature and art have helped to create this aura of
mystique and fear around Halloween. The fact that the food too has
evolved with these influences is truly spectacular, and unique to
Halloween.
I am certain that this is nowhere near the end of the evolution of
Halloween and its recipes. In years to come we will see more fearsome
concoctions captivate us.
So this year are you going old school with the traditional recipes of
Halloween or are you going to let lose, the evil genius cook in you, and
concoct a feast fit for the beast?
Either way, Cookpad, has the answer for you!
Illustrations by Ramya
Ramakrishnan
*Article originally
shared *here