The December gastronomic calendar

Bep Al·lès/Ciutadella - December was considered the coldest month of the year and its name comes from the fact that it was the tenth month of the Roman calendar. It is also the month in which the earth sleeps and will not wake up until February, so the work for the peasantry was not too heavy.

A custom, almost lost now, was that on the day of Saint Lucia, December 13, the tobacco was planted, more than being the day in which the peasantry of the printing time began its particular parenthesis for the year that was to begin with the “Accounts of Solomon”, where there is a belief that the 12 days that go from December 13 to December 25, Christmas Day, represent the months of the year and the weather that occurs on each of these days will be the one that will predominate throughout the corresponding month. This means that the weather on the 14th will be that of January, on the 15th in February, and so on until Christmas Day, which will be that of December next year.

As for the harvest, we will have potatoes, turnips, cauliflower, oranges, mandarins, clementines and olives, as well as the first stems of artichokes. It is also time to kill the pig and fatten those animals that were to be used for Christmas and New Year's delicacies such as turkeys, Indian hens, chickens, capons and hens, as well as lambs and suckling pigs.

As for cooking and gastronomy, it is still time for mushrooms and making rice dishes where they will be the protagonists, such as pork tenderloin in Menorca) with chanterelles and mushrooms, to which some early artichokes and green beans will always go well. It is also time for small game hunting, where we can also make rice dishes with mushrooms and thrushes. From December 18th, in addition to rice dishes, we can cook those dishes that will have partridges as their main ingredient, because the hunting season for partridges with male decoys begins, and there we will have preparations such as partridges with cabbage, partridges Minorcan style, partridges with salmoreig... and many other hunter dishes, from that kitchen of the shoemakers who always had cages in their houses with their partridges, the males that sang the best, and to which more than one was given the name of Carusso.

As we have seen, it is time to harvest potatoes, turnips, cabbages and cauliflowers, and with them we will prepare the first legume dishes, accompanied by pork from the slaughterhouses, and the sausages that will give that taste so much ours to chickpeas, beans, lentils and black-eyed peas, which we can also accompany the pot with pieces of pumpkin.

December is the time for boiled meat where there will be no shortage of meatballs and “chenc”, an anglicism that comes from “shank”, thigh with which we call in Menorca this beef that goes from the elbow to the knee, which is very gelatinous, sweet and tender, which in Spanish is called “morcillo”, and from which in ancient times the xenc broth was made that was given to sick and convalescent people as a tonic.

It is time for spoon dishes, and also for fork lunches, sauces and stews, for baking with meats and vegetables from the land. Cooking around the table and by the fire.

As for seafood cuisine, it is time for rock mullet, which we will grill accompanied by its liver sauce or we can opt for old and traditional recipes such as noodles with mullet or mullet with pine nut sauce. There is also a very tasty sea and mountain pairing, which is mullet with chanterelles and sobrasada.

In the dessert section, it is the season of pomegranates with muscatel and oranges with honey and cinnamon. It is the season of eating the last strawberry trees and in the kitchen making sweet potato puddings, baked sweet potatoes with milk and sugar, pumpkin puddings and starting to prepare all those pastries, cakes and all the delicacies for the Christmas and New Year holidays.