Tender Mercies: Rosettes

My good friend Ione Erickson who lives in Willmar, Minnesota used to tell me about making Rosettes. After her own children were grown, and her own grandchildren likewise, it was her Christmas gift to the family to settle in after Thanksgiving to long, extended sessions of Rosette making, enough for her entire family to be supplied for the upcoming Christmas holidays.

Because Ione is of Norwegian descent and because every time I hear about Rosettes, it is in connection with all things Norwegian, I am going to take a wild guess here that Rosettes have their origins in Norway and have therefore slipped-the-noose of the term Scandinavian. It is apparently more important to get this distinction right than I would have guessed.

I don't know what I expected when I saw my first Rosette here a few days ago as a part of the Advent celebration for that day...maybe a small buttery cookie cut from rolled-out dough and then baked. I certainly did not expect these light-as-a-feather concoctions, deep fat fried and floating off special decorative Rosette irons into the hot oil before being removed, sprinkled with sugars, and attached to small weighted anchors which acted in accordance with the principles of gravity to hold them in display on the trays.

I am joking about the anchors, but I am not joking about the "hot oil" and the "deep fat fried" aspect of making these confections. These words do not appear in any version of the Holden Cookbook and in fact, have been banned from the Holden Dictionary itself. Something subversive may be going on as these two terms, along with the words "bacon" and "eggs-to-order," seem to be making a comeback, or as in Holden's usage of the terms, making a fresh start . Those of you who choose to worry about the "green aspects" of the disposal of used cooking oil need not fear. The time, the effort and the steps needed to dispose properly of fats and oils are so prohibitive that any food preparation requiring such an ingredient or such a process will be prepared only on on rare occasions, Advent apparently being one of them.

Sarah Gustner (Lead Cook) and Liz Langeland (Staff Coordinator) proudly show off their handiwork. They admit to some initial failures in getting the Rosette batter to the proper thickness in order to ensure that it stayed on the irons long enough to cook but not so long as to remain permanently affixed thereto in a greasy mass. Their success is obvious. (I assume their failures went into the compost bins!...which begs the question, "Does oil cooked into the batter of a Rosette count as oil and does it, therefore, need to separated from the Rosette and disposed of as oil, or does its combination with the batter of the Rosette negate its properties as oil?...I want to answer my own question with the reply, "Food for thought," but I dare not continue on with this train of thought.)

Carole Young ("IT Person"...that's "Information Technology Person"...although when the network is down or when a program is not working properly or when the program operator is not operating the progam properly, she is the "It Person! "...but I digress...) anyway, Carole's facial expression speaks volumes to the fact that technology cannot improve on this delicacy.

For those of you have never seen Rosette irons, here is a sampling of the ones Sarah and Liz used in making our Advent extravaganza. The red handled device is used for the attachment of the iron to a handle that can be used to hold the battered iron under hot bubbling oil. Most cooks deal with one iron at a time, but as you can see, it is possible to attach two irons to the same handle. I would assume that only highly skilled and/or experienced Rosette makers would use the double-handled arrangement.

Laura Norton (Contributions Recorder and Village Artist) and Katie Benjamin (Teachers' Assistant in the Holden School) return to the table for seconds...or thirds...or....

Winter coffee breaks are long coffee breaks, and community members frequently spend their mid-morning time in laughter and conversation over coffee and (on this day) Rosettes.

Late-breaking culinary news: This morning for Sunday Brunch, we were served sausage, fried eggs, and ...are you ready for this?...crullers! Go figure!