The pandemic has spurred a spate of home cooking. The smartest cooks are finding ways to link nourishment of their families to nourishment of the wider world.
One such home cook is Yves Salomon-Fernandez, who just celebrated her second anniversary as the president of Greenfield Community College. She reaches out to the GCC community in various ways. The most recent and perhaps the most novel way is through cooking videos.
She just recently concluded her second online session cooking with her children and friends in the kitchen at Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield. Her culinary efforts find enthusiastic helpers and eaters among the theater troupe.
“This cooking show really started as an opportunity to engage our students and our faculty and our staff as we are remote now,” Salomon-Fernandez said about the culinary endeavor. “This is a way to connect on a level that is deeply personal, to interact with folks around cooking, to share a little bit of our multiple heritage, to try new traditions. … What makes us ultimately American is that we have all these traditions.”
She also uses the videos to showcase the products at local farms.
“It’s fun, and if that’s a way to lift up our community we’re happy…. We are the community’s college,” she said.
The videos, available on Facebook under the account “Prez Yves,” are indeed fun. Salomon-Fernandez supervises her children and other helpers as they chop and cook, taking frequent nibbles of the dishes they are creating. She confesses that by the time the meal gets to the table, she is often full from all that tasting.
Salomon-Fernandez says she is more or less a self-taught chef. Her family immigrated to the United States from Haiti, and her parents took on a lot of work to stay afloat financially.
“I’m the oldest of seven,” she said. “I assumed the role of mother, caretaker, head of household while my parents worked two or three jobs.
“My mother called one night and said, ‘I need you to make dinner.’ I was 14 years old, and suddenly I had to figure out how to make dinner!” She rose to the challenge.
As Salomon-Fernandez looks ahead to Thanksgiving, she knows that her holiday table will reflect the diversity of the family into which she was born, the family into which she married and her experiences living abroad.
The flavors of her life are not just Haitian but Puerto Rican, Ukrainian Jewish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Portuguese — “Just a little bit of everything.”
“I’m excited about Thanksgiving,” she said with gusto, explaining that her menu will probably include at least two turkeys, roast chicken, fish, plantains, rice and beans, ham, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese. “If anybody’s craving matzo-ball soup, my husband might make some,” she laughed.
She spends Thanksgiving not just with blood relations but also with people who have become her “chosen family.” She expects that this year’s celebration will be less crowded than usual because of the pandemic. Nevertheless, she looks forward to the big day.
Her sister and brother-in-law usually stay with the Salomon-Fernandez family for a while around Thanksgiving.
“It’s just a time of laughter,” she said of their visit. “We have this tradition of playing monopoly. They will play the same monopoly game for two to three weeks. It’s the highlight of my kids’ life.
“(Thanksgiving has) always been a really fun time. I cook. My husband cooks. Nobody leaves until the dishes are done. We tell jokes and we pick on each other and we play board games,” she said.
The recipe that’s included below is one she made during her most recent cooking video in early November.
She and her husband used to drive to the Boston area to purchase these Haitian meat patties, but they eventually decided that the trip was too long so she learned to make them. The pastries may be made with beef, chicken, ground tofu, or cured fish. It was hard to get her to specify exactly what she puts into her pies; she tends to just throw in a variety of spices and see what will happen.
“Haitians, we cook with a lot of spice. Spice is for flavor, not necessarily for heat,” she declared.
She plans to schedule another video soon and even suggested that the two of us might cook together at some point — what fun. As Yves Salomon-Fernandez noted, “Cooking together and breaking bread together brings people closer together.”
These pies or patties are a traditional Haitian delicacy. The use of purchased puff pastry makes them fairly easy to assemble.
For the filling:
3 tablespoons oil
1 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced (or more; Salomon-Fernandez loves garlic)
1 Scotch bonnet pepper, minced (available at Foster’s; this is a strong pepper so you may substitute another if you want less heat)
1 pound ground beef
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 tablespoon fresh
½ teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon adobo flavoring
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons lime juice
For the crust:
2 Pepperidge Farm frozen puff-pastry sheets, thawed
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, the garlic, and the pepper. Sauté until the onion is cooked through and translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the ground beef and sauté, breaking it up into small pieces, until the meat is cooked through.
Use a spoon to remove and discard any excess fat from the pan. Stir in the water, tomato paste, thyme, allspice, adobo, Italian seasoning, chipotle, and salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for another 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove the meat mixture from the heat and stir in the parsley, cilantro, and lime juice. Set the filling aside to cool.
While it cools, lightly flour a clean, smooth work surface. Use a rolling pin to roll out a sheet of puff pastry until it doubles in size. Use a sharp knife to cut the sheet into 6 equal squares.
Set the squares aside and repeat with the remaining sheet of puff pastry. Place the pastry squares in the refrigerator to chill for 10 to 15 minutes.
To assemble the patties, gather together the pastry squares, the meat mixture, and a small bowl of water. Place a square on a clean work surface and place about 3 tablespoons of the meat mixture into the center. Wet your fingers in the small bowl of water and moisten the edges of the pastry.
Fold the pastry in half and seal the edges with your finger or the tines of a fork. Transfer the patty to a lightly greased baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining squares and meat mixture. Put the patties in the refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Beat the egg and the tablespoon of water together in a small bowl. Use a pastry brush to lightly brush the tops of the patties with the egg wash. Bake the patties until they are puffed and lightly browned, about 25 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature. Makes 12 patties.
Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook,” “Pulling Taffy,” and “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website, tinkycooks.com.