by Tim Billbrough
Introduction
With an unusually large burst of Awen this past January, though, I set upon a quest to feast the Wheel of the Year with a special food item for each of the eight festivals. In these dishes, I try to capture the spirit of the specific festival, my own native land, and the ancient Celtic culture we derive from.
I do not hold these dishes as special in and of themselves, but I try to make them special through the consideration, intent, and symbolism that goes into choosing what to make and the ingredients that go into it.
I have four rules that I try my best to follow in pursuit of this goal:
1. The dish must represent the festival in question, its themes and what we revere about it. This is how I honor the festival.
2. I must use only ingredients I grow myself/can source locally, or are native to my home in New Hampshire, USA. When I can do both, that is preferred. This is how I honor the land I live and practice on.
3. The ingredients must be seasonal to my own land, either through ripeness or appropriate preservation. My climate is slightly different than that of the Celtic Isles, so this is how I honor the Wheel of the Year itself.
4. The dish must be an interpretation of what our Celtic ancestors would have eaten around the time of festival. This is how I honor our Druid traditions.
Using these rules, I seek to channel my own self into my cooking and seek deeper connection between myself, my practice, and my land.
Symbolizing Alban Hefin
The days are nearing their pinnacle and the light in the world is almost at its maximum. Now comes Alban Hefin, the Summer Solstice, and once of the most important and complex rituals in the Wheel of the Year.
In a word, the symbology of Alban Hefin is simply: Light. It is the longest day of the year, summer and the warm weather is truly here and the cold nights of winter are behind us. As the days begin to get shorter again, it is also in front of is, but that is the realm of Lughnasadh, first of the harvest festivals. For now, here in Alban Hefin, it is a time of natural plenty. The natural fruits of summer are well under way and the first of the agricultural plants are being reaped.
When faced with he idea of how to represent the symbology of the festival, I struggled to think of something that could represent light itself. That is, until I remembered that the traditional ceremony for this day was actually two parts, a vigil over the shortest night and a feast at noon. I decided that the best way to represent what Alban Hefin symbolizes would be to have two separate dishes, one for the nighttime vigil and another for the noontime feast, and that, as a symbolism of summer’s bounty, they should be foods that would be wild caught, rather than grown.
What to Make
With that in mind, I now had to figure out exactly what it is that I would make. The first thing that came to mind was easy: strawberries. Not only to I grow two different types of cultivated strawberries, but the edges of the forest surrounding my home covered in wild, and native, Virginia Strawberries.
As a sweet summer treat, I figured they would easily give a boost of natural sugars to those who are holding the nightly vigil and might need a quick pick-me-up snack.
As for what I would make for the noontime feast, I dove back into my research to draw inspiration from the ancestors. As usual, finding definite answers on these topics for the ancient Celts is nearly impossible, but what archeology and history can tell us is that for this celebration, roasted meats would be the main food of the feast.
Now I had to decide what meat to use. In the end, this was fairly easy. As I wanted to symbolize the spirit of the festival with wild-caught foods rather than cultivated ones, I really only had one option: a local fish. At this time of year and in my region, rainbow or brown trout would be the local inland fish most available. I also happen to volunteer as a fishing instructor for my state’s Department of Wildlife and know where the best fishing spots around me are.
So it was settled, I would make a two-part feast. Fresh strawberries to keep up through the nightly vigil and a roasted trout for the main feast at noon.
Making the Feast
And this is where, as they say, pride goes before a fall. After getting my initial burst of Awen and scrambling to find something to make in time for the festival but also to get these out before the festivals themselves for the first three, I sat down several weeks ago and did the research on what to make for each festival for the remainder of the year. I had anticipated easily finding the berries and catching the fish.
Well, as I write this, we are experiencing our 13th straight week of rain and temperatures somewhere 10-15 degrees cooler than usual. A very cold and wet spring we haven’t seen in
ages. Which means that, with the Solstice a week away and my deadline for this blog post in only days, the strawberries, while beautifully blooming, have not fruited and the fish have stayed in their winter hideouts. I haven’t been able to tease them out despite my experience and best efforts.
So, while I am going on with this feast, I must confess the strawberries I am using are among the last of those frozen from last fall and I had to buy the trout. Both remain homegrown or locally caught and both are native, so the rules of this effort are not in jeopardy, but the representation of nature’s bounty is a bit more symbolic than I had hoped.
It’s a bit of a blow to my ego, especially the fish, but, regardless, with that disclosure out of the way, we move on.
Just having a bowl of strawberries is nice, but something I think would be nicer, especially with thawed berries, would be to macerate them in some sugar. In order to do that and keep within my rules, I decided to use some maple sugar, which often comes, nowadays at least, in the form of small shaped candies.
I added the candies to my mortar and pestle and pounded them up before mixing them in with the berries and leaving them on the counter to macerate. I also thought it would give them a nice maple-y flavor on top of the strawberry.
For the fish I treated it simply. I opened it up, one of the benefits of buying it meant that I didn’t have to clean it or pick out the pinbones, so there are blessings everywhere, and used a bit of salt and some herbs from my garden: chives, thyme, and tarragon. I would have loved to add some lemon and pepper, but, alas, neither are native to me nor do I grow my own.
I tried to wrap the fish in fresh sweetcorn husks, but had a devil of a time doing it, so instead, I used them as a bed for the fish. I placed them on my grill with the fish on top and, using indirect heat and a small piece of local hickory, I smoked it until it was cooked.
Having done that, I actually recommend you just grill the fish directly on the grates. Because they cook so fast, the smoke did almost nothing and the husks cooked more than the fish, causing it to steam more than grill.
That said, I got my feast together and tried them. The strawberries were great. Not only did the maple sugar not overpower the strawberry flavor, as I was slightly worried about, but it did add a very subtle maple flavor that went very well with them. I would have loved some cream on them, but, again, neither native nor home-grown for me. Still, I expect those will help me keep my vigil on the actual festival.
Despite my comments above, the fish was still quite good. Trout is a very mild fish and the herbs did a great job of adding flavor. I think I will do this again next weekend (I bought two fish and froze the other!) but with my own tweaks and it will truly be a feast worthy of Alban Hefin!
Conclusion
So, while things did not go entirely as planned, the two-part feast still turned out to be quite delicious. A reminder that we are at the whims of the natural forces around us and will have to make do or adapt as we need to, as well as striking evidence of the climate change our planet is facing. As the light of Alban Hefin shines bright this year, many blessings to you all.
Recipe
Strawberries
Ingredients
½ pint of fresh or frozen strawberries.
2 teaspoons (or three small pieces) of maple candy, pulverized.
Method
Wash and hull your berries, if fresh, and place in a small mixing bowl. Add the pulverized maple sugar and mix well. Cover and set aside for several hours, or until they are softened and sweetened to your taste.
Rainbow trout
Ingredients
1 whole rainbow trout, gutted and cleaned.
Salt to taste
Small bunch each of thyme, chives, and tarragon, or herbs of your choice.
Method
Sprinkle salt all over the inside and outside of the fish. Open up and stuff the inside of the fish with the herbs. Preheat your grill with indirect heat. This means turning on one side of a gas grill and not the other or putting all the coals of a charcoal grill to one side. Place the fish directly on the grate that is not over the heat source and cover the grill. Cool 10-15 minutes or until the fish reads 145F/63C internally. Remove from the heat and let stand 5 minutes.
