A Gratin That Embraces Tradition, and Innovates on It
The New York Times
This comforting potato-celery root dish from Yotam Ottolenghi is all about transforming the expected.
LONDON — The quiet of January offers me a moment to look back at the weeks that came before and make heads or tails of them all. I am particularly interested in traditions: how they almost sneak up on us and surprise us, despite our misguided assumption that we are fully in control. And I can’t think of a better illustration of the fluidity of tradition, its almost arbitrary nature, than our — and that’s a big our, the entirety of humanity, more or less — response to recent times.
In many cultures, family traditions have their big moment in late December, when we gather in groups, each with its own customs, to re-establish the circles that define us. But the colossal disruption brought about by a pandemic that’s now nearly two years old has meant that just about everyone has had to adjust their holiday plans, to some degree. (That is, if they were lucky enough to keep them at all.)
In my world, the tension between my idea of a “big holiday” and reality was most apparent in the size of our gathering. My mother, my niece and her husband couldn’t make it from Israel to Northern Ireland, where my husband’s family lives. It didn’t feel safe to invite others at the last minute, either. Instead of the usual 12 or more, we were seven.
