Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
Rethinking seasons, Coquito to get happy, and the best things I made this holiday season
The war on Christmas is alive and well in my soul.
Ok, maybe just the war on winter.
There is this popular idea is that that only people in the North, and really just a specific part of the North, experience seasons and thus the proper passage of time. Many Floridians cosplay the seasons through things such as seasonal decor and holiday-themed Starbucks beverages. There is always someone who will argue that much-maligned seasonal drinks are popular because it’s a way for people in warmer climates to actually mark the seasons. Growing up as a Floridian, we would decorate for fall with foliage-themed decor, despite the fact that I never saw the leaves change colors until I had gone to college, nor had I seen snow fall from the sky until that point either. To this day, I have never seen a rhubarb or a ramp, two ingredients that food magazines love come Spring, in a grocery store.
As a teenager I left the nest to go to college, dreaming of the promise of SEASONS and the chic suede boots I would wear while sauntering around New England like a protagonist in a movie, apple cider in hand. What I didn’t take into account was how fiercely my body would reject the cold Massachusetts winters (Hello, three years of “seasonally-induced asthma”). I didn’t know when admiring the serenity of the first snowfall that it would be followed 3 more months of cold and darkness that no amount of warm cider could fix. I spent my three years in Boston miserably sick starting from the moment the first leaves changed color until the first bloom in the spring. It took just a few years of this before I found myself migrating back to Florida for the winter with all the other birds. I had not only taken for granted how lovely the seasons were in my home state, but taken for granted the very idea that we had seasons worth commemorating at all. In an era where culture is getting increasingly homogenized, I’m now grateful for my little seasons.
If you find yourself with the good fortune of being in South Florida when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, you likely are starting the new year with a snack of 12 grapes for good luck, an old Spanish tradition that has been carried over to parts of Latin America and, by extension, the population of Miami that likes to pretend they are Spanish. I have been to more than one New Year’s Eve party where a friend whips out a zip lock baggie with the grapes out of a sequined clutch, though some of the more luxe parties will have someone serving trays of grapes, both of the fresh and fermented sparkling variety (I prefer the more efficient choice of 12 raisins from the red little Sunkist box in my clutch).
The new year continues with peak grapefruit season, making resolutions to eat healthier a little more bearable when you can halve a gorgeous jewel-toned citrus and feel like a queen looking upon the crown jewels. While everyone up North is huddled in their “cozy” living rooms, I would argue the best way to start a morning, and a new year, is breakfast al fresco with a perfect grapefruit.
While the dirty snow is melting in piles up North, much of Florida is enjoying its peak growing season, which for a large part of the state is inverse to the growing seasons of the rest of the country. While around March and April the food magazines are waxing poetic over the first strawberries of the season and the impending arrival of Spring, Floridians are enjoying what most other climates would consider late summer produce—tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and corn.
I often say that our summer is like everyone else’s winter. May 22 marks the day I bring out the giant Tupperware and go to buy three days’ worth of water bottles, canned fruits, and, instantly recognizable to any Latino in Florida, a giant green circular tin of Export Soda crackers. The summer is also when we prepare ourselves for the constant threat of a hurricane. Floridians whisper the names of previous storms like they’re horrendous exes—Wilma, Andrew, Irma. We remark to friends and strangers alike that hopefully we won’t have a bad season this year, while always thinking to ourselves “it’s only a matter of time.” In Miami, the collective trauma of Andrew still lingers 30 years later. If you find yourself in a supermarket in central Florida around this time, you may notice that the cans of Export Sodas are now on prominent display, a reminder of the many Puerto Ricans who left after Maria to come to Florida.
That’s not to say that our summer is all huddling around the AC and worrying about The Storm. Come mid-June, the first of the Miami mangoes arrive. For a few weeks in the summer, the office is perfumed with the smell of super ripe mangoes brought to work by anyone and everyone blessed with a mango tree in their backyard. Invariably, the trees always produce more fruit than one family can consume, even after all the mango pies, sorbets, cobblers are made, and their owners bring plastic bags on the verge of bursting open to share with the unfortunate ones who do not have a mango tree. More than once I have heard of people having someone “babysit” their mango tree while out of town during the season so that at the very least the bounty doesn’t go to waste. It’s one of my favorite parts of living in Miami, not because the mango tastes like candy (it does), but because the ritual seems like such a charming relic of a different era.
After months of what feels like the losing end of an arm-wrestling match with the heat, you suddenly feel relief at the slight loosening of the sun’s grip in November. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a Florida winter. In some parts of the state the mornings and evenings are chilly enough to justify a sweater and a warm drink, but the afternoons are gorgeously sunny and what I believe to be the platonic ideal of 65 degrees Fahrenheit. In South Florida, November comes with the relief of the end of hurricane season and the beginning of stone crab season, when South Floridians enjoy cracking upon the bright orange claws dipped in butter and mustard sauce. It also marks the start of strawberry season, when many Miamians enjoy the annual ritual of driving to Homestead to partake in berry picking and the famous cinnamon rolls from Knaus Berry farm. Most years it won’t get too cold, but once in a while you’ll see the temperatures dip low enough that people put blankets over the citrus trees to help prevent frost. You won’t see snow fall out of the sky, but you may have to keep an eye out for iguanas falling off the trees like coconuts because their cold blood can’t handle temperatures below 65 (I can relate).
Speaking of coconuts, it had never occurred to me that for many people coconut is considered a summer flavor until I encountered the confused face of a Stop & Shop clerk in Massachusetts when asking where to find cream of coconut (not to be confused with coconut cream). I had wanted to introduce my friends to Coquito, a traditional creamy coconut holiday rum beverage described as “Puerto Rican Eggnog” by those with no imagination. To me and many other Puerto Ricans, the mix of coconut and cinnamon is the flavor of the holidays, as integral to the season as warming spices or cranberries are for others. Years later during my first December in my then-new home of Miami, I had my Goldilocks “This is just right” moment when I walked into the Publix and asked the store clerk if they had cans of Coco Lopez. “Of course!” he exclaimed, leading me past the ubiquitous stacks of Spanish turron to a display with all the ingredients I might need, the way I had seen other supermarkets do for dishes like bread stuffing or green bean casserole. The perfectly corny Juanes cover of “Burrito Sabanero” was playing on the speakers. “You making coquito?” he asked with a grin. It was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.
Maria’s “Super Receta pa’ que te pongas HAPPY” Coquito
My cousin Maria knows how to have a good time, and if she tells me this is the go-to coquito recipe to get “happy” for the holidays, I’m not going to question it. This is the recipe my family uses every year, and its the same recipe I brought Christmas eve to the fancy law firm I used to work at when I accidently got one of the partners a little tipsy. In honor of the recipe creator, I’m just translating the recipe as she wrote it to my mom in an email in 2014. Just put everything in the blender and chill. Shake before serving.
“ Ok so, 1/2 a bottle [liter] of DonQ Cristal Blanco! 1/4 cup of brandy (Felipe II muajaja)! 1 can of evaporated milk. 1 can of condensed milk and one 15oz can of cream of coconut (Coco Lopez Brand). 2 teaspoons of cinnamon”
Recommendations
Its never too late for cookies.
As I sending this Christmas eve? Yes. But the holidays last until AT LEAST January 6 (Three Kings Day) and you have my full permission to eat as many cookies as you can stomach until then. My cookie box this year featured:
cranberry thumbspints (with guava) - adapted from Martha Stewart
Baci di rana - A recipe by your truly
alfajores de maicena - literally the only thing I’ve made from Chow, but this is the best recipe I’ve ever found for them.
chocolate hazelnut cookies - an old Gourmet mag pecipe (RIP)
danish butter cookies - another old Gourmet mag recipe
the cookie - Say what you want about Alison Roman, there’s a reason this chocolate chip recipe is so popular (though I like to finely chop the chocolate into freckles.
Around Miami
Like everything in Miami, there will always be the places with tons a hype that get all the Instagram love. ‘O Munaciello is not one of those places, but it does have the best pizza in town. It one of those “blink and you might miss it” places on Biscayne, but once inside you’ll find that this place has EVERYTHING (Cue the Stephan voice) — Shrines dedicated to Diego Maradona, A giant angel hanging over the space seemingly by a couple strings of spaghetti, and printed tablecloths that teach you important Italian/Nnapulitano vocabulary like “breast” and “death.” More importanly, the have a giant wood-fired oven that delivers those perfectly charred bubbled that make Neopolitan pizza so good. Speaking of Maradona, their Maradona pizza with nduja and burrata is my favorite, though really you can’t go wrong with any of the pies.
To those that celebrate, Merry Christmas. To those that don’t, I hope you still get some time off to rest until the New Year. Thanks for reading and happy eating.
-GiGi