Mention mincemeat pies, and most folks wrinkle their noses in horror. “Meat and prunes,” I remember thinking as a child, a combination as frightening as liver and squash, which wound up on my dinner plate on terrible occasion. These days I love liver and squash (think grilled, still-pink calves’ liver with onions, and roasted butternut squash spiked with a bit of cumin, fennel seed and garlic). And I also have learned to love mince pies. But don’t even consider the mincemeat that comes out of a can; I think that’s what gave me the willies back when. Think dried currents, raisins, orange and lemon peel, apples, brown sugar, butter and brandy, and you’ve got more to do with sugar plums than with meat pasties.
Mince pies are an ancient holiday tradition in England. In medieval times, the small pastries, called chewette, did indeed contain meat or liver, boiled eggs and ginger. Over time, chopped dried fruit was added to enrich the taste. By the 19th century, the meat had vanished, although beef suet was used for fat content.
Novici Haizel grew up between Accra, Ghana; New York; Geneva and London, where she learned to bake in the High Tea tradition. Mince pies are a holiday speciality, one that she has loved since she was a child. When she opened her tea room and cake shop in the Oil Center, mince pies came on the menu following Thanksgiving. Last year, she convinced me to taste one of the small tarts. I was a convert on the spot. She bakes them through December. It’s considered good form to eat a mince pie every day during the 12 days of Christmas, one for every happy month of the next year.
Drop by Novici’s, in the Oil Center Gardens, for a truly delicious taste of mince pie, $3 each, or call to order, 739-2379.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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