National Tortellini Day

National Tortellini Day is on February 13th in the United States.

Another national day celebrating another type of pasta. This dish, like most pasta dishes, comes from Italy, believed to be the old region of Emilia in northern Italy, which is part of today's Emilia-Romagna.

Rather than a flat or noodle pasta of some type, tortellini are instead ring-shaped stuffed pasta. A similar type of pasta is tortelloni, which is identical but for size.

The pasta can be stuffed with many things. Meat is popular, as is cheese, but there are also vegetarian variants of it. Really, there is no limit to what you can use to stuff the pasta with, as long as it will cook that way. Tortellini is often served in a broth, typically beef or chicken, rather than being served with a pasta sauce, but there's no reason why a sauce couldn't be used instead.

National Plum Pudding Day

National Plum Pudding Day is on February 12th in the United States.

For anyone British, this is a rather unusual day to be celebrating the plum pudding, also known as the Christmas pudding, for the dessert is traditionally served on Christmas Day, not partway through February.

The pudding is a boiled pudding containing dried fruit. It is made from dried fruits, egg, suet and various spices, and typically has a high percentage of alcohol. Plum puddings are usually made well in advance of use, at least a month, and they can keep for a long time due to the alcohol acting as a preservative.

There are different recipes for plum pudding but there is one thing they have in common - the recipe does not use plums! This was due to the Victorians calling raisins "plums." The dish dates back to the 17th century at least, and the ingredients that made it up, in particular the spices, would then have been very expensive, thus Christmas would have been the time to have such an extravagant dessert.

Once cooked, there are different ways of serving the pudding. Some traditional ways are flambé, where brandy is poured over the pudding and ignited, or with cream or brandy butter. These all tended to be expensive ways of serving.

National Peppermint Pattie Day

National Peppermint Pattie Day is on February 11th in the United States.

This is a day celebrating a chocolate mint confection that is branded, rather than a generic one. The full name is properly the York Peppermint Pattie, named after York, Pennsylvania and manufactured by the York Cone Company.

Although this particular candy is a trademarked variety, the general concept itself, which is simply covering a peppermint interior with chocolate, is common and pre-dates it. What makes the York Peppermint Pattie different is that prior versions all had a soft interior, and the York variety was instead hard. The patties could be snapped. This was, in fact, the final test for the patties after manufacture, whether they could be snapped or not. If they couldn't, that pattie (or rather the batch) was a second.

As with many mint and chocolate candies, the chocolate exterior of the original York Peppermint Pattie is made from bittersweet, aka dark, chocolate, rather than milk or white.

National Cream Cheese Brownie Day

February 10th is National Cream Cheese Brownie Day in the United States.

This is another variation of the popular dessert, the chocolate brownie, which is a cross between a cake and a cookie. As well as the traditional ingredients that can be found in the normal chocolate brownie, such as chocolate or cocoa powder, flour, butter, eggs and sugar, there is also the addition of cream cheese.

Cream cheese is a type of cheese that is soft and mild and often high in fat content. Although the definition of cream cheese can vary, in the US it has to have at least 33% milk fat. Other countries may require an even higher fat content.

Although a cheese, cream cheese is adaptable and can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes. In cream cheese brownies it is often used to top the brownies to create, in combination with the chocolate, a marbled finish.

National Bagels & Lox Day

National Bagels & Lox Day is on February 9th in the United States.

The bagels part of this popular brunch dish is self-explanatory - it's a bagel, a bread product that originated in Poland but is now strongly associated with New York, traditionally formed in a ring which is boiled in water before being baked. The bagel is often sliced in half and lightly toasted.

The lox part of the dish is not as easy to understand, as it derives from the Yiddish word for salmon. The salmon in this case is a brined salmon fillet (brining is also fairly self-explanatory; the food in question is steeped in brine). The lox would then be sliced thinly.

The lox would usually be accompanied on the bagel with cream cheese. Other ingredients may also be used as a garnish, such as tomato and sliced red onion. The bagel would normally be served open, but can be served closed like a more traditional sandwich.

National Molasses Bar Day

National Molasses Bar Day is on February 8th in the United States.

Molasses bars can be types of cakes or cookies, depending on what ingredients are used. The primary ingredient in the all is the one that they are named after - molasses. The end result tends to be a chewy biscuit or cake.

Molasses, which is known as treacle in Britain (the black type, not to be confused with such as Golden Syrup), is a black, thick by-product from sugar beet and cane when they are refined into sugar. Although both sugar cane and sugar beet can be used to make molasses, the end products are not the same.

Molasses, as used in molasses bars, would normally be cane molasses. One variation of cane molasses is thrice-boiled resulting in what is called blackstrap molasses, which has much of the sugar content removed, and is used as a health supplement. Molasses used in cooking would not normally have gone this far.

National Fettuccine Alfredo Day

National Fettuccine Alfredo Day is on February 7th in the United States.

Fettuccine is a type of pasta whose name means little ribbons, for that's what it is - flat ribbons of pasta.

Fettuccine Alfredo is a dish based around this pasta. Fettuccine Alfredo is really a very simple dish to make. The pasta is cooked and then tossed with Parmesan (also known as Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and butter. The cheese is melted and and emulsified by the pasta.

This dish is named after, and by, Alfredo di Lelio in the early 20th century, although versions of the dish date back to the 15th century.

There are variations on this simple dish, especially in America. Ingredients may be substituted and the cheese may be thickened. Other ingredients may be added, to make it more of a single dish, rather than a side, such as chicken, shrimp and broccoli. Cream and egg can be added to make it richer.