In Europe this time of year one can buy a pound of fresh marzipan to take home and shape into little mushrooms as easily as one can buy Brie.  As far as I know there is one, and only one, source for Christmas old world staples like fresh marzipan and fresh citron by the pound in the Northeast:  Polcari’s Coffee in Boston’s North End.

 

When I lived in the North End years ago, Ralph Polcari, who inherited the business from his father, ground my French Roast coffee once a week, his white shirt sleeves rolled up.  Something makes me think he often had a cigar in the corner of his mouth, but the place never smelled like anything but fifty years of cumin seed, cardamon and coffee.  A fat black and white cat always lay in the window, and Ralph would give him a smile and a pat when he passed on the way to measure out dried chickpeas from a barrel for a customer.

At Polcaris you can still walk up to the counter and ask for a pound of fresh marzipan, and they don’t look at you like you’re crazy.  They just reach for the large vats underneath the counter, weigh out a chunk, wrap it in paper, and say, “and what else can I get you?”

 

 

 

Bobby Eustace was the unlikely looking young man, a skinny kid with a few earrings and a spikey punk haircut, working beside Ralph years ago.   Bobby helped Ralph on busy Saturdays, jumping back and forth waiting on old ladies often while talking to a friend standing in the back of the crowd.  Bobby would be weighing cinnamon and talking to his friend about the mosh pit last night, but his “and, yes, Ma’m, what else can I get you, Ma’m”’s arrived with a gentle, earnest smile.  It was a funny scene, this antique store with square, solid Ralph behind the counter beside New Wave Bobby talking bands.

Ralph had no family; when he died he left the business to Bobby, but nothing has changed at Polcari's Coffee.  -  Ok, I didn’t see a cat the other day.

No one agrees on marzipan.  The Germans have a law for their ratio of almond paste to sugar, thus codifying their little marzipan pigs.  French marzipan has syrup in it and is cooked more, so it is whiter and lighter.  The British don’t cook theirs at all, and add egg whites.

So, when I say that Polcari’s is the only store I know of that sells soft, fragrant, moist, marzipan by the pound, there’s a reason for you to wonder how sweet or almondy it is, how crumbly or pilable, or if it’s ready to shape into a peach and paint, because marzipan is many things to many countries.   My feeling is don’t ask questions of the Polcari’s version; it’s soft, almondy and fresh, weighed out for you by Bobby, an entirely different product than the cans in the grocery store, which not living in Brooklyn or Berlin, are my only other options.

Fresh citron reminds everyone of fruitcake, which divides the world into those who do and those who don’t.  My family does fruitcake, and so a source of real candied citron,  and candied fruits, which again is nothing like those little plastic boxes next to the walnut display at Shaw’s this time of year, is nothing short of a treasure chest.

 

Citron, by the way, is a whole fruit that looks a little like a grapefruit and lemon, but is mostly peel.  At one point in history it was honored for medicinal purposes.  The cherries and citron weighed out by the pound from Polcari’s are moist, sweet jewels.  No, none of this stuff tastes like the original fruit; it’s not intended to.  Candied, it becomes something different, a rich, colorful, textured sweet, fruits saved in sugar to bring color and sweetness to the darkest time of year.

Bobby says he considers himself a museum keeper, but there is nothing not alive about Polcaris Coffee.  A small crowd of customers stood waiting to be served at the counter when I was there the other day.  One man was there to buy mustard seeds to make his own mustard, a recipe from Molly O’Neill in the New York Times years ago.  People travel to Polcaris for things like that, and things like candied citron.  Just because you can’t find these foods anymore doesn’t mean people have stopped needing them.  That’s the strange thing about the way foods disappear.  The cheerful, busy counter at Polcari’s is proof that people are still making stews with dried chickpeas and Christmas marzipan potatoes.

By the way, a stroll through the North End, particularly this time of year,  is also a pleasure that hasn't disappeared.