Dear Nigel,
What a difference a day makes - or even a few days in this case. The world is whiter than your persiled Y-fronts and getting out of the back door has been a bit of an ordeal. Children were sent home on Monday and the bus refused to venture into the village at all. We all traipsed up the road to the top of the moor to collect our smiling offspring who were gagging for a few days of enforced sledging, snowball fights and snowmen making.
Every radiator is covered in mountains of waterproof clothing and more hats and gloves than we actually appear to own. The sledging run goes directly outside my window so I can sit and drink coffee and wave occasionally at the ruddy-faced children who refuse to come in even after several hours. In a few days this enthusiasm will begin to wane so I'll let them have their fun.
Over in the fridge department there are gaps starting to appear and a weak, ineffective light that hasn't been visible for weeks due to Christmas. The freezer is getting lower and I have to prevent myself falling in each time I reach to the bottom for the last of the sausages and some unidentifiable meat. The cat food is nearly all gone and the one thing I cannot possibly do without ( - in my case it is a certain kind of plain full fat yoghurt without which I am simply miserable) has been scraped to its last.
This is the first day I have ventured out further than the top of the village. My shopping list reads like an inventory for one of Ranulph Fiennes expeditions, and, given that more snow is forecast in another day or so, there is a high likelihood that we will be holed up again here. I don't mind this, in fact, in a strange way I think I rather enjoy the challenge. What I like most is the brightness of the landscape and the completely soft silence that reverberates from branch to branch. I head out in Archie (newly returned since his last prang when I had to dive into a hedge to avoid a hearse) and keep to the only main and gritted road fifteen miles to the supermarket.
I am now alone with my siege mentality. An acquaintance spots me pocketing twenty four loo rolls and half a trolley of semi-skimmed milk to freeze and grins wryly. There is a convoy of archies in the car park. This, the highest town in England is obviously several degrees warmer than home. I know this because of the scarcity of snow on the ground and the fact that I can now get my key into the door lock of the landrover and so will no longer have to take a chance on leaving it unlocked. I buy a seventeen kilo sack of working dog food for my non-working arctic dog who moons at the back door trying to get back in to her warm bed every two minutes, and a hunk of decent mature cheddar, and head for the till.
You are cooking a good old fashioned ham (pg 16) with a new sauce - artichoke and parsley.The artichokes in question are those knobbly, slightly obscene little specimens -Jerusalem artichokes, which seem to me to have such a deep and comforting flavour just right for this time of year. I am pleased to see that you don't bother to peel them (just scrub and chop) as this has rather put me off in the past, which is a shame. You say of this recipe, that the ham 'can be energised a bit in summer, when it will benefit from a bright-green, olive-oil-and herb-based sauce. But on a day as bone chilling as this, it needs an accompaniment as comforting as a goose-down duvet.' The optional addition of a little double cream to the sauce will have to depend on whether I'm feeling post-seasonally guilty for stuffing my face with chocolate over Christmas, or whether two days healthy eating is making me feel virtuous and therefore in need of a treat for the obvious success that I can envisage, without having to endure the hard part (namely a good deal more portion control and to realign my taste buds to more healthier fodder). The rest of the artichokes are roasted to accompany the Ham - seasonality at its best.
I am skimming over your ham and cabbage fry-up for, although the recipe appears tasty-enough in itself, I find juniper berries just a little hard to take, so dominating are they in their flavour. I've ruined many a game casserole because of this. You say ' I am probably alone in holding juniper as one of my favourite spices. Its clean, citrus 'n' tobacco scent is both warming and refreshing. Where cumin, cinnamon and nutmeg offer us reassuring earthiness, juniper brings an arctic freshness and tantalising astringency.' It is certainly an acquired taste, although I can see what you are getting at with this recipe, with its roots in sauerkraut.
I turn to January 13th - The cook's knife, and find a friend. There is something comforting in the knowledge that even the best cooks have favourite old knives that have travelled through life beside them. 'Picking up the right knife is like putting on a much-loved pullover. It may well have seen better days but the odd hole only seems to add to its qualities'. My handful of old knives would probably appal the best of cooks but they are MY knives and they do the job with me as their blunt utensil in a quite satisfactory way.
From one picture postcard to another,
Martha
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Sunday, 6 January 2013
January 6th - Shopping refuseniks and the dawn of a New Year
Dear Nigel,
Something is brewing here in Hobbitsville, something mature and vintage. I suspect it is a piece of old cheese leaching its way off a fridge shelf and coming to find me. I am in Refusenik mode: the thought of a journey to the shops is simply too much, and anyway, we have mountains of food here. The only trouble is that the mountains contain a few old bread sticks, several varieties of half-massacred cheese and yet more pheasant (frozen). No, I haven't touched them yet.
You, on the other hand, seem rather chipper today. Whether it is 'the garden refreshed after the rain...the air..sweet and clean', you are in a mood to face the year squarely in the face 'ready for anything the New Year might throw at me.'
Where we meet is in the larder. You say 'my energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn't. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been.' So you trudge off in search of chicken and greens to make a spicy noodle soup. And we eat sausages - rare breed pork and chive - but with those unholy staples of a bad cook's kitchen, known as the oven chip. (You may have read about these deviant products hidden in the back of a cookery porn magazine.)
The broth you make is 'bright and life-enhancing'. I think this is what is missing in my repertoire at the moment. We need economical, sustaining, yet renewing foods with the energy to propel us on and out of our dormant states. I flick aimlessly through my stack of soup books and realise quickly that you were right all along: As I leaf through recipes for carrot and cumin, Leek and potato, Celeriac and wild mushroom etc. I realise that what I want more than anything else is something light. There has been rather too much stodge and heaviness of late and even the nicest things seem to involve maximum calories and hours of recovery in front of the tele. So I come back to your recipe (pg 13) for Chicken noodle broth, slightly embarrassed that I passed over it so carelessly first time round, but find that actually it is exactly what i am looking for.
An hour or more has passed and I am now surrounded by a sea of both cooking and gardening books. I like the recipe. I plan to make the recipe. But I don't have any Thai basil. Ordinarily, I would just ignore this fact and carry on regardless, perhaps substituting something similar along the way. But, I don't know what Thai Basil is, what it looks like, what it tastes like, what it might be similar to.
I check out my hefty tomes on Herbs: Arabella Boxer (circa 1980) in 'The Herb Book' clearly hasn't heard of it; Lesley Bremness in 'The complete book of Herbs' (1990) may have lectured and researched herbs in China but not got there either, and Monty Don's just making lots of pesto. So I turn to my cookery advisers; but where are they? I eventually unearth a recipe for Thai red pumpkin and coconut curry in the Leith's Vegetarian Bible, where there is a mention for 'fresh basil leaves, Thai holy basil if possible'. Here is a woman who clearly realises the chances of locating said holy basil are pretty remote. Still, if bog standard would do then that's fine.
What perplexes me most is the quest. If this book (Leith's vegetarian Bible) was published in 2002, at what point did Thai Basil hit the shelves of metropolitan England? - London being, in this instance, very much a foreign country. Somewhere in the 1990s I'd guess. A certain Mr Slater, talking in the mid 90s, said 'Fragrance comes second only to flavour in my book. This is what brings me to the table. It is true to say that some cuisines are more fragrant than others; Thai cooking, with its fresh, clean waft of ginger, limes and chillies, is as inviting as the warm, sweet notes of the caramelising onions and garlic of French country cooking.' (Real good food)
To the dawning of a New Year and all new things. (By the way, loved the photo of that fiery Witch Hazel - so explicitly new and unexpected against the harsh and barren background of Winter.)
Martha
Something is brewing here in Hobbitsville, something mature and vintage. I suspect it is a piece of old cheese leaching its way off a fridge shelf and coming to find me. I am in Refusenik mode: the thought of a journey to the shops is simply too much, and anyway, we have mountains of food here. The only trouble is that the mountains contain a few old bread sticks, several varieties of half-massacred cheese and yet more pheasant (frozen). No, I haven't touched them yet.
You, on the other hand, seem rather chipper today. Whether it is 'the garden refreshed after the rain...the air..sweet and clean', you are in a mood to face the year squarely in the face 'ready for anything the New Year might throw at me.'
Where we meet is in the larder. You say 'my energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn't. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been.' So you trudge off in search of chicken and greens to make a spicy noodle soup. And we eat sausages - rare breed pork and chive - but with those unholy staples of a bad cook's kitchen, known as the oven chip. (You may have read about these deviant products hidden in the back of a cookery porn magazine.)
The broth you make is 'bright and life-enhancing'. I think this is what is missing in my repertoire at the moment. We need economical, sustaining, yet renewing foods with the energy to propel us on and out of our dormant states. I flick aimlessly through my stack of soup books and realise quickly that you were right all along: As I leaf through recipes for carrot and cumin, Leek and potato, Celeriac and wild mushroom etc. I realise that what I want more than anything else is something light. There has been rather too much stodge and heaviness of late and even the nicest things seem to involve maximum calories and hours of recovery in front of the tele. So I come back to your recipe (pg 13) for Chicken noodle broth, slightly embarrassed that I passed over it so carelessly first time round, but find that actually it is exactly what i am looking for.
An hour or more has passed and I am now surrounded by a sea of both cooking and gardening books. I like the recipe. I plan to make the recipe. But I don't have any Thai basil. Ordinarily, I would just ignore this fact and carry on regardless, perhaps substituting something similar along the way. But, I don't know what Thai Basil is, what it looks like, what it tastes like, what it might be similar to.
I check out my hefty tomes on Herbs: Arabella Boxer (circa 1980) in 'The Herb Book' clearly hasn't heard of it; Lesley Bremness in 'The complete book of Herbs' (1990) may have lectured and researched herbs in China but not got there either, and Monty Don's just making lots of pesto. So I turn to my cookery advisers; but where are they? I eventually unearth a recipe for Thai red pumpkin and coconut curry in the Leith's Vegetarian Bible, where there is a mention for 'fresh basil leaves, Thai holy basil if possible'. Here is a woman who clearly realises the chances of locating said holy basil are pretty remote. Still, if bog standard would do then that's fine.
What perplexes me most is the quest. If this book (Leith's vegetarian Bible) was published in 2002, at what point did Thai Basil hit the shelves of metropolitan England? - London being, in this instance, very much a foreign country. Somewhere in the 1990s I'd guess. A certain Mr Slater, talking in the mid 90s, said 'Fragrance comes second only to flavour in my book. This is what brings me to the table. It is true to say that some cuisines are more fragrant than others; Thai cooking, with its fresh, clean waft of ginger, limes and chillies, is as inviting as the warm, sweet notes of the caramelising onions and garlic of French country cooking.' (Real good food)
To the dawning of a New Year and all new things. (By the way, loved the photo of that fiery Witch Hazel - so explicitly new and unexpected against the harsh and barren background of Winter.)
Martha
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
On another note (no. 2)
Faffing around yesterday on my computer wondering if i actually existed.....well it was New Year's Eve, and a time for life audits and recrimination drinking.
Anyway, apparently i do exist - which is always nice to know. Friends have been telling me this for years but sometimes you can catch yourself as if through gauze, looking into a mirror into an empty room where no one blinks back at you.
So, my alter ego, as googled, is a Martha Moffett who lives in a sleepy little fishing town called Lake Worth in America, and is also a writer, of plays and short fiction. How lovely.
What is the other YOU doing with their life and how does it compare?
Anyway, apparently i do exist - which is always nice to know. Friends have been telling me this for years but sometimes you can catch yourself as if through gauze, looking into a mirror into an empty room where no one blinks back at you.
So, my alter ego, as googled, is a Martha Moffett who lives in a sleepy little fishing town called Lake Worth in America, and is also a writer, of plays and short fiction. How lovely.
What is the other YOU doing with their life and how does it compare?
Sunday, 30 December 2012
On another note...
Those two dead birds? Nothing to it really - just like peeling a satsuma. Do use the kitchen floor (a much under-utilised work surface) with newspaper, and a pair of good scissors. There was no blood. Apparently these aristocratic creatures don't have any - that way there is no need to make brain cells either...and i'm sure we've all met a few like that at parties.
Saturday, 29 December 2012
December 29th - Great Expectations and the Christmas Wasteland
Dear Nigel,
I hope you had a good Christmas. Did you? I'm not sure whether i did or not. The problem is that thing called EXPECTATIONS. We all have them - huge inflated things, impossibly sentimental and romantic things.
Sitting in my Christmas Wasteland amid the half-eaten pudding, the Turkey leftovers and the wreckage of fading decorations, bits of children's toys and mess, i begin to amass a list of all the obstacles to a decent family Christmas this year:
1. Illness.
My family and i, and half the country it seems, spent most of the run-up to the main event either being sick or groaning over a heavy cold and not being able to do anything in the way of Christmas preparations, particularly food ones. The normally heaving freezer and tins of smug mince pies gave way to hurried boxes of something not quite as worthy - however expensively packaged - and the annual battle in the supermarket requiring medicinal compensation of the alcoholic variety.
2. Weather
Whether it was debilitating floods altering the travel plans of loved ones, emptying flood-alert homes just at Christmastime, or simply rain, rain and more bloody rain, dark days and damp spirits; it came. Christmas cards tell us that the natural weather for this time of year is bright skies, snow-laden landscapes and ethereal beauty - not many cards depicting cars being washed away under bridges it seems. Yet. I feel a new generation of Christmas cards being invented as we speak: sarcastic realism...remember the year the dog took the turkey off the side while you were busy laying the table and it had to be rescued, reformed and one leg removed in the interests of hygiene?...etc
3. Difficult Teenagers.
You may not have had the pleasure of this one, but i can assure you that this sub-species has the power to crack Christmas wide open with its minimal words and grunts. The plea (almost hysterical ) to get the family to the Christmas table at just the right moment, being met with a 'Just going for a shower now' boils the blood instantly - at least mine. Don't think Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey have this trouble with their brood; it's all those sharpened knives, you know....dinner will be served now, won't it?
On the plus side, apparently the presents were acceptable, the stockings up to scratch and the dinner did at least all make it on the same day...and i jest not. But i'm still left sitting in a puddle of destruction with an appetite for nothing it seems.
I turn to your diary to see what you're up to.
December 27th: 'With snow still on the ground and mercifully little to do, three of us sit at the kitchen hob making warm hotcakes of sweet mincemeat and brandy butter.' Here maybe lies my answer. Instead of me sweating over things i don't wish to cook and don't wish to eat, a communal activity of conveyor belt eating. Like pancake day marathons, there is much to be said for the clamour for the next one fresh from the pan. Perhaps with the added attraction of an appetite formulated on a walk in the rain. Sophie is desperate to use her new umbrella with its kitten handle, so what the heck, out with the wellies. Teenagers have a habit of waking up when they smell food. Like dogs really. The little mincemeat hot cakes you make (like drop scones) will use up the leftover mincemeat nicely and a couple of clementines knocking around in the fruit bowl. Shopping aversion has set in. There is a deep split in a nation of those living to shop and those shopping to live if pictures on the news are to be believed.
I have put away my Turkey now. Made the stock for soup, made the traditional Turkey curry, and cold meats and pickles for a Boxing Day cooks rebellion; 'the day those working 'below stairs' would open their presents and count the tips box' (...still waiting for that tips box...) You enjoy the annual ritual of stripping the Turkey from the joint, and, i have to admit there is something very therapeutic about slipping the flesh from the bones and frugally easing off each minute morsel to add to the pile on the table. Your chosen recipe for leftovers this year is a Christmas bubble and squeak (page 512) made with red cabbage - leftovers if possible - an apple, and goose or turkey trimmings. This will be tasty-enough for me to be able to cope with the red cabbage. And fried again. This is not the time for New Year penance and self-flagellation.
Best wishes for a really good year next year. Think we probably both deserve it.
Martha
I hope you had a good Christmas. Did you? I'm not sure whether i did or not. The problem is that thing called EXPECTATIONS. We all have them - huge inflated things, impossibly sentimental and romantic things.
Sitting in my Christmas Wasteland amid the half-eaten pudding, the Turkey leftovers and the wreckage of fading decorations, bits of children's toys and mess, i begin to amass a list of all the obstacles to a decent family Christmas this year:
1. Illness.
My family and i, and half the country it seems, spent most of the run-up to the main event either being sick or groaning over a heavy cold and not being able to do anything in the way of Christmas preparations, particularly food ones. The normally heaving freezer and tins of smug mince pies gave way to hurried boxes of something not quite as worthy - however expensively packaged - and the annual battle in the supermarket requiring medicinal compensation of the alcoholic variety.
2. Weather
Whether it was debilitating floods altering the travel plans of loved ones, emptying flood-alert homes just at Christmastime, or simply rain, rain and more bloody rain, dark days and damp spirits; it came. Christmas cards tell us that the natural weather for this time of year is bright skies, snow-laden landscapes and ethereal beauty - not many cards depicting cars being washed away under bridges it seems. Yet. I feel a new generation of Christmas cards being invented as we speak: sarcastic realism...remember the year the dog took the turkey off the side while you were busy laying the table and it had to be rescued, reformed and one leg removed in the interests of hygiene?...etc
3. Difficult Teenagers.
You may not have had the pleasure of this one, but i can assure you that this sub-species has the power to crack Christmas wide open with its minimal words and grunts. The plea (almost hysterical ) to get the family to the Christmas table at just the right moment, being met with a 'Just going for a shower now' boils the blood instantly - at least mine. Don't think Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey have this trouble with their brood; it's all those sharpened knives, you know....dinner will be served now, won't it?
On the plus side, apparently the presents were acceptable, the stockings up to scratch and the dinner did at least all make it on the same day...and i jest not. But i'm still left sitting in a puddle of destruction with an appetite for nothing it seems.
I turn to your diary to see what you're up to.
December 27th: 'With snow still on the ground and mercifully little to do, three of us sit at the kitchen hob making warm hotcakes of sweet mincemeat and brandy butter.' Here maybe lies my answer. Instead of me sweating over things i don't wish to cook and don't wish to eat, a communal activity of conveyor belt eating. Like pancake day marathons, there is much to be said for the clamour for the next one fresh from the pan. Perhaps with the added attraction of an appetite formulated on a walk in the rain. Sophie is desperate to use her new umbrella with its kitten handle, so what the heck, out with the wellies. Teenagers have a habit of waking up when they smell food. Like dogs really. The little mincemeat hot cakes you make (like drop scones) will use up the leftover mincemeat nicely and a couple of clementines knocking around in the fruit bowl. Shopping aversion has set in. There is a deep split in a nation of those living to shop and those shopping to live if pictures on the news are to be believed.
I have put away my Turkey now. Made the stock for soup, made the traditional Turkey curry, and cold meats and pickles for a Boxing Day cooks rebellion; 'the day those working 'below stairs' would open their presents and count the tips box' (...still waiting for that tips box...) You enjoy the annual ritual of stripping the Turkey from the joint, and, i have to admit there is something very therapeutic about slipping the flesh from the bones and frugally easing off each minute morsel to add to the pile on the table. Your chosen recipe for leftovers this year is a Christmas bubble and squeak (page 512) made with red cabbage - leftovers if possible - an apple, and goose or turkey trimmings. This will be tasty-enough for me to be able to cope with the red cabbage. And fried again. This is not the time for New Year penance and self-flagellation.
Best wishes for a really good year next year. Think we probably both deserve it.
Martha
Friday, 14 December 2012
December 14th - Two dead birds in the shed
Dear Nigel,
There are two dead birds in my shed. No, it's not the latest crime fiction on tele, these two were live and kicking until fairly recently and running around in their fine rust feathers.
I came home from the school run to find them tied by the necks to my garden gate. If this were a place where they celebrated witchcraft and the local vicar was seen helping the villagers create a wicker man with a slightly unhinged manic look on her face, my heart might be starting to race a little. As it was, the gamekeeper next door came round again to give me a lesson in quick pheasant plucking - don't bother, just take off the skin and cut out the crown. Having only ever been faced with a nicely plucked, dressed and sealed-in-cellophane bird from the farmers market i am feeling a bit dubious about my Christmas casserole.
I decide to shelve the problem temporarily and hang them in the shed until I'm feeling a little braver - after all, aren't they supposed to be hung for a good while? Eventually, i think, i will set to for the massacre with newspaper on a clean kitchen floor and a pair of scissors to get inside the skin. (Not many recipe books, i suppose, start their recipe with '...now first clean your kitchen floor', but the thought of rivers of blood streaming off my worktops rather puts me off.)
I turn to see what you have been up to lately and find that you have been considering the prune (page 487), a wonderful edition to so many recipes at this time of year. You like to use those half-dried prunes that require no soaking, adding them to casseroles and other slow-cooked dishes. I notice that you recommend them for Beef, pork, rabbit and game, so this might be a possibility for my brace of pheasants when i get round to it. They add a deep richness to the sauce, and, as you say 'any slow-cooked dish where prunes have been added will be better...for a night in the fridge.' You use them in a casserole of oxtail and prunes. I'm not a great fan of oxtail, and nor, by your admission are most of your friends. Your recipe is for two people as you 'can't imagine ever getting four oxtail-loving people around the table at the same time.' Nor me.
Your Mincemeat cheesecake (page 486) is much more to my liking, and it gives that welcome lift (which cheesecakes so often need) from their overbearing richness. I like your use of shortbread biscuits for the base and the addition of soured cream to the cream cheese mixture to help temper the sweetness. All-in-all, i think this could be the recipe i have been looking for - something a bit different yet festive and popular with all ages. Thank you for that.
We are definitely in agreement when it comes to canapes, however. I refuse to make them as they seem so pointless and time-consuming: if ever there was a time to nip into M&S now is definitely your moment. You declare that 'if there is a part of the festivities that depresses me, it is the thought of making bits to go with drinks.'
Let's the two of us declare war on canapes with a bowl of olives and a rich brown casserole.
With Best wishes and Seasons greetings,
Martha
There are two dead birds in my shed. No, it's not the latest crime fiction on tele, these two were live and kicking until fairly recently and running around in their fine rust feathers.
I came home from the school run to find them tied by the necks to my garden gate. If this were a place where they celebrated witchcraft and the local vicar was seen helping the villagers create a wicker man with a slightly unhinged manic look on her face, my heart might be starting to race a little. As it was, the gamekeeper next door came round again to give me a lesson in quick pheasant plucking - don't bother, just take off the skin and cut out the crown. Having only ever been faced with a nicely plucked, dressed and sealed-in-cellophane bird from the farmers market i am feeling a bit dubious about my Christmas casserole.
I decide to shelve the problem temporarily and hang them in the shed until I'm feeling a little braver - after all, aren't they supposed to be hung for a good while? Eventually, i think, i will set to for the massacre with newspaper on a clean kitchen floor and a pair of scissors to get inside the skin. (Not many recipe books, i suppose, start their recipe with '...now first clean your kitchen floor', but the thought of rivers of blood streaming off my worktops rather puts me off.)
I turn to see what you have been up to lately and find that you have been considering the prune (page 487), a wonderful edition to so many recipes at this time of year. You like to use those half-dried prunes that require no soaking, adding them to casseroles and other slow-cooked dishes. I notice that you recommend them for Beef, pork, rabbit and game, so this might be a possibility for my brace of pheasants when i get round to it. They add a deep richness to the sauce, and, as you say 'any slow-cooked dish where prunes have been added will be better...for a night in the fridge.' You use them in a casserole of oxtail and prunes. I'm not a great fan of oxtail, and nor, by your admission are most of your friends. Your recipe is for two people as you 'can't imagine ever getting four oxtail-loving people around the table at the same time.' Nor me.
Your Mincemeat cheesecake (page 486) is much more to my liking, and it gives that welcome lift (which cheesecakes so often need) from their overbearing richness. I like your use of shortbread biscuits for the base and the addition of soured cream to the cream cheese mixture to help temper the sweetness. All-in-all, i think this could be the recipe i have been looking for - something a bit different yet festive and popular with all ages. Thank you for that.
We are definitely in agreement when it comes to canapes, however. I refuse to make them as they seem so pointless and time-consuming: if ever there was a time to nip into M&S now is definitely your moment. You declare that 'if there is a part of the festivities that depresses me, it is the thought of making bits to go with drinks.'
Let's the two of us declare war on canapes with a bowl of olives and a rich brown casserole.
With Best wishes and Seasons greetings,
Martha
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
December 4th - Best laid plans....
Dear Nigel,
Are you a list person? I am a list person. There's the Christmas card list (-I've written three), the Christmas present list (easier since the advent of one-click-and-it's-yours), and, of course, the Christmas food list. The latter started off as a pleasant evening perusing all my favourite recipe books and deciding what people wanted to eat this Christmas. There were requested favourites such as Millionaire's shortbread for Tom, Smoked Salmon soup for James, Traditionals such as my Granny Burn's Christmas cake (for which no Christmas could possibly happen without), and other inspiring or useful recipes. So, QED; and i went to bed feeling I'd sorted - and actually already done - Christmas.
Now, here we are first-footing into December and the items cooked and stored are lagging behind the advancing days on the calendar. I count them up and realise that unless i make one extra dish every day of the week from now until Christmas then Christmas is not going to happen. Like some ridiculous horse race we put ourselves through it every year.
Alison Pearson may have smashed up some bought mince pies to make them look homemade but this is nothing compared to the expectations of family members that this year must be at least as good, if not better, than last year. I may feel like i want to retire to bed with a bottle of sloe gin and a half-read book but other members of the family would soon put a stop to that. Christmas may be for everybody but you'd better make sure you want what everyone else wants. My second son, Christopher, declared last year 'the best Christmas ever' - so however am i going to top that?
I return to THE LIST and decide to make mince pies with the little ones. This is one of those areas where imperfection is almost a requirement. I manage to knock out a few dozen mince pies on one end of the table whilst Sophie is busy hammering pastry into submission at the other. Once levered off the table into tins they are being over-generously filled ( supermarkets' ideas of 'generous fillings' and my kids' seem to differ somewhat), and stamped with carpet-sized stars.
I stop for a moment and catch a look of deep concentration as Molly carefully paints each star with a whitewash of floury milk. And it is at this point that all the lists and panic and pressure of Christmas goes completely out the window. This is what it's all about, and if there are huge gaps in the Christmas menu and we are resorting to opening a packet of cheese straws on Boxing day then nobody will really care.
I turn to your diary for December 1st and see that you, too, feel the change in the air. 'Unlike so many other meals, Christmas cannot be left to chance. Planning, rarely part of my kitchen life, is essential.' The reason you give is that 'you tend to remember every Christmas'....and that 'every dish that fails or disappoints will be mentioned at every Christmas from now till kingdom come.' I think you are perfectly right here. I still recall very well the turkey from a friend that was still being plucked at nine o'clock Christmas eve and that was so huge that we had to fairly ram it in the Aga to make it fit.
You serve up a warming dish of mashed cumin and paprika-spiced parsnip croquettes in a tomato sauce enlivened with sherry vinegar (page 473) to chase out the cold on a bone-chilling evening. I hadn't noticed the cumin in here before but am keen to give it a go now. I seem to have made several cumin-based recipes lately in a bid to ward away the fog of colds that seem to pass endlessly around at this time of year. Some say 15 raw garlic cloves works a treat, and i expect it does if you want to be billy-no-mates.
Bored with the usual Christmas cake you concoct a version of the french Buche de Noel that is more to your liking. There is something distinctly naff about the arrangement of two swiss rolls pretending to be a log - as made by every girl guide doing their cookery badge in the 70's. Your version contains a homemade praline - a festive 'crown of glistening, caramel-coated hazelnuts' and a butter cream made with Nutella (pg 476). I will, of course, be making the TRADITIONAL version. And, as is traditional, it will probably still be sitting there half - eaten until well into January. Perhaps if there were not small children around who consider it their right to decorate it, i could possibly get away with it. Maybe in a few years time...It's not as if it's most people's first choice from the table anyway, but then it does have its uses when someone drops by unexpectedly.
Best wishes for a stress-free run up to Christmas,
Martha
Are you a list person? I am a list person. There's the Christmas card list (-I've written three), the Christmas present list (easier since the advent of one-click-and-it's-yours), and, of course, the Christmas food list. The latter started off as a pleasant evening perusing all my favourite recipe books and deciding what people wanted to eat this Christmas. There were requested favourites such as Millionaire's shortbread for Tom, Smoked Salmon soup for James, Traditionals such as my Granny Burn's Christmas cake (for which no Christmas could possibly happen without), and other inspiring or useful recipes. So, QED; and i went to bed feeling I'd sorted - and actually already done - Christmas.
Now, here we are first-footing into December and the items cooked and stored are lagging behind the advancing days on the calendar. I count them up and realise that unless i make one extra dish every day of the week from now until Christmas then Christmas is not going to happen. Like some ridiculous horse race we put ourselves through it every year.
Alison Pearson may have smashed up some bought mince pies to make them look homemade but this is nothing compared to the expectations of family members that this year must be at least as good, if not better, than last year. I may feel like i want to retire to bed with a bottle of sloe gin and a half-read book but other members of the family would soon put a stop to that. Christmas may be for everybody but you'd better make sure you want what everyone else wants. My second son, Christopher, declared last year 'the best Christmas ever' - so however am i going to top that?
I return to THE LIST and decide to make mince pies with the little ones. This is one of those areas where imperfection is almost a requirement. I manage to knock out a few dozen mince pies on one end of the table whilst Sophie is busy hammering pastry into submission at the other. Once levered off the table into tins they are being over-generously filled ( supermarkets' ideas of 'generous fillings' and my kids' seem to differ somewhat), and stamped with carpet-sized stars.
I stop for a moment and catch a look of deep concentration as Molly carefully paints each star with a whitewash of floury milk. And it is at this point that all the lists and panic and pressure of Christmas goes completely out the window. This is what it's all about, and if there are huge gaps in the Christmas menu and we are resorting to opening a packet of cheese straws on Boxing day then nobody will really care.
I turn to your diary for December 1st and see that you, too, feel the change in the air. 'Unlike so many other meals, Christmas cannot be left to chance. Planning, rarely part of my kitchen life, is essential.' The reason you give is that 'you tend to remember every Christmas'....and that 'every dish that fails or disappoints will be mentioned at every Christmas from now till kingdom come.' I think you are perfectly right here. I still recall very well the turkey from a friend that was still being plucked at nine o'clock Christmas eve and that was so huge that we had to fairly ram it in the Aga to make it fit.
You serve up a warming dish of mashed cumin and paprika-spiced parsnip croquettes in a tomato sauce enlivened with sherry vinegar (page 473) to chase out the cold on a bone-chilling evening. I hadn't noticed the cumin in here before but am keen to give it a go now. I seem to have made several cumin-based recipes lately in a bid to ward away the fog of colds that seem to pass endlessly around at this time of year. Some say 15 raw garlic cloves works a treat, and i expect it does if you want to be billy-no-mates.
Bored with the usual Christmas cake you concoct a version of the french Buche de Noel that is more to your liking. There is something distinctly naff about the arrangement of two swiss rolls pretending to be a log - as made by every girl guide doing their cookery badge in the 70's. Your version contains a homemade praline - a festive 'crown of glistening, caramel-coated hazelnuts' and a butter cream made with Nutella (pg 476). I will, of course, be making the TRADITIONAL version. And, as is traditional, it will probably still be sitting there half - eaten until well into January. Perhaps if there were not small children around who consider it their right to decorate it, i could possibly get away with it. Maybe in a few years time...It's not as if it's most people's first choice from the table anyway, but then it does have its uses when someone drops by unexpectedly.
Best wishes for a stress-free run up to Christmas,
Martha
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