After all the old pipe I trotted out last week in praise of
the turkey, I should probably come clean. Call me a hypocritical fraud if you
like, but on Christmas Day I’ll be on beef. I knew that I would be weeks ago
when I ordered it, I just didn’t want to share it with you. My massive hulk of
a forerib has been hanging for several weeks now. Its flavour gaining depth as
putrification is carefully controlled by John the butcher. I gave it a sniff
the other day and no longer does it smell like dead cow, but sweet, stiltony,
with musky inside-of-a-hymnbook notes.
If I’m careful not to get too smashed on bucks fizz and
bloody Marys come Christmas morning I am confident that this bit of moo-moo
will make for the best non-turkey dinner ever.
On a recent foray around my local supermarket (I’d been sent
for clingfilm but got distracted), I noticed how one could actually get away
with doing nothing on the big day. Ready-cooked stuffing, pigs in blankets,
trimmed sprouts, pre-roasted spuds, gravy. Where’s the fun in that? That’s food
for people who cook through a sense of obligation, rather than joy. If that’s
you I’d argue that if your only decent dish is a killer fry-up, then make that
instead, so much more giving. Christmas wouldn’t be the same for me without somebody
throwing a wobbly in the kitchen and sobbing drunkenly into the bread sauce (a
condiment by the way, that is the single greatest gift of the festive period).
There was a period in the early 2000s when I hated Christmas
and selfishly swerved it regardless of how my family would regard my absence
from the Yuletide table. I missed being there, especially on Christmas Eve.
I adore the night before Christmas. Baked ham with Mum’s
knockout Cumberland sauce, carols from King’s on the wireless, midnight mass,
the seasonal angst of not being able to find the end of the sellotape. Love it.
The day after too, with leftovers, pickled onions (there must be pickled onions
on Boxing Day), a slice of Christmas pud fried in butter for breakfast. The day
in the middle is just a formality.
So much of my Christmas is centred on abundant, expensive
food that we could easily manage without, and family that we could not. This
makes me outrageously fortunate. While I’m tucking in with my happy and healthy
family, there will be so many out there with nothing and no-one, just wishing
that Christmas would go away. I spare these people a thought, but I do nothing
to make things better for them. Call me a hypocritical fraud if you like,
again.
Whatever you eat over Christmas, wherever you eat it, and
whoever (if anyone) you share it with, I wish you a harmonious and healthy one.
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