THOUGHTS ON FESTIVITIES-1

The Gobbler Gobbled

By HUGH JOHNSON CHAUCER'S Reeve is the chap I admire. It snewed in his hous of meat and drink.

I've heard so many people say this year that they're not going to bother with a turkey, and how ghastly and commercialised it's all getting, that I feel a bit of the old Reeve's spirit is needed. You can't fight Christmas. You can do it at half-cock with an eighteen-inch tinsel tree and a roast chicken. Or you can fairly go for it. This is my plan.

To n'(y mind, the right size of tree is the one you have to shorten to get it to stand upright in the room. You will still be finding the pine- needles behind the cushions next August; but what a wonderful time they'll remind you of..

last year I got a recipe for a hot rum punch from Berry Bros. and R vdd. whose shop in Sr. James's is the place to go to imbibe the Spirit of Christmas Past., This, and a ham, which I baked over a bath of cider, and dropped, cider and all, over my feet an hour before opening time, were the foundations of a party on Christ- mas Eve.

My. wife (now. Then we had only just got engaged) had done mince pies, and between us we had wrapped up some kind of present for each of-the two dozen guests in absurd confec- tions of red-and-silver wrappings. The tree was

eleven feet high. It released a hundredweight of needles and parcels whenever anyone went near it. There was a log fire, and red candles stuck into every candlestick we could lay our hands on. The tree had seventy-two little Japanese lights, which I discovered at the last moment were on a white flex, making the whole thing look like a cat's cradle. So I had to get some green paint and paint it.

The punch was the best thing. You had to start it yesterday. It was an old-fashioned, no-short- cuts recipe, but we sang carols for the hour and a half it took to get the zest off half a dozen lemons and half a dozen tangerines (do the tangerines first; the lemons arc child's play com- pared with them) and get them macerating in a bowl of rum. The zests have to macerate for twenty-four hours before you make the brew. Just before the party, you run the rum off the sodden peel and mix it with the strained juice of the lemons, six oranges and a pint of water. You add half a pound of candy sugar. Then you make a pint and a half of very strong, very fresh tea by throwing three or fonr handfuls of Earl Grey into a saucepan of boiling water and straining it off straight away. You heat up all these ingredients together in a saucepan, and add two bottles of rum. When it is all hot again, you add a pint of creamy milk, also hot, but not boiling, and stir it up. For a close cousin to a nice cup of tea, it is a remarkably good drink. We had champagne for people who don't like tea.

The ham is simpler. It goes in the oven on the grid from the grill in a baking-dish full of cider. Over the top you put a tent of greaseproof paper. Reckon twenty minutes of moderately hot oven per pound. With half an hour to go you take it out (this is where I dropped it. The cider, of course, tends to wash around. I had forgotten this) and peel off the skin. It is dangerously hot, but bare hands seem to be the only way.

The next thing is to score it criss-cross in diamonds with a knife. The layer of fat sur- rounding it cuts easily and opens out in a most satisfying way as you make your marks. Then you cover it in brown sugar mixed with a little mustard powder•. Again, bare hands are the only way. Finally, to be really bossy, you stick a clove in the centre of each diamond. This looks like child's play, but in fact a clove has two sharp ends. A thimble would have been a help.

This has taken about twenty-five minutes. The ham is still hot, though, and you put it back in a hot oven for half an hour, without the tent, for the sugar to form a crust. Towards the end you baste it a bit.

Whether this ham is hot or cold or warm when you eat it makes no difference. It appears at the party with a knife at its side and a few slices already cut to show people the trend. Otherwise it will get too mangled to come on again.

As a matter of fact, our ham last year was much too salt, owing to a misunderstanding with the grocer, so we had plenty left for the weeks ahead. According to the plan, though, its only had to do for lunch, on Christmas Day. This meal consists of a bottle of sherry, a tin of pheasant soup and the ham. Ham and sherry were sung by Rupert Brooke, but should not be neglected with the poet's works. They are a very good, and exquisitely Christmassy, combina- tion.

Christmas dinner is so hemmed about with tradition that there is no element of choice left. The. Good Housekeeping Encyclopedia of Cookery, I notice, lays down the housewife's Christmas Day programme hour by hour from reveille on. Even the Bristol Recipe Dialling Ser-

vice, Fm pretty sure (dial Bristol 8071 for a novel recipe. I got apple and bacon roll. It was horrible) knuckles under and intones a stuffing on Christmas Day.

But on Boxing Day there are the pickings. A cold turkey is the most open invitation to gluttony I can imagine. There are many dismal ways you can heat it up again, which all add up to the misdemeanour of the late (I take it she is late) Mrs. King. But the thing is to eat it cold, in long morsels, and drink the Rhine wine —why not call it Rhenish?--that you neglected in favour of burgundy the night before.

If you did deviate on Christmas Day, and have a pheasant or a goose, you can still have cold turkey. You can buy it smoked, which is, if anything, better still.

To my mind, fried Christmas pudding on Box- ing Day is better than the steaming pud itself of the day before. I don't know whether it is commonly done. It is utterly simple. You just cut the remaining pudding into thinnish slices and fry them in butter until they are crisp on the outside and hot right through.