Imperative cooking: Planning for 'the day'
'I THINK we all eat too much at Christ- mas, don't you?' No, certainly not; the reverse. We, or rather they, don't eat enough. Consider their Christmas day. How many meals do they have, these people who, with pride or shame, eagerness or trepidation, proclaim their eating to be so Gargantuan? I will tell you. They have one. Just one.
This is how the supposedly endless feast- ing actually works out. They get up too late for breakfast. Staying up too late at some silly party, sheer disorganisation or merely the pathetic joy of a lie-in' means that the most wonderful opportunity for a huge, delicious breakfast is thrown away. Before lunch, they drink too much. This might be as well, given the sort of food they eat. But it also seems to take them three hours to drink too much and they have lunch in the middle of the afternoon. I have heard of families which start lunch as late as 3 or even 4 o'clock. This, of course, is tea-time, so they can't have tea. They call lunch 'din- ner'. And they can do this without confu- sion because they do not, in fact, have dinner.
Why not? Partly because, at the very time everyone should be looking forward to the best meal of the day, they are jaded, bloated or still drunk. Also because the effort of serving one turkey, three sauces and 14 veg to 12 people who have been drinking, often quite unpleasant things, for three hours has exhausted the lady of the house who, for the rest of the year, is used to sloughing off her duties to Marks & Spencer, the deepfreeze and a microwave.
Around 9, everyone has 'something sim- ple', which means it is cold, disorganised, eaten off laps and with bits of paper, and can in no way be called a meal. And, by the way, referring to it as 'tapas' does not make it any better.
So, there we are. Months of planning, extravagant talk about 'the day', nudging about the naughtiness of the indulgence: and all for one, late and horrid meal.
There is another way. Simply organise the day so that four meals can be fitted in (more for young people).
Breakfast is either after early morning Mass or even after Midnight Mass and before you go to bed (non-Christians can replace Mass with whatever they do: trying on new pullovers, playing video-games or reading Voltaire). Anyway, it's home-made sausages, bubble and squeak, lots of fried eggs, bacon and fried bread, all in duck fat. Nothing wrong with a few kippers or smoked haddock either.
11.30-12.30: Champagne. 12.30: Lunch. I think this year it will be assorted cured fish, anchovies I salted in October and kept in oil and chillis, herrings Mrs A did likewise, but in vinegar and mustard, cuttlefish in oil and garlic, dried tuna roe, raw salmon in lemon juice. Or, if I have had the courage to brave the hordes at Billingsgate, dozens of oysters and raw mussels.
Then a goose. I bought a few month-olds back in early summer and the kind old boy who keeps a small farm nearby has been bringing them up — a sort of fostering arrangement. As happens in progressive social work departments, I have kept parental contact with them, inspecting them regularly, and we have sorted out a couple to kill well before Christmas and hang a while. With the goose, just potato and onion stuffing. Then a green salad, cheese (some goat I bought back from Ardeche which has spent two months in olive oil) and pudding. Lunch ends about 2 p.m.
So, by 4 o'clock, we are ready for home- made crumpets and watercress, then cake. I used to have watercress sandwiches but today's watercress is nearly as weak as today's government. First, I resorted to throwing away the top halves of two sand- wiches and combining the rest to form one with double the middle. But now I have abandoned the bread altogether and, inevitably the butter: it won't stick to the watercress.
Dinner is at 9. This means we have not eaten anything for five hours and nothing substantial for seven. So a chap wants a spot of meat. It's going to be assorted sala- mi, hams and pâtés with butter and radish- es, then some Padron peppers fried in oil with lots of salt, then neck and leg of beef stewed in a bottle of old Argie, the wine reduced to a few tablespoonfuls and black olives added. Stilton and celery. Siena cake and damsons from the garden, dried and re-swollen with marc. To bed by 11, of course. Because tomorrow there are kid- neys for breakfast, and potatoes fried in the goose fat.
Digby Anderson
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