our deli­cious approach to the holidays

Tis the sea­son when every evening, the three of us con­vene to ask, “What do you have on for tomor­row?”  There has been plenty to do, start­ing with a whole series of musi­cal events at Avery’s school.

For these, I arm myself with a hand­ful of tis­sues, since noth­ing brings wit­less tears to my eyes quite like the sound of girls’ voices, singing in heav­enly imper­fec­tion.  There was the “Singing Tea,” a phrase that makes my Amer­i­can rela­tions laugh.  What on earth?  How does a tea sing?  British peo­ple will under­stand that it means a con­cert of the girls who take singing lessons at school, pre­ceded by a tea.  That is, a period of stand­ing around clutch­ing cups of tea and watch­ing the girls them­selves wolf down untold pieces of cake, hav­ing skipped lunch in order to rehearse.

Sand­wiched as she was between Hay­den and Bach, Mozart and Brahms, Avery’s piece was more funny than even it nor­mally is.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” of course, by the incom­pa­ra­ble Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cian and song­writer Tom Lehrer.  “My heart will be quick­enin’, with each drop of strych­nine…”  Per­fect for our intensely satir­i­cal daughter.

Then we were onto the Junior Choir singing “Cry Me a River” at the Soiree Musi­cale.  They were heav­enly.  I needed my tissues.

And then there was the week-long adven­ture of the much-anticipated school musi­cal, “Sweet Charity.”

The musi­cal was sub­lime: the dancers pro­fes­sion­ally in time with one another, the lead charm­ing, and the ensem­ble full of crazy energy.  Granted, the plot which cen­ters on “dance hall host­ess” bemoan­ing the loss of their inno­cence while they solicit clients and drink and smoke, is not one I would nat­u­rally have cho­sen for a girls’ school whose cast runs the gamut from 12–18.  But as a friend of mind pointed out, maybe it was just this sort of dar­ing sub­ject mat­ter that grabbed the inter­est of the older girls.  At one point Avery was singing and danc­ing right in front, prac­ti­cally in the laps of the audi­ence, so we fatu­ously chose those seats every evening.  It was such fun.

Finally there was the Christ­mas Carol Ser­vice in the Hall, a room of such ele­gant pro­por­tions that I always feel I’m in a Harry Pot­ter movie.

My mother asked if the girls sang tra­di­tional car­ols, and I replied, “Yes, so tra­di­tional that they sing them in LATIN.”  Sim­ply heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful, all of them in their black con­cert clothes, shin­ing faces illu­mi­nated by hand-held lights, every one of them gor­geous in her own way.  On the brink of everything.

On top of all these events, we’ve been attend­ing far more than our share of school Christ­mas Fairs, get­ting ideas for our own Fair in a year’s time, for which John is totally respon­si­ble!  I think it is won­der­ful that a girls’ school is happy to have a father in charge.  A good exam­ple to the girls for what a hus­band and dad can be.  And nat­u­rally, we’ve been dec­o­rat­ing our own house, too.

There is of course the tree itself.

It is lovely, but I am bemoan­ing a bit the new trend in trees: some­one has bred one that doesn’t drop its nee­dles but also doesn’t smell like a Christ­mas tree.  This is our fate, this sea­son.  I have hopes for a smelly tree in Con­necti­cut.  The beau­ties of shop­ping for Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in Eng­land far out­weigh a non-fragrant tree, though.  With our lovely friends Vin­cent and Peter we went strolling (or rather push­ing our way through chok­ing crowds) down Colum­bia Road in the East End.  What an expe­ri­ence!  We looked up at one point and saw this fellow.

Avery is offi­cially in love with the East End: Shored­itch, Hack­ney and Beth­nal Green, not the least for the mes­sages the res­i­dents leave for their read­ing public.

I espe­cially like this last one for the very expres­sive size of the font.  It’s as though the writer begins by feel­ing ter­ri­bly emphatic and annoyed with his neigh­bors, then begins to lose steam, and finally at the end seems to regret being so angry.

We repaired to Vin­cent and Peter’s cozy home where they plied us with var­i­ous tarts and quiches, among them this beauty made with red onions, black olives and sar­dines (photo cour­tesy of Avery).

And then we came home with five gor­geous (if lethally prickly) wreaths made of real holly, as only the Eng­lish can do.  They adorn the back win­dows of the kitchen.

Avery has, of course, set up her annual ice-skating pond with its lead skaters and sled­ders, giv­ing strict instruc­tions to any­one who vis­its to wash hands after touch­ing!  This year saw the addi­tion of some amaz­ing “Insta-Snow”, which works by sprin­kling water on a very tiny amount of pow­der, caus­ing it to fluff up many times its orig­i­nal size!

To keep up our strength dur­ing all these fes­tiv­i­ties, on the advice of my cook­ing friend Caz, I made these:

Sophie Grigson’s Christ­mas Sprouts

(serves 6–8 as a side dish)

675 g brus­sels sprouts

100 g smoked duck breast or bacon, cut into strip

50 g toasted chopped hazelnuts

15 g butter

1 tbsp sun­flower oil

300 ml dou­ble cream

2 tsp turmeric

dash of lemon juice

4 tbsp breadcrumbs

3 tbsp finely grated parmesan

3–4 tbsp chopped parsley

Trim the sprouts of their outer, tough leaves.  Place the sprouts into a saucepan of sim­mer­ing salted water and cook for 4–5 min­utes, until almost, but not quite, cooked. Drain thor­oughly, allow to cool slightly, then cut in half.

Place the but­ter and oil into a wide fry­ing pan over a medium heat. Add the bacon lar­dons and almonds and sauté for 3–4 min­utes, until lightly browned.

Add the sprouts and sauté for a fur­ther 2–3 min­utes, stir­ring constantly.

Add the cream and bring the mix­ture to the boil. Boil for 2–4 min­utes, until the cream has reduced to a rich sauce. Sea­son to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and spoon into an oven­proof gratin dish.

Mix the bread­crumbs and parme­san cheese together in a bowl, then sprin­kle evenly over the top of the sprout mixture.

Place into the oven and bake for 18–20 min­utes, until the top is golden.

I am not a mas­sive fan of sprouts but even I really liked these.  Go easy on the bread­crumbs as you want the end result to be quite creamy.

One of John’s and my hol­i­day out­ings was a nearly com­plete bust, so let me pass on my intel­li­gence.  “Taste of Christ­mas” sounded so won­der­ful!  We have always loved “Taste of Lon­don,” a food fair at which lots of top restau­rants turn up to serve tiny por­tions of their sig­na­ture dishes.  Lovely chance to wan­der through Regent’s Park — even in the rain, as it was in June! — and eat sump­tu­ously, fac­ing far too many choices, and walk­ing away feel­ing stuffed and gluttonous.

I didn’t read the small print on “Taste of Christ­mas,” which turned out to be at the ExCel con­fer­ence cen­ter — depress­ing! — over an hour’s drive to the Dock­lands, in short, the area far, FAR East where the Olympics are going to take place!  You can imag­ine how far one must go to find land in Lon­don on which to build giant sta­di­ums.  That’s how far we drove.  And upon arrival, we dis­cov­ered only SIX restau­rants were tak­ing part and the rest was a mish­mash of unat­trac­tive Christ­mas orna­ments and mostly-useless kitchen imple­ments.  Once there, how­ever, we tried to have fun, and sam­pled all the food there was, plus we found a very excit­ing sil­i­con mat that one can place directly on the burner of an Aga stove and fry things!  Like these pep­pers, stuffed with goat’s cheese.

The only other last­ing good thing from the dis­mal fair in the mid­dle of nowhere was this salmon dish from Rhodes W1, which I’ve repli­cated as best as my taste buds can accomplish.

Olive-oil-Poached and Smoked Salmon Ter­rine with Sweet Lemon Dress­ing and Microherbs

(serves 6 as a starter)

2 cups olive oil

300 g/10.5 ounces fresh salmon fillet

200g/7 ounces cream cheese

200g/7 ounces creme fraiche

1 tsp capers

hand­ful baby cress

hand­ful baby shiso (Japan­ese coriander)

hand­ful chives

hand­ful fresh tar­ragon leaves

juice of 1/2 lemon

pinch salt

300g/10.5 ounces smoked salmon

dress­ing:

1/4 extra-virgin olive oil

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp clear honey

fresh ground black pepper

Bring the cups of olive oil to what can only be called a “shim­mer”.  It’s short of the tem­per­a­ture for fry­ing, but a piece of bread­crumb will move about if you drop it in.  Care­fully lower in the salmon fil­lets and cook at this tem­per­a­ture for three min­utes, then care­fully turn the fil­lets over and cook for another 3–4 min­utes until JUST cooked through.  Remove and drain on paper towels.

In a food proces­sor, com­bine the poached salmon, the cream cheese, creme fraiche, capers, HALF the quan­tity of all the herbs (reserve the other half for gar­nish­ing), the lemon juice and sea­son­ings.  Pulse until well com­bined but not a total mush.  Taste for sea­son­ings and add salt if needed.

Com­bine dress­ing ingre­di­ents and set aside.

At this point, you may decide if you’d like to serve this dish as a sit-down starter or as a fin­ger food.  If as a starter, choose a plat­ter on which you’d like to serve the ter­rine and place a piece of plas­tic wrap twice as big as the plat­ter in the cen­ter of it.  In as close as you can come to a rec­tan­gle that’s about half the size of a piece of typ­ing paper, place a layer of smoked salmon slices on the plas­tic.  Spread a layer of the poached salmon mix­ture on top.  Cover with another layer of smoked salmon, another layer of mousse, and fin­ish with a top layer of smoked salmon.  Cover with the extra plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate for at least four hours, or overnight. Then unwrap the ter­rine and lay it on a cut­ting board.  Care­fully, with a ser­rated knife, saw the ter­rine into per­fect strips about an inch wide.  This recipe should yield 8 strips.  Arrange on the serv­ing plat­ter.  Sprin­kle the reserved herbs over and driz­zle with dressing.

If on the other hand you’d like to serve the dish as a fin­ger food, sim­ply spoon a bit of the mousse on a baguette slice, top with a bit of smoked salmon and a sprin­kle of herbs, and driz­zle dress­ing over each portion.

Our won­der­ful neigh­bors Suzanne and John came to share this with us, to inves­ti­gate all the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, and most sur­pris­ingly, to offer to give our tree a sec­ond home when we leave next week!  How won­der­ful to recy­cle our own tree, and not into pulp, but into a sec­ond family’s celebration.

Finally, as a glo­ri­ous, hard-won Christ­mas gift to myself, today I man­aged to tri­umph over a so-far impos­si­ble bell-ringing chal­lenge.  You’ve heard me rant on about “Plain Hunt on Five” which sim­ply means a method where all the bells change their order in a pre-ordained pat­tern.  Until now I absolutely could not see the pat­tern!  No mat­ter how many dif­fer­ent ways were offered to explain it, I could not see it.

Until this morn­ing!  I have had a week’s enforced absence from the Tower after pulling a mus­cle in my shoul­der, and the chal­lenges of ring­ing had assumed epic pro­por­tions, as any chal­lenge does when one is not allowed to address it!  But today all the pieces fell into place.  My teacher handed me the rope to the heav­i­est bell, the Tenor, and said, “Right, cover on Plain Hunt.  Backstroke/handstroke over the five, then the three, then the one, then the two, then the four, then all over again till we say stop.”

And it clicked!  We were ring­ing for a spe­cial ser­vice involv­ing the parish chil­dren, called “Christ­in­gle” ser­vice where the chil­dren all carry lighted can­dles tucked into oranges and walk up the cen­tral aisle.  So we had an audi­ence of par­ents, kneel­ing with their chil­dren, point­ing to the ropes and to the com­puter mon­i­tor mounted on the wall, show­ing the bells in the bel­fry, swing­ing to and fro.  “That’s what’s mak­ing the sounds!” par­ents explained.  And I was able to keep my place, not per­fectly mind you, but to keep it, and to take my place in the so-familiar tune of Plain Hunt.  Onward and upward straight after­ward, to another method called Grand­sire Dou­bles, and I could keep my place there too.

“You’ll be really help­ful to us now,” said one very advanced ringer who’s never spo­ken to me before.  “Now we can ring a lot of meth­ods we can’t ring if we don’t have 6 or 8 proper ringers.”  Joy!  I am a proper ringer now, or at least approach­ing one.  A lovely Christ­mas gift for me.  I hope very much your hol­i­day prepa­ra­tions are includ­ing some happy-making moments for you, too.