Although Christmas was nearly two months ago, I must record a few culinary thoughts about it before my memory fails me completely.

Christmas 2011 was special because I took the plunge and invited - for the first time - friends rather than family for Christmas dinner. It was a wonderful occasion but of course occasions mean people, and therefore food, and lots of it. I found myself catering for 15 people on Christmas day, and while I remember feeling stressed, as I look back on it I realize that Christmas day itself was, in fact, not very stressful at all. Indeed, we had finished Christmas dinner by 3pm, which is the time at all other Christmases I have always aimed, and always failed, to get Christmas dinner started, let alone finished.

But more on Christmas dinner later, for there is so much more to be said about cooking at Christmastime than simply the Christmas day dinner. One of our biggest Christmas cooking times is shaping up to be the weekend of Thanksgiving. We have made it a tradition to make the Christmas cake as a family the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving, which gives it a good month to mature. I started doing it a few years ago, as a way of welcoming the Christmas season, which cannot officially start in my house - because I forbid it - until the end of Thanksgiving Day. It turns out that, completely unbeknownst to me, by making my Christmas cake during that weekend, I was in fact honoring the old English tradition of 'Stir up Sunday', the day historically set aside to make up one's Christmas goodies such as the Christmas cake and the Christmas pudding. It falls on the last Sunday before Advent (which is December 1, for anyone who may not know), which, indeed will always coincide with the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

I don't have a recipe for Christmas cake which is original enough to post here, but I will say that the act of making it together as a family, although it can be fraught, is also a powerful way of binding us together. Someone is chopping the almonds and the cherries, someone else is beating the eggs, someone else is grating the nutmeg and getting the zest from the oranges and lemons. Treacle and marmalade go into the mix, and there is butter being whipped up with brown sugar and ginger so you know life can't be that bad. And then the amazing bit: we get to wrap the thing in heavy brown paper and tie it with string, so that the cake doesn't cook too fast. I love these simple methods that remain the most effective way to do something, no matter how advanced our society becomes.

Then, when the cake comes out, I get to wrap it immediately, while it is still in it's tin, in layers and layers of tin foil, and let it cool completely. When I was wrapping it up this year, my four year old watched me and said, 'Is that your baby?' To which I thought, 'Actually, it kind of is.'

Anyway, besides Christmas cake, this year during the 'Stir up Sunday' period, I also made mincemeat. It was the right thing to do - although I don't make mince pies until a few days before Christmas, it made a huge difference to my sanity levels during that frenetic week to know that all I had to do to make my mince pies was mix up the pastry. My mincemeat is different than modern-day mincemeat. First of all, I make it with beef mince, a concept first introduced to me by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This is the way mincemeat was made historically, and indeed I have a Tudor recipe book which includes a recipe for mincemeat using beef or lamb. I have taken elements from both Fearnely-Whittingstall's and the Tudor recipe to create my own mincemeat. Please make a note of the saffron in the recipe: although it only calls for a pinch, I think this has to be the most exciting ingredient.


Holly's Traditional Mincemeat

250 grams beef mince (ground beef)
75 grams beef suet
100 grams currants
100 grams raisins
100 grams chopped prunes
275 grams grated eating apples
125 grams brown sugar
25 grams gound almonds
50 grams flaked almonds
50 grams candied cherries
25 grams preserved ginger, chopped
100 mls apple juice
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
zest and juice of 1/2 orange
2 tbls. treacle
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
2 tsp. mixed spice
pinch saffron

Combine everything together in a bowl. That's it. The only issue here is the shelf life of the mincemeat, which won't be long since the beef is raw and there is no alcohol in the mixture. (I suppose the title may be a bit misleading, because traditional mincemeat has alcohol in it, and here I have purposely left it out.) I have left it before in the fridge for up to two days before using it, as it does need a little bit of time to mature. Otherwise, the mixture freezes perfectly.

Next post: more on Stir up Sunday, plus other culinary delights of the season

Sadly I didn't blog about food during the Thanksgiving and Christmas periods - simply because I was too busy cooking it. Unfortunately the holidays are now one big blur so it is hard to remember exactly what I cooked and how I did it, but I'll try jotting a few things for posterity. Thanksgiving was a blast. I love cooking turkey - what a fantastic bird! This year I decided to search for the holy grail of turkeys - the super juicy, tender kind - by soaking it in a brine marinade the night before, including honey, sugar, allspice berries, oranges, thyme, bay leaves, etc. I had to buy a special plastic box just for the occasion, and my husband patiently helped me put it in the garage as I struggled to carry it when it was filled with the brine and the turkey - although he did sigh a few times, I seem to remember. But so ecstatic was I at the prospect of this exciting process of marinading the whole bird that I think even he may have caught the vision.
The next day I insisted that every child help prepare the dinner, and as they were wandering around the kitchen, I prepared the bird - wrestling it out of the brine, patting it dry, smothering it with butter, etc. I had to do it when they were there - as far as I'm concerned, this is the stuff of life-giving memories, the kind of memories that sustain you when life is disappointing or seems meaningless. 'Remember the year that Mom had to take the turkey out of that brine .....?'
I have a particular memory of Thanksgiving - one among many, but still one that sticks out. I remember my mother setting out breadcrumbs in a big bowl to make the stuffing, and then combining the breadcrumbs with chopped onion and sliced celery. She poured hot stock over the mixture to moisten it. I remember the smell was exquisite. I still don't think I can make stuffing as good as my mother's.
Other memories include my Grandma Hamilton's mustard pickles and baby onions, inhaling my mother's white bread rolls, cranberry sauce out of a can that retained the shape of the can once in the serving dish, my Dad's turkey gravy, getting up early and seeing the pumpkin pies laid out from being prepared the night before, dressing up and using the best dishes, and the first course of jello salad served on a bed of iceberg lettuce!
The turkey was wonderful, by the way.
Next post, Christmas.