Some feasts are humble affairs, others momentous occasions, but the epitome of feasting in our culture arrives each year on the last Thursday in November. I have always found Thanksgiving to be the most satisfying and least stressful annual holiday. While Christmas is smothered under a surfeit of commercialism, New Year’s Eve lies gasping under the weight of forced jollity, and Valentine’s Day inevitably arrives smugly to rub salt into the wounds of your latest breakup, Thanksgiving is a blissful relief. A gourmet’s paradise, it is uncomplicated, unburdened with material expectation, and devoted solely to the table.
“How about something different this year,” I suggested to Mum, while sitting on the sofa, a pile of cookbooks on my lap. “You mean something other than turkey,” she responded, visibly dubious.
“Yes, like a goose or a ham. I mean turkey for Thanksgiving and again for Christmas. . . Gets a bit boring, don’t you think?”
“But its tradition,” Mother protested, “and I love turkey.”
I sighed; even Thanksgiving was apparently not without tribulation—the dull old face of tradition glumly staring down each one of my festive ideas. Why are people like this? Why do they persist in defending endless repetition for its own sake? Now I am a great fan of many culinary traditions: they have given us an excuse to guzzle champagne at the merest hint of celebration, break out the barbeque each summer, and consume endless mince pies with brandy butter throughout the month of December. However, it is often necessary to give these rituals a makeover: a new hair cut, some flashy new earrings. Otherwise they are in danger of becoming utterly insipid and dull.
The annual Christmas pudding saga perfectly illustrates my argument. My family has clung vehemently to our English tradition of serving Christmas pudding as the culmination to the long and abundant holiday lunch. It is a massive, upside down bowl shaped wodge of dried fruit, flour, and booze. And in accordance with custom, it is doused with brandy, lit on fire, and paraded to the table. It is a wonderful moment, the flaming dessert topped with a sprig of holly, making its entrance to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.
Sadly, this piece of culinary tradition is more style than substance. Or rather it is far too substantial. Everyone dutifully takes a slice, although we’re all far too bloated and tipsy to enjoy it. My strategy is to pile on the brandy butter (butter whipped up with a considerable amount of sugar and brandy), and thus drown out the actual taste of the pudding. It is stodgy, leaden, and alarmingly durable. Few souls have the requisite tenacity to finish their slice, so a lot goes straight to the bin. Alas this is not the end. Mum generally makes two Christmas puddings—so enthusiastic about this tradition that she manages to forget how unpopular they are—and so the family is left not only with the remainder of the first, but a massive second pudding to conquer. As a child, I remember surveying that foul, black-brown slice mutinously at breakfast, in pack lunches, and fried up in yet more brandy after dinner for weeks on end. It sat stolidly in the fridge, in both shape and effect like a glowering, impenetrable Mount Rainier. Sometimes I swear we were still attempting to dispose of it throughout the waning days of January.
This Christmas, I shall probably fail in my campaign to ban the pudding and replace it with a sexier dessert, but I did win a small victory over Thanksgiving meal. It is a rule of thumb that by the judicious mention of certain ingredients, I can convince Mother of the virtue of almost any dish. She simply cannot resist the mention of ginger, figs, anise, goat cheese, gruyere, or hazelnuts. When I suggested a shoulder of ham she remained skeptical, but after my cunning elaboration—a glazed baked ham with spiced figs and parsley sauce—she grudgingly agreed. Now all that remains is to source a magnificent ham and dream up delectable trimmings: perhaps sme gruyere baked squash? Roasted onions? Cranberry sauce? A deep dish apple pie? All this dreaming and scheming is almost as enjoyable as feasting itself.
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