Cooking for Christmas

Let’s face it – we are a family of foodies. And never more so than at Christmas. Last Christmas, we took so many photos of the food that we forgot to keep a record of who was actually there. Sarah, Nic and I are all great cooks throughout the year, but at Christmas, somehow, there is a collective rush to produce all our favourite Christmas goodies.

This year, the rush started in November as I baked Christmas cookies, cheese biscuits, mince pies and shortbread all to our family recipes, so I could leave them for Sihle, Sarah, Riaan and Kev before we left for New Zealand. This despite the thermostat in my oven packing up, and having to do all the baking in a small oven which lives in the scullery – running down steps between rollings out to check that nothing was burning! I still had Christmas puddings from last year – and they do keep forever with the amount of brandy I put in them – so was able to leave one for Jen and one for Sarah. When I arrived in New Zealand, I was on mince pie detail, and made 3 or 4 batches before Christmas. The week before Christmas, I made cheese biscuits, shortbread and Christmas pud. I was going to skip the shortbread, but ended up making it after protests from Pete. And on Christmas Eve I glazed a huge ham AND a cooked and glazed a pickled pork – the closest Nic could find to a gammon in New Zealand. Nic maintains it’s not Christmas unless you have leftover gammon to eat on fresh white bread on Boxing day. And then for days after.

I thought about family traditions and food that we like to prepare. Many of my recipes come from generations back. My Shortbread biscuit and cheese biscuit recipes come from my paternal grandmother. The Christmas pudding recipe comes from an old Royal baking powder recipe book and was made by my maternal grandmother. The shortbread recipe comes down from the Lyon/Mann family somewhere – how far back to Scottish family I don’t know. I don’t make Christmas cake often, but we have the family recipe – with my Mom’s note – George V’s favourite cake! – written above it. My mince pie pastry comes from an old WI recipe book – and no doubt, will go down in history as Granny Deb’s recipe.

The gammon and bean salad that we have most years are relatively recent additions to our family Christmas meals. As a child, we had roast chicken (a delicacy) and hot veggies, cooked by the domestic help, who were then allowed to have a half day after they had washed up. We gradually moved to a cold meal (more suitable in our summer Christmas climate) and pickled pork was cooked and decorated with cherries and pineapple and later replaced by gammon, and we introduced salads – some more successful than others! The bean salad has lasted – copper penny (a gross carrot salad) and green cucumber mousse were thankfully discarded! Baby potatoes from the garden, boiled with a few sprigs of mint, were always my dad’s aim, but weren’t always ready by Christmas Day.

But in my family, it was the puddings that really counted. Christmas pudding – stirred by all the family and visitors and boiled for 6 hours in the heat of summer, and then reheated for an hour with the coins jingling in the bottom of the pan. Even non-raisin eaters like my nieces and nephew had pudding so they could get the money. This was always my Mom’s preserve, and even when she got too senile to manage the measuring and tying of the greaseproof paper lids on the pans, the pretence that it was her work was surreptitiously preserved. I nearly burned the house down a couple of years ago, when I went to sleep and the pots boiled dry in the middle of the night! Pete woke to smoke and a glowing pot on the stove – and a melted plastic toaster which had been next to the stove.

Fruit salad was a big hit when we were kids, and my Aunty Hazel’s fruit salad was the best. Sadly, there was always so much of it and so little fridge space that it would always ferment before we could enjoy it the next day. Nic has added Pavlova to the pudding repertoire, and this year, we picked the strawberries to pile on top of it.

The most enduring favourite, though, has to be “our” trifle. Mom’s generation invented it, I think - or it may even have been her mother's family. I can remember making it with my cousins when we were all young teenagers, and getting drunk on the sherry we poured in so liberally. Jen and all my cousins know the recipe – and I know some of them make it each Christmas. And certainly my children and Jen’s know how to make it. Nic doesn’t even like trifle, but if trifle is to be made, it has to be “ours.” For me, it is Christmas food – and having a bowl full for breakfast on Boxing Day means that tradition has been continued.

A foodie family indeed.

The “Lyon” trifle
1 or 2 packets of Boudoir biscuits (ladyfingers if you aren’t in South Africa)
Youngberry jam
Sweet sherry
Home made custard
Whipped cream
Sandwich the biscuits with the jam and layer them in a bowl – the number of biscuits depends on the size of the dish. Nowadays, I use a rectangular one, but as kids, we used a round bowl and cut the biscuits to fit.
Sprinkle liberally with sweet sherry and leave to stand for a couple of hours.
Make a thickish pouring custard – enough to cover the biscuit layer adequately.
Pour the custard over the biscuits and leave in the fridge until just before serving.
Whip cream and cover the top of the trifle. Decorate with cherries and almonds.