Food for the festivities
Marika Hanbury Tenison
If you dread stuffing the turkey at midnight, fiddling with fairy lights that won't connect, burning your fingers trying to set the pudding alight or living on leftovers until the new year, there is still time to book yourself a jolly, tailor-made Christmas in one of England's best hotels where the smell of roasting poultry doesn't get into your hair, your bed will be made by someone else and the question of who does the washing up needn't become a bone of contention or a matter of bribery.
At the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, for instance, Christmas entertainments are readymade, with midnight dinners, a candlelight ball. bingo sessions and a children's fancy dress ball right on the doorstep. Or, if you prefer the more mild air of the South West to the bracing breezes of Brighton how about the idea of spending an all-in eightday holiday at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, where they have a special Christmas pro
gramme with special menus to match. Just think of the joy of having someone else clear up all that wrapping paper, of having someone else to decide the pros and cons of to baste or not to baste the turkey and of letting someone else sweep away the shedding needles of the fir tree. Are you overweight, overtired and dreading the excesses of Christmas feasting ? Then why not opt out of the whole affair and hide away in a health farm for the holiday week ? From £100 a week you could book in ai Forest Mere in Surrey where Christmas DO is treated the same as any other day and instead of all those usual horrifying calories and cholesterol packed meals you can feast on a Christmas dinner of fresh fruit, fruit juice, yogurt or salad. The double rooms are comfortable, the surroundings are attractive, there is usually a game of backgammon or bridge to be played in the even' ing and all alcohol is banned from the premises. Think of all those early nights, think of the peace and what it would be like, for once, to have a Christmas free from hangovers, indigestion or flatulence and think of those pounds that will roll off 1° leave a thinner, more beautiful, you for the start of 1977. Perhaps, though, when all is said and done, you are at heart one of the home birds and Christmas, you feel, wouldn't be Christmas unless it was spent in the boson'', of your family. In this case plan your holt' day with a view to cutting out all but the most unavoidable of kitchen chores and indulge in the extravagances of gastronomic delight that are available this year. While the pound totters and the cost of the essentials of life spirals upwards, shop win' dows glitter with goodies, Christmas catalogues are bigger and brighter than ever, sparkling with sumptuous jewellery, scatter ed with scintillating nonsenses for those who already have everything and sprinkled with some bare necessities of life for those who have not. Food shops, above all, seem to be lavishly stocked with the best things in life and since spend, spend, spend seems to be the popular idea of the moment, why not Join the bandwagon or dream about it anyway? A not inconsiderable fortune could Make it an almost instant Christmas in the kitchen, something to remember when it's time to get back to the bread, dripping and TVP (textured vegetable protein). First courses set the pace for the rest of a meal so begin with a bang. Give yourself the best with a pound tin of finest Russian Beluga caviar at around £56 (you need at l.east 3 oz for a generous serving) and serve it simply with freshly made toast and Wedges of lemon with the pips removed. No frills are required and it's smart to serve the caviar straight from its tin, provided you half-bury the tin in a glass bowl filled with crushed ice--delicious.
. Peitt de fine gras is another deliciously ll1113le dish that leaves the cook free to enjoy the pleasure of' her guests rather than slaving over a hot stove. Toast is needed again but nothing else and you can take Your pick from foie gras flown from Perig.°rd to your order and packed in an attractive golden pottery goose at around £25 from Jackson's of Piccadilly to the more traditional raised pie shape, en cronte, available at Christmas only from Fortnum and
Mason's (the more you buy the cheaper it comes and on my reckoning one saves about £25 by buying enough for twenty-five servings).
Smoked salmon is still as popular as it ever was but don't be tempted to try your hand at slicing a whole side which will have to be operated on with the skill of a surgeon. The chances are it will take you a couple of hours at least to pick out all the tiny bones with eyebrow tweezers and the end result will be hunks of salmon rather than those essential, almost transparent slivers. Carving smoked salmon is for experts—amateurs end up with sliced fingertips and smelling strongly of smoked fish. Buy instead a presliced side of Smoked Salmon from Needham's Mail Order Department, Pontypool, Gwent NP4 6JW, for £15.15 for 21 lbs (Tel: 049-55-55698)—t he experts remove the bones, cut the salmon into thin slices and t heaput it all back together again so that you can impress your guests.
Jackson's will provide you with a ready cooked turkey and ham so that all you need to do on the side is to bake a few potatoes and toss up a swift salad, dressing it, since it's Christmas after all, with a vinaigrette made from walnut oil and Vinegre Citron (available from Justin de Blank Provisions, Brompton Road, London) and laced with special Strathardle heather honey from Fortnum and Mason.
Still making the best of your do-it-yourself Christmas, why not, if you own a fridge large enough to chill it in, treat the family to a Methuselah of Veuve Cliquot champagne (eight bottles in one for a mere £42.80 from Jackson's)? Buy an 1893 cognac from Fortnum and Mason but don't try to use it to set light to your pudding (cheap brandies flame better) and don't insult a 1920 port from College Cellars of 56 Walton Street, London, by using it to moisten the whole Stilton cheese. Wrap the cheese in a damp muslin cloth instead to maintain and mature the flavour.
Such delightfully, patently delicious, vulgar extravagances are as much fun to dream about as are stockings filled with Faberge, duffel coats lined with mink or a Citroen Maserati to use as a runabout, but they are not really what Christmas is all about. My own plan for Christmas this year is on a much more mundane and realistic level, an alternative that I feel is, in the long run, the one most likely to bring pleasure and happiness to everyone in the family. This year I have promised myself a simple Christmas, stripped down to the bare essentials and preserving the essence of the festival we are celebrating rather than battling to make it a yet bigger orgy of eating, drinking, glittering tinsel and keeping up with the Joneses. My major contribution to the enjoyment of everyone else will be in trying to keep my sense of humour when I find the turkey
won't fit in the oven, the mince pies stick to their tins, the brandy butter curdles and the hot water pipes freeze; it will, in other words, be Christmas as usual.
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