Does anyone truly find Christmas easy? No. Smug predictions of festive bliss should be taken with a pinch of salt. Even the happiest families rarely perform well under the laboratory conditions of a confined space, cranked-up central heating, too much alcohol too early in the morning, passive-aggressive gift angst, and acid reflux. And then there's history: the careful replication of Christmases past can be a dangerous thing. As MFK Fisher put it in An Alphabet for Gourmets (1948), far better to shock your guests with radical change: "All the old routine patterns of food and flowers and cups must be redistributed, to break up the mortal ignominy of the family dinner, when what has too often been said and felt and thought is once more said, felt and thought: slow poison in every mouthful, old grudges, new hateful boredom, nascent antagonism and resentment… Poison, indeed, and most deeply to be shunned!"
This stuff is on my mind because, for the first time, I will be spending Christmas in my own home. What's more, thanks to complicated family logistics, my vast family (it sprawls like Birmingham) will be mostly absent: no parents, no siblings, no nieces and nephew, no in-laws. The food and flowers and cups have, it seems, all been rearranged without me having to do a thing. Result?
Well, once I got over my melancholic Freudian angst, generalised guilt and borderline paranoia – I am 42, after all; it is time – I felt my new freedom like a shot in the arm. What it comes down to is this: I can cook whatever I like. Having learned the rules – thou shalt eat smoked salmon, roast turkey and Christmas pudding with brandy sauce – I can now, Hai Karate style, break them. At this point, then, my fantasy Christmas dinner consists of potted shrimps, roast duck with crisp skin, and lemon meringue pie. I have already begun channelling Lady Bobbin, a bossy character in Nancy Mitford's second novel, Christmas Pudding (1932). Lady Bobbin's guests despair of her hospitality: her stealthy noctambulations in the direction of their worsted stockings, where she likes to leave Old Moore's Almanac and chocolate babies, leave them sleep deprived; before dinner, she forces them to watch local schoolchildren mumming. But since I have only one guest (T), I need not worry on this score. Onwards!
This is not to say that I'm not on terrifying foreign territory. I am. During a mini-break in late October, my friend C revealed that she had spent the hour between the end of our walk and the start of our supper booking a Christmas supermarket delivery. "They go very early," she said, smoothly. When I got home, chilled by the Hannibal Lecter way she'd rubbed her hands together, I booked a delivery myself, filling my basket with things I don't remotely like but feel to be Christmassy – orange Matchmakers, Meltis New Berry Fruits, Jacob's Cream Crackers – in a desperate bid to create an order big enough to secure it. At 3am wide awake, the panic rises. My mother serves her turkey with meatloaf. Should I make meatloaf? Even if we're not having turkey? Would it be mad to prepare potatoes, carrots, sprouts, parsnips and red cabbage for two (one, when you consider T's diet)? Oh, dear. This business of two. When I was a teenager, I would sometimes take a walk after Christmas lunch, light dwindling but curtains not yet drawn; the gawping opportunities were excellent. Perhaps I will contrive to serve Christmas dinner so late that the blind will be pulled before we sit down.
The thing from childhood that I would miss, and will certainly make, whatever we end up eating, are my mother's chestnut patties – excellent with turkey, and delightful cold, too. So I will leave you, by way of an early present, with the recipe. Combine 450g of good, herby sausage meat with 175g of white breadcrumbs. In a pan, heat two tablespoons of oil and gently fry a finely chopped onion and two finely chopped sticks of celery. Add this to the meat, along with 240g of chopped chestnuts, a beaten egg, three tablespoons of chopped parsley and seasoning. Mix, and divide into 12, shaping each portion into a patty. Place a bay leaf on each one, and wrap in streaky bacon. Roast for 30 minutes in an oven at 180C until crisp. The result may not look very beautiful. There is something slightly farmyard about them. But they taste delicious, whether you are one, two, or a noisy crowd.
