In which we get a little teary

So how was it for you? Lack of snow aside (and how very disappointing it was to be snowed in the week before, yet cooking with the door open on the Day), was the festive season all you hoped it might be?

I’m going to come over all sentimental and say that perhaps Tarporley is one of the nicest places I’ve ever celebrated Christmas. On the Eve we – as in us three and my parents – took the dog for a bracing walk around the back lanes of the village and called in at my NEW FRIEND’S for a glass of Prosecco and a mince pie. I LOVE things like that. Back when I was small, people were always dropping round to our house for drinks, even on Christmas morning, and even now occasionally it can seem a bit flat, being ‘just us’. Anyway, the Prosecco was a swift one because we all simply marched off to sing carols outside the church. In my defence, I hadn’t realised it was DIY, but actually it was rather lovely; about 100 people just standing with their dogs and/or children singing carols at a swift tempo – which is important if you’re to avoid them being too dirge-y – and we romped through them for about 20 minutes. NB St Helen’s Church: How nice it would have been to put the lights on round the tree while we chorused… But it was still very Christmass-y, if a little dim at 3.45pm on a dull day in December.

Christmas Day was glorious, as it would be with a 15 month old who has recently perfected the art of walking backwards and whose favourite toys were the helium balloon and my Dustbuster. We have a very clean house. The beef was – may I say – cooked to perfection and I even managed whole mouthfuls of the Pudding. It’s taken me 34 years but I’m starting to not mind its yearly outing. Needless to say, MCD Jr ate it by the handful.

Boxing Day is the day of the hunt meet in Tarporley and it is – whatever your feelings on the event itself – so soaked in goodwill and community-mindedness it’s hard not to love it. Although it’s also hard not to love the acres and acres of coloured corduroy abounding up and down the high street; it’s clearly where mustard and poker-red cords come into their own. I wanted to clap my hands over my face and shout ‘MY EYES’ every time a pair approached but it might have interfered with the ‘goodwill to all men’ bit. All the pubs were open, offering bacon sandwiches and mulled wine. Santa rode through at a fair lick. MCD Jr stroked a horse with his Grandpa and nearly fainted with delight.

It was all so very lovely it left me feeling quite tearful and sentimental. The community here really is all for one and one for all, it’s a rare thing and to be a part of it is quite tremendous. I can think of no other place I’d want to bring up my son and I think that’s something worth striving for. The warm glowing embers of Christmas feeling are fanned all year round here and even just those three days went a long way towards convincing us we want to stay. If life here is as rich as the festive season heralds, we’re in for a blast.

Celeriac & Barley Risotto

Rose Prince gave a recipe for this the other week in one of the weekend papers and it sounded so good I made it as soon as I got my hands on some celeriac. It doesn’t sound terribly promising, indeed I might even apply the adjective ‘worthy’, but it’s filling and warming and not at all stodgy. This makes enough for two.

Melt a good knob of butter in a pan and sweat a finely chopped onion. Cut half a head of peeled celeriac into matchsticks and add to the pan with a clove of chopped garlic. Stir in the butter for a couple of minutes, then add 150g or so of pearl barley. Coat in the butter, then pour over enough chicken stock to cover by 1cm. Put a lid on and leave for 15-20 minutes. Check how the barley’s cooking, it might need a splash more liquid. Cook until the barley is tender, but don’t expect it to amalgamate like risotto. The grains will stay completely separate. Season and squeeze in as much lemon juice as you like, but lots is the key, Serve topped with a good dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream.

Technorati Tags: celeriac,pearly barley,risotto,recipes,Rose Prince

It’s beginning to feel a lot like winter

Or at least, it is up here. The skies are menacingly grey and low, the wind is actually howling (no doubt exacerbated by the gaps around the front doors), we’ve had hail and even a little snow. And yet, at the Tarporley Christmas Lights Switch On last Friday, I definitely overheard someone who sounded like he knew what he was talking about, saying how the multitude of holly berries meant we were in for a mild winter. Since then I’ve been carefully examining all the holly I can see and I can categorically state – and the people of Scotland can rise up in chorus – there really aren’t any berries on any holly up here. Maybe he has a special, sheltered one. In the Caribbean.

But it is definitely starting to feel a bit Christmas-like. I don’t need a small child to feel excited about it; I genuinely love the run-up and up here it’s all a lot less frenetic and – dare I say – a lot more fun to do the dreaded shopping. I’m not going to lie and say I’ve spent mere pennies on buying locally-crafted wooden toys for all made by cherry-cheeked Cheshire people, but there just isn’t the stress of a mass of humanity rushing to do the same thing in the same place at the same time. I’m also a bit more reliant on the internet which does take the fraughtness out of it. And I am sailing through a short but defined list of achievements.

1. We have decorated. See random picture (which for some reason I can’t crop) of our big tree.

It is purple and silver and the photo really doesn’t do it justice as I think it’s so so beautiful. I bought proper decorations (actually from the lovely garden centres round here) and it is splendid. We even have a small (real) one in the lounge for MCD Jr to stand and – oddly – rub his face against like a small cat. Whatever makes him happy.

2. I have ordered the Christmas meat. This year it’s a gigantic rib of beef. I follow Nigella’s Christmas book like a mantra, although in reality it’s no more stressful than a roast. On Christmas Eve we shall have a ham with her parsnip, potato and porcini gratin, which feels like the start of a tradition in itself.

3. I have mostly done the shopping apart from one last Amazon order and a little more internet magic. This I am incredibly proud of but I have been like a general, sending people spirit-crushing emails along the lines of IF YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT BY THE END OF THIS WEEK, YOU SHALL BE GETTING NOTHING AT ALL. Two family members are in hideous peril of this actually happening; it makes me quite ill to think they might not have a gift to open.

4. I have organised our first ever pre-Christmas drinks. Actually what happened was I sent a text to my new friend asking if she and her husband wanted to come over. She phoned and said, in a terribly efficient manner ‘And shall I bring trifle or a cheeseboard?’ I leaned my head against the patio and admitted I had gotten no further than the excitement of making poinsettia cocktails out of Nigella and could we not make do with crisps? She countered with fried chicken from the kebab house. I am now making a lamb and date tagine (Nigella again!) to continue the illusion I am a grown-up and I hadn’t thought we might just sit and drink and everything would be fine in the morning.

5. I have bought a really large tupperware box to freeze the tagine in as I shall make it before we go away for a few days.

6. We stop and look at the nativity scene in the village every time we go past. This is in the vain effort to educate my 14-month-old son in the ways of a nativity sheep (he is one) and that they go ‘baaa’ and stand quietly, looking solemnly at the wonder of the new baby. I have an inkling his strategy is to employ his three new favourite noises which is to snort like a pig if he doesn’t know the animal noise; to follow with a slightly dampened roar (unlike his dinosaur roar which is full-on) which is his version of hee-haw (like a donkey) and then (his latest and never fails – alas – to send us both stupid with laughter and I know I shouldn’t encourage) to strain to make a fart because apparently it’s very funny when he does so.

It’s going to be a very noisy Christmas.

Rockett St George

There is hardly one thing on Rockett St George I wouldn't want at any time of the year, let alone Christmas. Possibly everyone I know will be getting something from here. Love it. A lot.

On friendship, with a side order of soup

NB: Rambly.

It’s a funny old thing, friendship. As Tania K points out, no-one really sings about it; Love is the eternal, the worshipped, the all-important ending. But friendship also – and sometimes even more so – lifts us up where we belong (to coin a phrase, although does anyone else find Bette Midler’s rendition particularly irritating, in passing?).

Living up here in Cheshire now, without the solid structure of friendships around me as I had in London, along with the age-old game of making new friends has made me rethink a lot of what I thought I knew. How do we make friends? At school, at university, in our jobs, through life-changing circumstances… all of these cause new people to be thrown into our paths and hopefully some of them might just be walking along the same path as you for a while. I’m not sure length of friendship or even physical closeness is what makes it hold faster; sometimes it’s just the very intensity of the situation in which you met can bond you tighter for a while. Once something changes, it’s only natural that first passion, for want of a better description, fades a little and the bond, the glue holding you together loosens just a little. Sometimes friendships survive it, sometimes they just fade away.

Longevity is a funny thing. We went to a wedding recently. It was one of our university friends, someone MCD lived with, incidentally marrying someone we have never met. Living in London, eager, or even not un-eager, to continue the friendship meant three of them would meet up every few months or so. It wasn’t necessarily a close friendship; do we just sometimes need to see people who knew us then. Who knew us as we were before responsibilities, ties, life got in on the act. Do we just need to be reminded of who we were as well as of the times we had? A device, rather than a friend, one might say. The wedding was all it should have been, but as MCD and I watched the First-Dance Shuffle, we realised that this wedding was about – as are all weddings – the friend’s life and we knew no-one else there. (In point of fact we were put on a table with his father’s friends…) We had moved to the periphery in each others’ lives and that former closeness had dissipated over the years. The fact we didn’t even know the bride spoke volumes. It left us sad, but curiously unfazed.

It got me thinking. I’m going through that first intense passion again – I have my first ‘hot date’ with a new friend next week and the thought fills me with joy. Moreover, an evening date with no children which makes me think she finds me interesting enough without a small child to distract and fill in the silences. My ego is boosted. But on the other hand, I have to maintain my friendships in London. The shorthand you get with familiarity and frequent meetings has already vanished and the phone calls must be planned and timed for sleeping children or abruptly terminated for the same reason. It makes it slightly awkward, with too much to say and not enough time. You have to learn to summarise briefly and observe the niceties by making sure you ask as much as you answer, ask after and send love. There’s more etiquette to fit in and less time for chat.

Then there’s the rediscovery of ancient friendship. I’m now living close to my oldest friend. She and I have been together for – being quite accurate – 28 years. (We have to minus a few years because there was the ‘Donna’ period and it all got messy in a 5-year-old triumvirate kind of way….). As I’ve said before, we haven’t lived this close since we were seven, and our phonecalls were practised pieces of our own kind of shorthand; friendship in precision, etiquette dealt with quickly before moving on to the hardcore stuff. Now I’m having to re-learn the art of taking it slowly with her, hanging out, learning the finer details of her life and finding more – and less – in common as we go.

In many ways, the essence of friendship can be trickier than love. Love tends to be viewed - wrongly - as a one-time-only deal, but even if you love two, three, four times in your life, the number of friendships are still going to be many times that - so many different relationships to be managed and thought over and fought over at the same time. Is love the steadier in the face of fraught friendship; the quid pro quo for when love goes sour?

Happily there's always soup for the soul in these moments. It's a long-winded process making ham and pea soup, but the final dish is so comforting on rainy cold days, it's worth the effort. It's a two-parter so you could always do it over a couple of days if you can't face whole hours in the kitchen, but there's not much to it other than occasional stirring.

Part 1: Place a large ham hock in a deep pot with a carrot, celery stalk and onion cut into chunks. Add some parsley stalks, a small handful of black peppercorns and fennel seeds. Pour over a bottle of dry cider (in this case 568ml) and top up with water to cover. Put the lid on and bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook the ham very slowly for about 2 hours or until it pulls away from the bone.

Once the ham is cooked, sieve the cooking liquid and discard the vegetables. Taste - it should be faintly salty and sweet from the veg and cider. At this point you can refrigerate everything, or just push on through.

I had about 1 litre of cooking liquor, so use this as a general measure. First finely chop (and by this I mean just blitz in a food processor) 1-2 carrots, 1 celery stalk and 1 onion. Fry gently in a little oil in a deep pan then tip in about 400-500g yellow split peas. Pour over the stock and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and cook gently for about an hour, stirring and topping up with water occasionally if necessary. When the peas are grainy and soft and collapsed, you're almost ready to go.

To finish: Flake the ham - as much as you want - into the soup and adjust the seasoning. Layer some good melting cheese - anything you fancy - onto a slice of toast, top with another and grill or bake until the cheese has melted. Once you've ladled the soup into bowls, I like to add a drizzle of cider vinegar on top (it's a straight nostalgic hit of Germany for some reason). Serve with the hot cheese toasties on the side.

Technorati Tags: ham and pea soup,recipes,friendship

Hot Lightning

Which is impossible to say without the Grease inflection [‘Hot Latnin’ and perhaps a John Travolta finger point], I notice. Anyway, it’s my take on a very fine Scandinavian/German idea for potatoes, apples and pears which makes an excellent accompaniment to anything porcine. Personally I feel Halloween and Bonfire Night are prime sausage time (and as it’s British Sausage Week this week), and for me, good peppery Cumberland are just right.

This can be made with new potatoes, which gives you a slightly less ‘stewed’ dish. It’s up to you; I rather like the way the potatoes break down in the sauce. You may want to add a couple of crushed juniper berries for variation.

Take 1 large floury potato, 1 apple and 1 pear per person and peel. Cut into large chunks. Melt a good know of butter in a casserole and fry 1 rasher streaky bacon per person until golden. Remove from the pan, then add the potatoes and try to get a little golden colour on them. Add the bacon back into the pan with the apples and pears, season and add a really good slug of white wine or even cider. Pop the lid on and cook very gently until all is tender. You should stir occasionally to ensure nothing’s sticking. You may want more liquid, so add more if necessary.

Serve, perhaps sprinkled gaily with parsley, with your bangers.

Technorati Tags: hot lightning,potatoes,apples,pearson's arms,sausages,british sausage week

Apple & Gorgonzola Risotto

An unctuous, comforting supper for a rainy dark night. Use any blue cheese, but something melting and sharp is good. You may also want to add a little texture at the end like crushed hazelnuts or chopped walnuts.

For 2:

Peel and finely chop one onion and sweat in butter in a pan until soft. Add 150g risotto rice and stir until thoroughly coated in the butter. Pour in a good glassful of white wine and allow to absorb. Meanwhile, peel and finely chop a Bramley or any apple you like, but something with a good flavour, and add about three-quarters to the rice.

Stirring frequently, pour in your hot chicken or vegetable stock a bit at a time. I find I usually need about 500ml to make a risotto. After about 15 minutes, add the rest of the apple – this won’t melt down as much, giving a bit of texture to the whole. Once the rice is tender, turn off the heat, add as much blue cheese as you fancy and a good knob of butter and season and leave to mantecare as the Italians say.

Serve with the chopped nuts in great big bowlfuls.

Technorati Tags: apple and gorgonzola risotto,recipes,blue cheese,autumn,nuts