As a child, the lead-up to Christmas was a time of intense excitement and ridiculously high expectations, followed by a brief flurry of wrapping paper, the annual re-run of White Christmas on the Beeb and a gorgefest that lasted the best part of a week.
Then I came to Australia and discovered a very different kind of celebration fuelled by sunshine, Webers and rather a lot of beer.
Not that I’m complaining. It’s just that Christmas is the time I miss my mum and all her rituals the most.
Mum began her Christmas preparations several months before the big day. By October, she’d made the puddings. In November, the cake was baked then prodded full of holes with a knitting needle and fed whisky every week.
She even made her own mincemeat, with suet of course, and the meal itself was timed to coincide with the Queen’s speech so that we could pause, mid-mouthful, and toast mum’s favourite monarch.
Dad always played in a band on Christmas Eve. When he got home at gone midnight, he stuck on a santa hat and wellies with cottonwool glued around the top, lest we woke up, and delivered stockings to the end of our beds.
I’d never seen as dark and mysterious a Christmas pudding as my mum’s until last week, when I paid a visit to the newish Rochelle Adonis shop in Northbridge.
Rochelle is a trained pastry and is best-known for her various flavours of sexy nougat.
As well as her deeply rich, tar-black Christmas puds cooked, says Rochelle, in a bain marie for 17 hours, our very own Nigella is selling spiced Christmas shortbread and bite-sized mince tarts flavoured with warm spices and hints of ginger.
Rochelle is also doing a ripper brandy and vanilla bean ice cream also available, unchurned and unfrozen, as a sublimely rich, eggy, ready-to-heat creme anglais.
If it’s a Christmas cake you’re after, pay a visit to For The Coffee Table in Floreat.
A friend was given one of their cakes as a gift recently and served it up for morning tea. Wonderfully moist, chockablock with quality fruit and with a nice boozy hit, it is quite the most beautiful Christmas cake I’ve ever tasted.
After some other tempting treats for the table this yuletide? New Norcia Bakeries in Subiaco and Mount Hawthorn make their own pan forte and another sweet treat called Pan Chocolatti, heavily laced with nuts, honey and chocolate.
The Grocer in Nedlands has lots of Christmas goodies including a Celebration Box stuffed with all the festival niceties.
If you’re after a duck, goose or other fancy game there’s still time, but only just, to order one from meat distributors Mahogany Creek.
And if you’re feeding the hoardes, The Herdsman in Churchlands does a great seasonal fruit platter, while Kailis Bros (Freo and Leederville) will make up a fresh seafood platter to order.
This Christmas I’m off to Scotland to be with my family. This includes my dad, who continued to do the Christmas Eve dress-up and stocking thing right up until I left home at the age of 22. God bless ‘em all.
The Herdsman, 9 Flynn St. Churchlands. Ph 9383 7733
Kailis Bros, 101 Oxford Street Leederville. Ph 9443 6300
New Norcia Bakeries, The Cloisters, Bagot Road, Subiaco (opposite Crossways Shopping Centre), Ph 9381 4811
Mahogany Creek, Ph 9249 2866
The Grocer, 145 Stirling Hwy Nedlands Ph 9389 8144
jane cornes
office (08) 9271 9071
mobile 0414 862 306
http://www.doris.com.au
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