The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Too Many Christmas Trees?

 

Steed contemplates the joy of a 1960’s Christmas, “Too Many Christmas Trees”, The Avengers, 1965

 

Fed up with Christmas?  Had enough?  Can’t wait to return to the Blacking Factory?  Does the Counting House call?  Funnily enough, I’m rather fond of this time of year, the ‘in-between’ bit, I mean. The raw, midwinter weather of Boxing Day, with its sporting traditions: hunting, shooting, betting, and the racing on Channel Four. And then the run-up to the New Year; when the Christmas tree’s still up (just!), social media shuts down and your email feed collapses into a meaningless trickle. And you’re left alone. With a fabulous wife and a shoe-munching whippet; a bottle of Veuve yellow label and an old black and white movie. 

London becomes a ghost town: London for Londoners; the deserted streets remind me of old black and white episodes from The Avengers. How I used to love that series!  My all-time favourite episode has to be Too Many Christmas Trees, in which Steed and Mrs Peel spend Christmas at the Gothick country house of a nutcase obsessed with Dickens and Mrs Peel dresses up as a cheeky Oliver Twist. 

Driven by the great god Mammon which everybody, these days, seems to worship without question, the modern focus is on the run-up to Christmas: decorations appear in the London shops while the leaves still cling to the branches of the great planes trees in Berkeley Square.

Historically, of course, the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas Day and ends on January 5th, the Epiphany (January 6th), or even quite possibly, on January 7th, which as the erudite readership of the Spoon knows, is the date of the Russian Orthodox Christmas. I’ve never worked out in my head which is the right day (I’m counting aloud on my fingers as I type) so please feel free to put me right, those of you prepared to confess to a pedantic streak.

Food at this time of year is also a good thing. After all that turkey, all that goose, the soggy Christmas pudding, the migraine-inducing mulled wine and the sulphurous brussel sprout, Something Light is the order of the day.

I’ve cooked my usual cider and honey glazed Christmas Ham (tweaking a recipe issued by the wonder that is Sarah Raven), and once I’ve finished this post, will start making a traditional Germanic Herring Salad. Mrs Aitch has also discovered Forman’s Smoked Salmon pate on the shelves of our local Waitrose in Nine Elms; outstandingly delicious. I cannot stress how addictive this stuff is. 

 

Tamasin Day-Lewis wrote a fascinating article in the Telegraph about H. Forman & Son, the only surviving East End smokery. The tradition of smoking salmon was brought to London by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Scottish smoked salmon only took off later, following developments in fish farming.

But, sorry Scotland, if you want the Real McCoy, Forman’s smokery is the place to go. Known for its “London Cure”, Forman’s uses dry salt rather than chemical brine and stretches the fish to improve the texture with a drip-dry effect.

And so to their Smoked Salmon Pate: it’s amazingly creamy in texture and has a lovely, savoury taste. I see that they make it with Mascarpone cheese, which, I think adds to the creamy taste. Their superior concoction also includes unsalted butter, natural yoghurt, dill and shallots.

Tamasin Day-Lewis gives a recipe to create something similar for yourself, but to be honest, I am such a fan of Forman’s smoked salmon pate, it might be a good plan to hurry along to your local supermarket (both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s stock it) and bag a tub or two for yourself. While stocks last.

 

 

Happy Christmas

 

 

 

Wishing all my readers at The Greasy Spoon a very happy Christmas and my best wishes for the New Year. A big thank you to all those who left comments or emailed me with suggestions over the year. Roll on 2017...

 

The Mistletoe Bough

 

 

 

"The mistletoe hung in the castle hall,
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall...”

 

Here’s a spooky little tale for Christmas Eve. It’s The Mistletoe Bough, a fabulous silent film from 1904, recently recovered from the dusty vaults of the excellent BFI, and restored to glory with a new soundtrack by Peter Wigg from the 90’s band Saint Etienne. You can watch it for free on the BFI player by clicking this link.

 

 The Mistletoe Bough, director Percy Stow, 1904 (BFI) 

 

I’ve been fascinated by this legend for years: as an optimistic sproglet, barely out of shorts and bloody knees, I used to fish a charming little trout stream flowing through the grounds of the Old Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, one of the various ruined manor houses where the legend is supposed to have taken place.

The story first appeared in print in 1822 and resurfaced in the 1830’s as a song written by T.H.Bayley and Sir Henry Bishop. This version became wildly popular and apparently, “its solemn chanting” became a “national occurrence at Christmas”. Cheery lot, those Victorians.

 

David Cox the Elder (1783-1859), The Mistletoe Bride, watercolour over pencil with bodycolour, scratching out and gum arabic

 

For those of you who don’t know the legend, I’m not going to tell you what happens- you will just have to watch the BFI video to find out.

What’s this to do with food, I hear you cry?  Not much. In truth, nothing at all. I wracked my brains for some tenuous culinary link which might appeal to the erudite readership of the Spoon, but couldn’t think of one. 

 

Len Deighton: Making Food Sexy

 

Here’s a post I originally wrote for The Dabbler back in 2013, from a series of features on “Food in the Sixties”:

 

 

Colonel Ross: Champignons? You’re paying ten pence more for a fancy French label. If you want button mushrooms they’re better value on the next shelf.

Harry Palmer: It’s not just the label sir, these do have better flavour.

Colonel Ross (sarcastically): Of course, you’re quite the gourmet, aren’t you Palmer?

The Ipcress File (1965)

I want you to go back in time if you will, to the mid-1960s. To the years when olive oil, famously, could only be tracked down at the local chemist, and Crêpes Suzette was a dish of mystery, savoured only by the likes of the Fab Four and those lucky diners who could afford to splash out at the more desirable restaurants; where at your table, a fawning waiter in a maroon coloured monkey jacket would flambé a steak au poivre.

 

 

Into this culinary desert, strides an egg whisk bearing Harry Palmer, the working class protagonist in Len Deighton’s thriller, The Ipcress File, first published in 1962. Palmer is the perfect anti-hero: vice-versa, a flawed Mister Bond. While Bond holds Her Majesty’s commission in the Senior Service, Palmer scrapes the rank of Sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Bond wears a Walther PPK; Harry Palmer wears National Health Specs. And if fussy old Bond requires his housekeeper to boil the speckled brown egg of a Maran hen for three and a half minutes precisely, Harry Palmer slips Mozart’s Prague onto his trusty record player and whips up an Armagnac soufflé.

 

 

Len Deighton was- is- a man of many talents. He studied at Saint Martin’s before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Ou Est Le Garlic? (his first cookery book, based on his weekly cookery strip for The Observer) was published in 1965. His column appealed to the simplistic and mechanical brains of men: technical, cartoon-like DIY manuals on the fine arts of French and Italian Cuisine. Wannabe sophisticates learnt how to order from an A La Carte Menu (the correct pro-nunc-iation spelt out phonetically), how to stuff a Chou with Tomates, how to deglaze a copper pan, prepare Caneton à l’Orange, cut a cigar correctly (paper band on or off?) and ring up a fancy fishmonger to order smoked eel.

 

 

 

“You’re not the tearaway you think you are” purrs sexy Sue Lloyd during the kitchen scene in The Ipcress File, “You also like books…music…cooking.”

“I like birds best,” says Harry- an unsubtle reminder to a Sixties audience that although Sergeant Palmer appreciates the finer things in life, he reassuringly bats for the home side. At the time, Michael Caine’s character must have seemed remarkably novel, a prototypical yuppy before that depressing acronym had been invented, making it quite clear that it was okay for Real Men to cook, and quite possibly not just okay, but a desirable aid in persuading that voluptuous dollybird in the office (the one you’ve had your eye on for several weeks) to enjoy the delights of your home cooked Rôti de Porc aux Navets, and to climb in between your shiny black nylon sheets after the event.

International Men of Mystery, please take note: The Action Cook Book is still available to buy, albeit via the sinister Kindle. The art of seduction aside, it’s a brilliantly entertaining introduction to decent food, and in our Brave New World of Marks & Spencer microwaved mushroom risotto, this can be no bad thing. Even if Harry Palmer buys tinned Indian Prawn Curry from the supermarket.