Just Once a Year

Last Christmas was a two-day affair, conducted in a makeshift fashion at my sister's house. I had just started working at Suntory, and had hardly any holidays, and so my parents very kindly came down and made Christmas happen, right down to a mini-Christmas tree bought for the occasion. Still, it was a minimalist sort of celebration.

This year I think we unconsciously made up for last year's austerity. To begin with, our numbers were increased by Shoo, who came up to Lancaster with me, and Corinna's boyfriend Nick, who lives nearby and can always be counted on for a big appetite and good banter.

So many things about this Christmas have been perfect: the crisp, clear weather, the big tree, the central heating not breaking down, and managing to roast a whole duck that had crispy skin and tasty, moist meat inside, to my mother's particular delight.

My first-time blinis, served up on Christmas eve with sour cream and smoked salmon, were judged a fitting preface to Dad's sea bass. I was worried we didn't have any yeast to make them with, but Dad insisted there was some easy blend stuff in a cupboard. Once fished out it revealed a best before date of 1993! I suspect it came from my UK-resident granny's after she died (when I was in high school). I remonstrated that it would be unusable, but Dad insisted that he saw on an archeology programme that yeast from the fourth century or somesuch unearthed from a site was found to still be active: in it went.

So I stand corrected; in the end our elderly yeast was just fine, and there didn't seem to be any adverse effect on the taste. The blinis were made using a Delia recipe (Nigel Slater's skipped the buckwheat flour, and having gone out of my way to find it in the late hours of Christmas eve I was bloody well going to use it). Don't they look pretty on my parents' nice white china?

Then there was my mum's birthday. She was in need of some serious cheering up, for various reasons, but I think we succeeded in doing just that. Shoo and I spent the day in the kitchen making a Japanese feast, which then got eaten up rather too quickly to take photos. But they're all dishes I want to revisit, so some time in the future I'll be posting about braised pork, fried aubergines in miso sauce and perhaps some maki-sushi...

The cake was one I made for Maddy for her birthday back in June - an amazing chocolate hazelnut cake with nutella ganache. This time the ganache went a little awry on me. This one too is on my list of recipes to post, but not until I've had one more go at it to iron out the wrinkles.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday, whatever you got up to, and whoever you were with.