Ghosts of Christmasses Pasts

Were the ghost of Marley to visit me in the night to deliver one of his pre-Christmas 'change your ways' diatribes, I think I have a fair idea of what he'd be banging on about.

'Ben, you've given up on life', he'd say. 'You used to be so productive and creative. You'd come up with delicious recipes and share them with the world. You expressed opinions on food and drink in a pithy and engaging fashion with a uniquely quirky turn of phrase, bringing mild amusement to literally tens of people. Why did you stop, Ben? Why?'

And he'd probably have a point. 

Have a very cheesy Christmas!

You know it, I know it. 

It's been another year consisting primarily of bitter disappointment. 

A year when freedoms were routinely steamrolled by authority. A year when the goalposts were constantly being moved, and the ball of wool dangled constantly just out of reach.

A year when whatever you did was never going to be enough, and the only thing you had to look forward to was getting jabbed in the arm again. And again.

Anyway, here's my rubbishcunt Christmas present to you readers. A recipe for quite possibly the cheesiest pasta ever, not to mention the unhealthiest. Enjoy.

The Deacon Centre

OK, so this is, if you like, the BV 2020 Christmas Charity Appeal.

I want you to donate to The Deacon Centre. And if you can't do that, please Like, Follow, Share, Forward and all of that other stuff. LocalGiving for donations. Our Facebook page for general support and sharing.

Believe. Achieve.

This has been a shit year, right? Very little socialising, very little eating out, hardly any going to the pub and beer festivals have been non-existent. We've all had a terrible time.

One of the few positive things that actually happened this year is that a new charity, The Deacon Centre has been established, and things have worked out in such a way that I find myself Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Named after Joey Deacon, we'll be running creative spaces for Service Users with Physical, Learning and Communication disabilities and those who support them. Creative writing. Music. Art and Crafts. Drama. Giving people opportunities to express themselves creatively; a chance to really 'live' rather than to merely 'exist'. (We might even offer some food-related sessions at some point!)

We have some great ideas and big plans for when the pandemic is finished, and a determination to make a difference. It's very early days so we need all the support we can get.

So, if you do one thing this Christmas, do it for Joey.

Thanks.

• Visit the Deacon Centre website

• Visit the Deacon Centre Facebook page to like and follow and share

• Donate to the Deacon Centre via LocalGiving

The Battle of Quality Street

Christmas always seems more Christmassy when viewed through the prism of nostalgia. For me, that'll be mainly Christmases of the 1980s and possibly early 90s, though the magic was beginning to wane by then. 
 
"Ooh, I got a blank E-180 VHS cassette in my stocking! Thank you, that'll come in handy for recording Juliet Bravo." That sort of thing.

Things aren't the way they used to be. Even Quality Street isn't the same any more. But is it really demonstrably worse, or just different?

A big jar or tin of QS has been a part of my family's Christmas since long before I was born, and I have fond memories of eating them. And asking sheepishly 'Can I have another one please, Grandma?'

So, on what would've been Grandma's 90th birthday, I'm going to rank the current Quality Streets from worst to best. Here we go...

Why does this always happen?

Chocs away!

12. The Strawberry Delight. Why, oh why are there always more of these bastards than anything else? Why are these never 'swapped out' from the assortment to give new varieties a chance? Too sweet and synthetic without any kind of flavour that even remotely resembles an actual strawberry, and they're sticky as fuck - little tiny bits of foil always seem to get stuck to the chocolate and have to be either picked off or spat out. Ick.

Some people like them, mind. Grandma, for one.


11. The Milk Choc Block. Sorry, but it's the most pointless Quality Street ever. It's not like it's nice rich chocolate either. Bland and boring.


10. The Orange Creme. It's better than the Strawberry version in every way, but at the end of the Boxing Day, I just can't get excited about 'fruity' soft centres. Still, chocolate and orange is always a winning combination.

9. The Toffee Penny. Once you get chewing it, it's just like the other toffees in the tub, but lacking the chocolate coating, I know Christmas is probably the only time of year I'll actually feel like eating a piece of non-chocolate-coated toffee, but even so, I can't get excited about the penny.

8. The Fudge. Yes, it's fudge. Next.

7. The Coconut Eclair. This one has gone up slightly in my estimation over the past few Christmases. A nice bluey wrapper, and like a sort of chewy bounty, it's a good choice when you feel like something a bit different.

6. The Toffee Finger. It ain't that unique or interesting, but a reliable sweet that may be few folks' favourite but nobody loathes them either. You'll never see a QS tin in the middle of January with these left at the end.

5. The Caramel Swirl. When I was young, the Toffee Cup - a direct predecessor to this sweet - was amongst my favourites, but it's not as good these days. Either it has changed, or I have. Probably both. For a start, the modern day caramel doesn't look as attractive - there was something appealing about taking the band of paper off the old Toffee Cup - and it's just a bit dull. But we all eat them.

4. The Orange Crunch. One of the few relatively recent introductions that has actually lasted the course. Chocolatey, orangey and crunchy. What's not to like? Unless you don't like orangey, crunchy things? Or chocolate, obviously.

3. The Toffee Deluxe. My favourite of the toffees, with the right sort of texture and a good chocolate/toffee ratio. No messing about. These tend to go early.

Some of these are much missed...

2. The Purple One. Who doesn't want a mouthful of caramel and Hazelnut? Mmm. I reckon, on a National scale, if we exclude people with nut allergies and brain injuries, this is probably the most popular one. And 'popular' in ancient Hebrew is 'Purple'. OK, it isn't, but everyone agrees that these are good. Just not quite as good as...

1. The Noisette Triangle. Obviously. It's the best one. It's one of only a few that still looks, feels and tastes like it did when I was a kid. Ground-up nuts are good in chocolate. Maybe it's a poor man's praline; a grubby interpretation of a gianduja. But by Jove, it's the Qualitiest of Quality Street, and they should put at least twice as many in. At the expense of all those fruit cremes. Obviously.

Now then, where other QS rankings might call it a day after counting them down, I've got a little something else for you in my notably-smaller-than-it-used-to-be tin...

Yay, nostalgia!

Over the years a number of sweets have been removed from Quality Street - here's where some of them might've fitted into the rankings today:

The Honeycomb Crunch would go somewhere around 5th-6th place, I reckon. They brought it in a couple of years ago when the Toffee Deluxe was ditched, but now they've pulled a reverse switcheroo. It's a shame because it wasn't a bad sweet.

The old Toffee Square was probably a toffee too far, which is why it disappeared about 30 years ago and, unlike the Toffee Deluxe, it has never come back. From what I can remember, this particular toffee was extremely hard and brittle but always looked rather attractive and regal in a shiny crimson wrapping. I'd probably rate it near the bottom of the top ten. Apparently the official name for this one was 'Caramel', which makes no sense whatsoever.

The Truffle Chunk, or whatever it was called, disappeared around the same time. And this one was actually brilliant. Unwrapping the little brown-gold treasure chest was a joy. It's a long time gone and I can barely remember it, but I'd rank it firmly above everything else, Green Triangle included. There was another one which was similar in appearance that I seem to recall was pretty good too. Possibly coffee, possibly another soft caramel, but this is going way back to when I was a tiny tot. 

At the other end of the scale, the Apricot Delight was a short-lived mystery. And not so much a 'delight' as an abomination. Supposedly apricot-based, yet the wrapping was inexplicably blue while the actual colour of the filling was a sort of minty jizz. With a texture to match. It would rank near the bottom of the league - I didn't like it at all and I'm not sure anybody else ever did.

The Montelimar - now, this would probably be top five. Chocolate-coated Nougat, a bit like a Marathon bar. The texture was not unlike the modern Coconut Eclair which I guess must've eventually replaced it.

And finally, the Cracknel, which has come and gone a couple of times in my lifetime, in various different colour wrappages to boot. I liked it. A bit like a Dime bar, a bit like a Butterfinger, and, crucially, very different from everything else in the tin. I'd rate it top three, possibly even top two. If it were still with us.

So readers, what is your favourite? Which ones would you bring back? What do you completely fucking hate about Christmas these days?

Oh, and Merry Christmas, obviously!

Reindeer Love

OK, something a bit different. Nothing to do with food, nothing to do with restaurants, nothing to do with recipes, nothing, even, to do with pubs and beer, unless you count the several pints I enjoyed at the Radius Arms following a long, hard day in the studio.

You still with me? Good. Now, what I need you to do today is to go and download Reindeer Love by Adam Antler. Yes, it's me. All me. I sing and play all the instruments. And I'd really like to have a Christmas No. 1.

What can I give him? Christmas biscuits!

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a healthy contingent of miserly old scrotes banging on about how it's all too commercialised these days and the true meaning of Christmas has long been lost in a big pile of presents, wrapping and sellotape.

I've had some sympathy with this view since I ceased to be a wide-eyed, innocent infant eagerly opening his Rebel Transporter on Christmas morn. But of all the phenomena that are an affront to what the season should be, presents really aren't top of the list.

I mean, tinsel. What the festive fuck is that all about? At least the star on top of the tree (a custom that itself only goes back to the Victorian era) has some sort of significance. Nobody has ever explained to me what bloody tinsel is supposed to represent. And then there's the Coca-Colary bastardisation of Saint Nikolaos of Myra. And that fucking Darkness song about the bell ends. And The Snowman.

So gift-giving, which was always very much a part of the nativity story, is one of the more authentic traditions, even if the legend has expanded over the years from the original trio of gold, frankincense and myrrh to include drum solos and crutches.

#Dryanuary vs #Tryanuary

Sometimes it feels as though it's not enough for our Gregorian Calendar to sport mere months these days.

STOPtober. MOvember. There's probably a PLEBuary going on somewhere. Every month has to be A Thing, usually with a #trending #hashtag clinging obligatorily to its loins.

This month is, of course, a Double-Whammuary. We've got #Dryanuary - where people give up the grog for a month for charity, auto-detoxication or some combination of the two - and the beer industry backlashtag, #Tryanuary, encouraging drinkers to keep on putting themselves out there, supporting pubs by trying something new and different.

Both camps have plenty of support: Top beer writer Pete Brown goes dry, and is probably dying for a pint by now, while Hardknott brewer Dave Bailey makes a solid and impassioned counter-argument and is unlikely to be thirsty. 

Tiny Tim II - Revenge of the Festive Set Menu

There are lots of annoying things about Christmas, right?

The Godless over-commercialisation, the pubs full of fairweather drinkers, the bandwagon-jumping attempts at seasonal ales made by unimaginatively stuffing a bland, weak, twiggy bitter with nutmeg and cinnamon...

But a greater offence against the senses, possibly than all of these combined, is the shitty £25 Christmas set menu.

You know the one. Three courses. Three options per course. Inoffensive to the point of blandness. Where you have to try really hard not to look like a grumpy old scotal sac in front of co-workers as you wash down dry, overcooked meat with rough-as-fuck house red?

(I know that I had a bit of a whinge on this topic in the very early days of this blog, but it's been four years, so I'm entitled to another one. Consider it an early Christmas present.)

50% off all naked goose-fat massages - today only

So, it's nearly Christmas then, and I've been feeling like I ought to write some sort of a seasonal bloggette.

You know, festive spirit and snowflakes and goodwill beaming down upon the glans of humankind. That sort of thing.

But the sorry truth is that I haven't really come up with any new Christmassy recipes yet, and I already used the puntastic title 'Yule Blog' a few years back, and can't think of anything anywhere near as clever.

So you'll have to amuse yourselves and just pretend that I said something hilarious about cloves.

Souper New Year

I'm sure it's been woefully remiss of me not to have wished everybody a Merry Christmas or indeed a Happy New Year, but here we are already in 2013, and to be honest, this year I'm just glad to have got through it.

It was never going to be a hugely enjoyable Christmas, and being somewhat chronophobic I've never much cared for all this 'New Year' nonsense (although these days it has an altogether different celebratory tone, what with New Years Day being Mrs B-V's birthday).

On the food side, the cheese, rare breed ham and game pie from Borough Market was, as expected, totally fucking awesome, and the excellent Glenmorangie Sauternes cask a very pleasant discovery.
 
But it was a challenge was sticking to the 5:2 diet throughout the festive season, but we managed to average two fasting days each week by making the pattern just slightly less regular than the usual 'every Monday and Thursday'. We've avoided having to do consecutive days too, though there have been a few 'one-gaps' to counterbalance the 'five-gaps' - we're fasting today (Wednesday) and there's another one coming up on Friday.

If anybody has been wondering what we've been eating on the days when we've been restricted to just 600 calories (500 for Mrs B-V) the answer is... mostly soup.

Advent Adjuncts and Minimalist Meals

It's one of the world's great culinary ironies that spices harvested in the hottest countries find their starring role during Winter months on the opposite side of the world. Indeed, it wouldn't feel like Christmas in England without the products of Sri-Lankan and Madagascan Summers.

I have a slightly dichotomic view of cinnamon, nutmeg and their spicy, Wintery bedfellows - I suppose I quite like the novelty value afforded in small doses but probably wouldn't want them in my food all year round.

As an example, this time last year I cooked a festive beef stew (essentially 'mulled beef'), which was interesting and very seasonal, but I haven't been tempted to make it since.

And at this time of year a hot steaming glass of mulled wine full of cloves and fruit is just the ticket, but by January I suspect I shall probably not want any more. (Indeed a couple of Januarys ago I concocted mulled white wine as an alternative).

The German Invasion

Well, baste my roasting fowl, Christmas - yes, Christmas! - is just two weeks - yes, two weeks! - away.

What the festive fuck?!?

I suppose that means I'd better start thinking about presents and merrymaking and food and drink'n'shit.

Now, for reasons outlined earlier in the year, I'm not particularly looking forward to the Yuletide season. It's going to be a bit strange and different and not especially welcome. 'Twould be nice to put Christmas off until June or something, like they do in Australia.

But, nevertheless, it doth cometh apace, and so I'd better put on my best brave face.

The reason I've never cooked a Christmas Dinner

My earliest memory is of December 3, 1979.

I was only about two-and-a-half, but can distinctly remember waking up in the morning and realising that my Mummy wasn't there. Instead, I awoke to Grandma gently explaining that Mummy and Daddy had gone to the hospital, and that I had a new baby brother.

Then came the long walk with Grandma down Longley Road to St George's Hospital to see Mummy and the tiny new family member. That was over 32 years ago.

Yesterday lunchtime I went to that very same hospital - where Grandma had just passed away, aged 83.

eggnogblog

If you're reading this then you survived Christmas - if not necessarily New Year - and unless you're under three, probably suffered from some degree of nostalgia.

The marketing weasels are very clever these days, and they'd love to think that the plethora of new products available will avert our minds eyes from the wistful memories of all the stuff you can't get any more, but which will never be forgotten.

150 watt lightbulbs, high tar cigarettes, guards on trains, the hard square toffee in Quality Street, Gold Top milk... all gone.

Actually, I was surprised to discover recently that the Gold Top (or 'full cream') milk that my grandmother used to give me as a child is actually still available in large supermarkets. Not liking milk very much - unless it's been made into butter or cheese, obviously - I'm not all that bothered either way, but for a few years now I've been meaning to make Egg Nog, and thought that a bottle of Gold Top might well be a useful ingredient. That and eggs, presumably.

Oh, and some booze. Obviously.

The wait is nearly over

I saw a great new festive product on sale this week.

It’s called ‘Bruce Forsyth’s Double-your-Ham’, and it’s brilliant. You just squeeze a couple of drops of the solution onto your Christmas ham using the supplied pipette, and within 30 minutes the ham will increase in size by 100%.

It's Ham-tastic!

Plus, it’s endorsed by the very crown prince of National Treasureland himself – what’s not to like?

For people who don’t like ham, you can also buy Brucie’s ‘Halve your ham’, which basically involves the chinsome octogenarian coming round your house and eating half of your ham.

I admit it, I’m talking rubbish again. He only eats about 40% of it then he gets full and wanders off to present Strictly, so the product is shit. I’m thinking of reporting them to Trading Standards actually.

Although, when you think about it, it does mean that if you keep using the product your ham will technically last forever, albeit in eternally diminishing quantity, because he’ll never take all of it. Hmm. I have some strange dreams. If indeed it was a dream.

Once, as a child I dreamed I was unhappy because I’d spent all my Christmas money on myrrh and didn’t know what to do. 



Chocolate, please
 
Anyway, I think I can safely ascribe my extraordinary mental state lately to a lack of chocolate. It’s now been over three weeks without, apart from a tiny one each day from my Advent Calendar, obviously, and it’s starting to take its toll.

For a start, I wish the calendar actually contained nice chocolate rather than manky Maltesers – and even then, just the chocolate without the crunchy, malty centre; you don’t even get the mini bag of Maltesers until Christmas Eve!

I had to change my dessert selection at my team’s Christmas Lunch from Yule Log (which looked really nice and rich) to the Christmas Pudding, which was far too light and cakey with a distinct shortage of fruit, nuts and alcohol as set-menu Christmas Puddings very often are.

A large box of Hotel Chocolat chocs – possibly the finest chocolates commercially available at the moment and certainly the most varied and interesting – arrived in the office and I couldn’t have any. Bah humbug! (Humbugs not containing any chocolate and hence permissible, of course)

And there was only one style of biscuit in the selection tin that didn’t have chocolate, and in normal circumstances it would have been my last choice. The plain Viennese sandwich – who chooses that for fucks sake?!?

When it was really cold last week I wasn’t even able to go to Paul and have their excellent hot chocolate – man, it’s been tough, I tells ya. Hopefully Bono will put out a charity single alerting people to plight of those who have voluntarily given up chocolate for Advent.

I even had to pass up the chance to drink a chocolate stout the other night - admittedly in the Market Porter where there were about a dozen other beers to choose from, but my hackles were already rankled by the preponderance of fairweather drinkers whose great numbers have rendered pubs horrendously crowded! Maybe landlords are using some kind of Forsyth-endorsed ‘Double your punters’ product?

OK, I’ll stop complaining now anyway. It’s been a good test of my willpower, and just about challenging enough to feel like an achievement. Go Me! And my wife!

There’s only a few days to go, and when we get back after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve I’ll be up for an Augustus Gloop-style feast. 


A very chocolatey Christmas to all Ben Viveur readers too, I might add.

I’m determined to make my first Christmas as a married man as chocolatey as possible – after all, we deserve it, and if Brucie brings out a ‘Double your Yule Log’ product I’ll buy it. Twice.

Festive Beef Stew

You know Christmas is coming when supermarket starts playing 'A spaceman came travelling' while you're buying cloves.

With ten days to go now, it's coming right for us again like a snowballing reindeer and I'm starting to get that unnerving feeling that I haven't pulled my preparatory finger out as much as I should've. The ghost of Christmas Last Minute will be a guest at my table once more. Eek.

But apart from the panicked retail spree on Christmas Eve that I seldom seem capable of avoiding, I actually really enjoy the festive season - probably more so than the people who end up with the mediocre gifts I impulse-buy on December 24, anyway.

I enjoy the music, I enjoy the board games, I enjoy the not having to go to work (although I might very well end up with more of that than I'd like in 2012!). And I enjoy the food and drink, obviously.

Mulled White or The Long Hot Toddy

Well, Happy New Year, folks.

The tenacious longevity of my coldy-fluey-swiney ailment has meant that I've been functioning well below 100% through the festive season and into 2011, but I think I've hit upon a tasty cure which I'll share with you today.

During the Winter months I enjoy mulling wine, as, I'm sure, do many of you. It's a simple way to rustle up some festive cheer - a rough red, heated up with some apples and oranges, and the classic seasonal spice combo of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Mmmmm. Warms the heart, so it does.

I've also mulled ale and cider a few times over the years. Give me a naked flame, a handful of cloves and a cinnamon stick and I'll mull anything, me.

But the other day I began - ahem - mulling over a little vinous thought that just wouldn't go away. What about mulled white wine?

Yule Blog

Well, festoon my hearth with Yuletide mirth and gluttony, it done be Christmas Eve here, and one of those very special times of the year that I usually spend indulging in fine food and drink. (Not unlike the rest of the year, in fact!)

Merry Christmas!

Cheese @ Borough Market

Sadly this year the festive flu has rather curtailled such intentions thus far -  I've been pretty much housebound for the past week or so, with tastebuds so jaded I could probably eat a whole filet-o-fish without sicking up chunks of reformed pollock, and have thus been unable to sample much in the way of seasonal flavours.

There have been a couple of exceptions though - I made it as far as Borough Market the other day to stock up on high-quality cheeses (Comte, Mont D'or, and Worksop Blue on the Ben Viveur cheeseboard this Christmas!) and was able to neck a few festive ales en route in the excellent pubs nearby.

I'd rather be Tiny Tim

Work Christmas party last night - the first one of the year - and at the risk of offending my otherwise lovely bosses, it was the culinary equivalent of a multi-vehicle pile-up with no survivors. But then these sorts of things usually are.

For years, my work Christmas parties consisted of eating a plateful of shit food, drinking uninspiring house red, trying and failing to cop off with girls I fancied, getting a bit pissed (both in the English and American sense of the expression), trying and failing to cop off with anyone at all, ranting and raving about the futility of life, then finally stumbling home home alone in a raging, dispairing, sobbing, drunken heap of messed-upness.

These days, now I'm all grown up and cohabiting, a work Christmas party merely consists of eating a plateful of shit food then going home early. Which is, I suppose, rather better.

I guess it was too much to hope for that the standard of Christmas party menus would improve in the way that other aspects of my life have done though. As meals go, 'christmas dinner with all the trimmings' has to be one of the most overrated, overhyped, overpriced dishes ever conceived. Yet we eat it every year, often on more than one day.