Eating through Christmas

The menu for the family dinner on Christmas Eve has much more than the actual ingredients that go into each dish. More than anything else, sentiment, family traditions and memories of many Christmases Past go into the making of a Christmas menu and that is what makes it special.

For our family it starts with the arrival of a big square red box, which contains The Christmas Cake. I write that in Capitals because to me The Christmas Cake means the beginning of Christmas.

On her first Christmas in her own home, having discovered the lady who bakes this delicious concoction, my daughter started sending it to all the separate households of the family. She sends it twelve days before Christmas and it has become for me the harbinger of Christmas. The Christmas Cake is not like an ordinary cake. It has no frosting and is only as sweet as a good ensaimada. Imagine, if you will, a dozen and a half special ensaimadas laced together with a delicious mixture of red maraschino cherries and green and red bits of other candied fruit drenched with honey and caramel and sprinkled lightly with confectionary sugar. That would be The Christmas Cake, which seems to have been designed on purpose so you can easily break off a section of it to take with your morning coffee every morning for the "Twelve days of Christmas", counting your blessings with every luscious bite.

Soon after the Christmas cake arrives, other food gifts start trickling in, baked with loving care by dear friends. They cannot ever be duplicated by even the best of professional bakers because as you nibble on them, you smile to yourself and imagine with how much affection they were made. I used to regard as another sign of Christmas the arrival of the "Best Apple Pie in town" still hot from the oven of a young friend of mine. But lately it has not been forthcoming (Where are you, dear Maripu?) and has been supplanted by another delicious pie from the bakeshop of another dear friend, Ida Caro Guzman. This has now become a regular item on our Christmas menu along with the irresistible little German cookies that Esther Esteban makes from her mother’s Old World recipes.

But why am I starting with the dessert? To proceed in the regular eating order, our Christmas dinner starts with the cocktail snack. First slices of Spanish chorizos sautéed in olive oil with plenty of garlic and sliced onions and eaten with hot French bread (or is it Spanish pan?). When I used to come back from my frequent trips to Spain, my hand carry would have driven those bomb detector police dogs crazy. They would have been diverted from their official duties by the tempting aroma of genuine Spanish sausages. But now, there is no problem; I use local Spanish-style sausages easily available at any of the local Spanish restaurants.

At about the time several platters of this have been consumed, the lechon arrives. At our Christmas family dinners, lechon is not as it is usually is, one of the main courses. With us it is part of the cocktail hour. This is one of the oldest of our family Christmas traditions dating back to my very first Christmas as a very much-married woman. The man of my house had fond memories of his childhood Christmases when he and his four siblings would waylay the lechon while it was still being brought to the dining room and there would be a mad scramble as to who would get the tail and who would get the ears and the last one (who usually was he because he was the youngest) would get whatever piece he could manage to tear off as the lechon was being rushed away from further disfiguration. Our version of this is a bit less rambunctious–bits of crisp skin are properly carved off and served as snacks with the drinks. But one way or another the lechon finally arrives at the dining table without half of the balat, looking a bit forlorn.

But the basic idea remains the same–Christmas family dinners are the only time of the year when you can eat anything you want the way you want it and hang the social amenities. I had a sister-in-law who liked her ice cream with ketchup topping! As the old pol "Amang" Rodriguez whose non-English ante-dated Erap’s would put it–"You can feel in the family way!"

After this rather informal beginning, the rest of our dinner proceeds in a more formal fashion. The first course is always a heavy soup made from a recipe given to me years ago by a fellow army recruit (a.k.a. army wife) who got it in turn from her Spanish father who used to be with the old Tabacalera (now Hacienda Luisita). He used to make it for his Spanish colleagues on Christmas when they were all homesick for Madre España. They probably used to call it "Pote del Gallego" but in our family it has become known as "Mama’s Soup" and it has to be made exactly the same way every year and by me or they will want to know "what happened?" The secret of this particular dish is to keep boiling it for two whole days until everything becomes an unidentifiable but delicious mish mash.

The paella also is referred to by everybody around our buffet table as "Mama’s paella" and according to them it has no equal in town. I feel flattered and pleased no end, of course, when they say that. I keep thinking "Who me?" because I never set out to be a cook and there was a time when I could not even boil an egg. But I learned to make a good paella, having practically eaten my way through all of southern Spain. As soon as I entered the door of my favorite little restaurant in the shadow of the cathedral in Sevilla, the lone waiter would yell to the cook–"Paella y coca-cola!" It might as well have been my name!

In these "educational tours" I was guided through the mysteries of arroz valenciana by a genuine Valenciano whose most treasured childhood memory was of the time his mother cooked 14 versions of arroz for a houseful of guests. One for every day of their two-week holiday in their old house in Bocairente, a picturesque medieval town on top of a high mountain.

It seems his mother was a born cook. She kept cooking until she was past 80. She died a fitting death–while cooking one of her concoctions, she was overcome by fumes from a leak in her old fashioned gas oven. She died with her apron on, a martyr to her epicurean cause!

I, too, remember some astounding paellas–at the home of my friend Lolita Got in Alicante, the paella was made out of rabbit meat. Gratefully I did not know till I had eaten a whole plateful. It tasted like chicken. In the home of Betsy Brias outside of Madrid, she served us a paella in a cast iron paellera so large it almost covered a whole round table for twelve. The guests were each given a serving spoon and they scooped out their portions from the paellera, which moved slowly around on a revolving disc in the middle of the table. It was so huge that it would not fit in any oven and had to be cooked over an outdoor fire tended by four cooks who kept stirring it so the rice would not get scorched.

But you do not have to go into all that to produce a good paella. To be sure the rice is well done I do not cook the rice in the sauce–I cook it apart then mix the cooked rice with the sauce that is made separately and I use chicken broth instead of plain water for the rice. Now my "secret" is out!

Anyway, as I said before, Christmas food tasted special because it is prepared with a heavy mixture of sentiment, cherished memories and lots of affection.

When I think of the Christmases of my childhood, I wonder whatever did happen to my mother’s old nut bowl, which used to be brought out only on Christmas. It was an enormous bowl made of one solid piece of black narra with a heavy wooden mallet to match. Come Christmas time it would be filled to the brim with walnuts and hazel nuts still in the shell. There was a raised portion in the middle of the bowl and the trick was to stand a nut on it and whack away with the wooden hammer. There were little silver forks with which to pry out the meat from the cracked shell. And always there was a bowl of raisins on the side that you ate together with the nuts–a heavenly combination that I have not eaten since I was a kid on Christmas Day. Why don’t they have nut bowls anymore? (Somebody is bound to say because nowadays the nuts are everywhere!)

And speaking of childhood delights–at one of the luncheons held recently by our Wednesday Group, Loleng Panlilio brought a cake for the birthday girl, Trining Corominas. It was Angel Cake. Nobody makes Angel Cake anymore. Loleng explained that the cakes are made by an old tenant of hers, a retired chef, who gives them to her along with his apartment rental! Everybody agreed it was a great deal. They had not tasted anything quite as delicious. As for me, the last time I had Angel Cake it was my grandfather’s 70th birthday and I was six years old and got to lick the cake knife!

That is what I mean–Christmas food brings back good memories. Good friends and good memories are an unbeatable combination. Love and laughter are the best ingredients of all. So happy eating!