I’ve not given my friends their Christmas gifts as yet and I hope they’re too busy socialising and stuffing their faces to read this blog because I’m about to reveal how I made their gifts.
The thought of Christmas gift buying practically brings me out in hives, because I can’t bear pre-Christmas crowds and the over-commercialisation of Christmas.
I thought about simply buying everything online, but when I got a bottle of delicious chokecherry jelly from my friend Charlene’s father in Canada, it occurred that homemade gifts might not be such a bad idea.
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Next time, I’ll follow the wisdom of the professionals and write my Christmas articles in July! That’s how the food magazines do it. They get the celebrity chefs and their cooking teams to create the dishes, don festive dress, take the photos and write the articles in the height of summer. At least I’ll have the weather on my side if I want to create a Caribbean Christmas in July.
It’s been hard to fulfil my ambition of producing a series of Christmas articles because I’ve had the most manic three weeks at work. I wanted to write about a wonderful ham recipe but after some really long days, all I could do was eat and sleep when I got home at night.
Now that the mad Christmas rush has gone, this piece might seem a bit belated but there’s still a lot of eating and socialising to do until New Year and that’s where the ham comes in very handy.
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A true Caribbean Christmas isn’t complete without seasonal drinks. In Trinidad and Tobago, sorrel, ginger beer and ponche a creme are must haves for the season.
I have very vivid memories of Auntie Gloria’s delicious, spicy sorrel on the rocks in posh frosted glasses - usually reserved for company and special occasions - and a thick slab of black cake. Absolutely fabulous!
Sorrel isn’t exactly the easiest thing to find in London - unless you’re after the herb sorrel. You’d have to find a savvy Caribbean shop where the owner has sourced some dry sorrel from back home and then you’d pay around £1.50 for 150g of the dried red leaves.
But sorrel is an experience, of which drinking is the final stage. It starts with the tedious task of picking the red leaves as explained by a sorrel vendor in this short video made by Bookman.
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The next time I go to Paris, it’ll be to explore the heaving multicultural diversity of its cuisine. After reading The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, an inviting and funkily illustrated cookbook that delivers on the promise to bring the ‘French melting pot’ into our kitchens, I’ve been inspired to hop on the Eurostar and steam over there in record time for a gastronomic adventure.
Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaije have gifted us the first book to focus on the ethnic influences on Paris’s traditional haute cuisine. And thanks to Dinah Diwan’s illustrations, the Ethnic Paris Cookbook is also a visual feast. In fact, it recently copped the Best Illustrated Cookbook award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Can Cook, Must Cook caught up with Snaije, a journalist and Puckette, a computer consultant turned caterer to find out what more about them and about this great book. Here’s what they had to say.
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Raisins, currants, sultanas, prunes, cherries and mixed peel - the dried fruits that are now happily soaking in rum until it’s time to bake the great Caribbean Christmas cake in a couple of weeks. Some might say that I’m a bit late, because I should have been soaking them six months ago but I don’t agree.
This might sound like blasphemy to some, but I don’t even think there’s anything wrong with soaking the fruits in alcohol the night before baking the cake. I feel it’s how you treat the cake after you bake it that makes all the difference.
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