Christmas our way: it's about food, drink and family

Christmas presents against
the backdrop of the lake

When I was younger Christmas would come once a year. It took a long time to come around. But these days it seems to come much more frequently. The Christmases I remember when I was young were, of course, in another place where it was cold, or if not cold then damp and windy. It would start getting dark at about half past three in the afternoon. Fires burnt. You dressed up to go outside if indeed you ventured outside at all.

Christmas in this place is different. For one thing it has turned into a festival of frenzy. Perhaps it is also a festival of frenzy in the other place as well but it does seem to me that by Christmas Eve the entire world is convinced that Armageddon is nigh and that the shops will never open again. More specific to where I am, is that Christmas here comes when it is hot, or at least when it is summer. This is something that The G is completely content with and used to but for me the sight of Father Christmas in shorts is as counter-intuitive as it is possible to be.

Oly is a touch older than that
memorable Christmas of 1981

Notwithstanding all this Christmas is still, for me (and I hope for The G) a time for the family. I will steadfastly refuse to be anywhere other than my own home for Christmas. I made the mistake once when Oly was about 15 months of going to spend Christmas with my folks. I still recall the continual watch that had to be kept on anything that might be eaten or broken by a 15 month-old toddler. My Mother, who had had four children of her own, had moved (as she thought) stuff out of reach but she had forgotten how persistent a 15 month-old can be when he has decided he wants to eat or break something!!

Oly and Meghan enjoy opening
their presents

Well, Oly is now 35 and he is determined still to eat things and the only thing he really breaks is the record for drinking bottles of beer in a single sitting. He flew in this Christmas on 20 December so we had a couple of quiet days with him. His partner Meghan, a lovely Irish colleen from Limerick or somewhere nearby (Ireland is a big green field to me where it always rains) and his brother Sammy arrived by fast car on 23 December. The car, which is a rogue-software-affected VW, is called Bowser. They did explain to me why she is so called but I cannot remember.

Many of my mythical readers will know that it is impossible to live in this house and not to be swept up in a whirlwind of preparation for a veritable litany of culinary delights. Each occasion seems to deliver some delectable offering that surpasses the one before, though at the time each delight seems to be unsurpassable. It would not surprise me if this year’s delight is unsurpassable but I will be happy to be surprised.

Sammy prepares a mean breakfast

Christmas Day arrived and it was fine and sunny day. Not the hottest day, thankfully, but warm enough. The sea beckoned and so we went off for a swim. This at least is one way in which an antipodean Christmas is better than a Northern hemisphere Christmas. You can swim comfortably in the sea. The purpose of the swim is, I believe, to enable the boys to justify the breakfast that they will eat. Sammy is a master of the breakfast and arranges his plates in a way that would do credit to the most fastidious of chefs in the most refined of restaurants (well perhaps not refined as the quantities consumed by the boys is not consistent with the delicacy of approach one would equate to refinement).

No sooner have we washed up the breakfast things than we start on the luncheon arrangements. We like a long slow lunch. This year we decided that we would have a tapas-style lunch of about eight small courses. You will see from the pictures that small is a relative term but although the courses were reasonably substantial we made lunch last for about 7 hours.

Robbo looking surprised and with
very good reason

Our friend Robbo appeared late. He was due at 1300 but turned up at 1320. This is most unusual as Robbo is known throughout the civilised as being one who arrives early. We know this now and plan accordingly but when he is late The G becomes concerned that he has driven off the road. This is not an unrealistic concern as we learned that our friend Moya had done just this on Christmas Eve while driving back from Canberra to Moruya to open and supervise retail operations at her exclusive Moruya-based emporium “To Di For”.

While travelling between Bungendore and Braidwood she decided that she would fall asleep at the wheel. This is not a good idea. The consequence was that she tried to do a bit of off-roading. Being asleep at the wheel and embarking on a bit of off-roading is not a good combination. Trees were felled, the entire landscape quaked at the onslaught that was a blue Toyota Camry. The trees won in the end and Moya enjoyed Christmas in Canberra hospital with two broken arms, three broken ribs and a broken toe. Fortunately, apart from these injuries, she is relatively OK. The car is not OK, the fire people had to cut her out of it.

The wines…

The Dal Zotto sparkling

But enough of that. Robbo did finally appear and he at least had not decided to play with the trees. We rewarded him for his epic and trouble-free 12 minute drive with a glass of a Dal Zotto sparkling white. We had visited Dal Zotto during our Victoria trip in November and we have enjoyed since a couple of very satisfactory bottles of theirs.

The Scion Fleur

Before we got to the Durif, we enjoyed with our whiskey-cured salmon (see below) a bottle of Scion’s 2014 Fleur. This is a very good wine – beautiful and crisp and just right to start with. We had liked Scion winery because the young (to us) vigneron named Roly talked about “constructing” wines to go with food. He was a nice guy as well and that counts.

All the wines we drank for our Christmas lunch were the result of the Victoria trip. All were very good but the centrepiece was the massive magnum of Warrabilla 2006 Durif. When I was younger and spritelier I used to raise a quizzical eyebrow when someone referred to a wine as “big”. The bottle is pictured with the Pork Pie below. When you drink this it is like being transported to another world. The nose is so full of blackberries and plums and other stuff you could believe you had fallen into an orchard or wandered unexpectedly into a fruit farm. The palate is soft and long (that is the taste hangs around for a long while). It was truly a magnificent wine. We have, I am delighted to say, another magnum (we bought two) and I will be looking forward to the second though we will need to find another suitably qualified couple to share it with.

The Dal Zotto Sangiovese: a very
good wine but we did not do it any
favours by preceding it with the Durif

The Durif ran out and we turned briefly to another Dal Zotto, this time a Sangiovese. We did not do this justice though it was a lovely drop and I will look forward to another bottle. But after the Durif it would have been difficult to imagine any wine that was man enough to compete.

We also enjoyed a Scion light Muscat with our Christmas pudding. This was also very nice. The G felt that the Christmas pudding was too heavy after the earlier courses but she was alone in this view. She is not often wrong but in this case there is no doubt that she was mistaken!

But to the food. I cannot do much more than reproduce the pictures of the dishes we savoured.

To the food…

Whiskey-cured salmon gravlax

After we had refreshed ourselves with the Dall Zotto sparkling we started with a whiskey-cured salmon gravlax. The G has made this before and this year’s was even better than the previous versions.

We had found a bottle of Australian whisky at the Berry bottle shop made by James Bentley (I cannot find a website) and we used this for the curing of the salmon. It is not what one would call a fine drinking whiskey but it performed a useful service in assisting with this dish. 

The G served this with some pickled cucumbers which she had, of course, pickled herself.

Peach soup

The G is well-known for her Peach Soup. It is, as you would expect for a summer soup, served cold. It requires a bottle of reasonable desert wine. 

This year she used a Mount Majura 2008 sticky wine made from pinot gris, riesling and chardonnay grape varieties.

The soup is served with frothed cream on the top and a sprinkling of nutmeg.

We washed this down with the Scion 2014 Fleur (which is pictured above). The Fleur was about as perfect a match for this soup as you can imagine.

The Pork Pie and
the fabled Durif

But it was not long ere we were into the Warrabilla Durif. The nose was discernible from 100 yards and we had a magnum. You may not have quite understood just what a fine wine this was: it was a very fine wine.

We’ve been perfecting our pork pie over the last two or three years. The boys joke that they killed wildlife with the first (rather solid) version. But we have carefully researched the pork pie and its manufacture and all I can say is “watch out Melton Mowbray”.

We had significantly improved the jelly in the pie and its distribution. We have a couple more improvements for next year but this pie is now well-established in the Moore family culinary lexicon.

Prawn cocktail - G style

It may seem odd to follow the pork pie with a prawn cocktail but The G felt that something lighter was needed after the pork pie and she was right.

We had bought the prawns from (as The G calls her) The Prawn Lady who is at Bodalla about 10km away. These prawns were sweet and succulent and about as fresh you can get. The weather was right for a swift prawn cocktail and The G had called this one absolutely right especially with the mayonnaise she makes which never anything short of spectacular.

The G has various Men and Ladies: these include The Peach Lady, The Garlic Lady and The Olive Oil Man. I suppose these people must have names but why spoil a good thing?

Ham. Enough said

I think we rested a while before the next course but we may not have rested long.

The Christmas ham is a great thing. We have acquired ours from the IGA supermarket for the last couple of years and we have always been every pleased.

The boys fry slices up for breakfast with eggs.

This year I caramelised some onions (with sugar and red wine) and we just served the ham simply with a potato salad garnished with a cherry (which comes from The Cherry Man who comes every year coincidentally to Bodalla).

Cheese from Bruny Island

Cheese is an important food in the annals of human food production and so it is to the Moore Christmas.

These cheeses come from The Bruny Island Cheese Company. We are members of the Bruny Island Cheese Club which means we order, and get some sort of discount on, quantities of cheese a couple of times a year. Bruny Island is in Tasmania and its owner is a passionate cheese maker.

We decided that we needed something a little fortified to accompany the cheese so we opted for the Scion Muscat which worked extremely well.

A mince pie

You cannot generally enjoy a long lunch that has been planned by The G without having a pre-desert. Robbo had brought some mince pies so we had one of them.

These mince pies are made by, wait for it, The Cake Lady. Her name is Chris and she runs a business with her husband called Eat More Cake. Her basic philosophy runs along the lines that eating more cake may make you put on weight but that has the advantage of making you harder to kidnap. So every cloud has a silver lining.

Even my sister has eaten an Eat More Cake cake.

Gerry's Christmas Pudding

Lesser mortals would have been flagging by now. But we are not lesser mortals. 

The G’s friend Gerry (who is moving to Tuross in early 2016) makes us a Christmas pudding each year and The G serves it with cherries and custard (which you can call crème anglais if you want). I have finally persuaded her that custard is served hot and not, as the Australians might have it, cold.

No doubt Gerry will be joining us on Christmas Day next year.

We had found a bottle of Moor Beer Company’s stout whose name is a play on the boys’ surname so we though this would be amusing. It was also really, really good!

You may think that by this time we were replete. And we were, though not replete enough not finish with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange just, you understand, to settle our tummies!

Next year

And now all that remains is to start planning for next year.