10
A Merry Down Under Christmas
December (ctd.) The beaming Uncle Flossie lifted his glass of Veuve Clicquot. “Here’s to us, chaps! Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas!” we all echoed, drinking…
There was a reverent silence.
Then Greg said: “Wow! That’s some drop, Charles!”
Smirking, the genial uncle agreed: “Not bad, hey? Talked it over, y’know, and then decided that since it was odds-on your Australian Customs wouldn’t know Château LeBec if they fell over it, we’d claim it was just an ordinary cheap table wine, and all bring in bottles of The Widow as our duty-frees!”
One or two younger persons looked uneasily at our host at this: would it be taken as insulting the Aussies, not to say their wines? But Greg merely grinned, said: “Good on ya, mate!” and sipped his fizz.
Then we got on with the Christmas feast, Australian-style.
One is frankly tempted to draw a veil. Terrifically generous of Greg tho it was to have invited all of us for Christmas dinner. Well I say dinner but we were eating at two o’clock in the afternoon of a very hot day. Mercifully in the air conditioning of the Silvercreek Cellar Door. The small café tables had been cleared away to the far side of the big room and we were at a long trestle table brought in for the occasion, set by the tall windows and the big sliding glass doors giving onto the vine-shaded patio. Clive Lamont had wondered why we didn’t sit out there, but a venture thereto had resolved that one and he’d retreated hurriedly.
Well it wasn’t the hottest Christmas they’d had hereabouts, by no means, but it was well into the thirties and predicted to go higher over the next couple of days, tho this December on the whole had been dry but not very hot in the Barossa, at least in local terms. They had had a very wet spring and altho Silvercreek and the surrounding area, up as far as Kev Manning’s place, hadn’t suffered from flooding and the threat of mildew like some of the lower-lying growers had, the vines were in very heavy leaf indeed, and Duck was predicting a very late vintage.
Well biting on the bullet, one can report that the table was groaning under the fat of the land. Not to say a goodly portion of the fruits thereof. Or their juices, so to speak. Janine Stuart always spent Christmas with her own family, but Silvia and her Jamie didn’t have anyone—Jamie’s brother never bothered, apparently, to come home and see his mum at the festive season—so they always joined up with Greg, and of course old Charlie Lewisham as well. (His avowed declaration being that he’d sooner die than spend Christmas with his daughter and “that ponce” she was married to, oops!) So Silvia was in charge of the cooking and it was all stops out.
The first course was apparently traditional in Australia at Christmas—at least, several persons had assured one it was, tho if one dated the main horticultural crop concerned… Never mind. A modern tradition, let’s say! Avocado halves filled with, nay heaped with, enormous prawns mixed with chunks of crayfish in mayonnaise. A commercial brand, but it was soy-based, according to Silvia, and much better for you than the cheaper supermarket brands! If she said so. They also used it in the potato salad they sometimes offered in the restaurant. Well it wasn’t bad as bottled mayo went, but what Marthe would have said… As for seafood in summer! Properly refrigerated tho it was—in fact it was served still very cold. We had all, of course, been brought up not to eat seafood in the months without an R in them, and reversing this for the Southern Hemisphere… Quite. In fact in Paris one can’t even buy fresh seafood in the markets in those mo— Never mind. The whole of Australia, we had come to realise, was highly refrigerated as well as air-conditioned, and one could only trust that these fruits de mer had been kept really, really well chilled from the moment they were hauled from their briny depths.
Well both Uncle Flossie and Clive Lamont lapped the result up like lambs, bless them, and praised the cook, Silvia duly blushing, laughing and disclaiming: it was so easy! Flossie of course, with his usual smoothness, agreed with them, and lifted his glass to Silvia into the bargain. Mireille, poor darling, was looking agonised and trying to smile politely. But of course she ate hers up. Luckily Bean Minor was sitting next to her and was able to murmur in her ear: “T’en fais pas,” with the information that the Aussies refrigerated everything. I was on her other side and confirmed this. And dutifully ate mine up. Well yes, very palatable, but could one tactfully suggest that someone (not me) teach Silvia how to make real mayonnaise? Er… No. Not really. Well the Veuve Clicquot washed that lot down nicely, and apart from the cook herself, only Jamie and I of those present were aware of just how many extra avocados, cut into and found to be either much too hard or brown and horrid, were lurking out there in the kitchen…
Then came the main course. And the bottles of Château LeBec which sure enough, the officials on duty at Sydney airport had merely shrugged over and let through on payment of a purely nominal sum. True, the two senior gents had the very fake receipts from Oncle Albert to prove how cheap the stuff had been. At least, they were perfectly genuine receipts, but the prices were totally fake.
The pièce de résistance? Given that this was South Australia in the middle of a hot Antipodean summer? Yep: a GIANT American bird, glistening golden-brown, rimmed with unnecessary balls of stuffing which had been baked separately because one didn’t want them to be too greasy, given all the other fatty foods we’d be having today. Big fancy vegetable dishes which dated from Greg’s grandmother’s day and which his father was astonished to find were still going strong, mounded with glistening well-browned roasted potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes and roasted pumpkin. Er—manifestly greasy, yes. Given the ambient temperature, would anyone actually want— Never mind. Ours not to reason why. Two more large bowls, possibly not strictly vegetable dishes, as old Charlie Lewisham didn’t comment on them, of green peas (very green: frozen) and carrots, each topped with generous knobs of melting butter. She knew Charlie always liked them—okay. Any sensible provider of a trad. Christmas feast would surely have stopped there? There was far more than even the crowd of us could eat.
But no! Side dishes. (Um, didn’t the trad. veg. of Olde England count as sides, Down Under? Surely she couldn’t merely be compensating for the lack of the over-boiled choux de Bruxelles which the boys had been fearing since the words “traditional” and “English” had been proudly breathed quite some time earlier?) A huge platter full of roasted chunks of aubergine, I mean eggplant, zucchini and capsicums, assorted colours. Dotted with fresh basil, very attractive. Olive oil, yes. (Okay, the Italian touch didn’t count as greasy.) Four enormous bowls of mixed salad: tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and since it was Christmas a little wild rocket. (I.e. cultivated wild rocket.) With a vinaigrette. Two enormous and one would have said redundant bowls of potato salad, merrily dotted with tiny squares of raw red capsicum. Dressing a mayonnaise and yoghurt mix, eh? Mm, unusual. Lighter, yes, Silvia. An extra salad, since there were so many of us, composed of rice, a generous amount of diced watermelon, small pieces of fetta cheese, and a mixture of roughly chopped mint and flat-leaved parsley. She hadn’t been able to find an exact recipe for it on the Internet, so it was a sort of combination of several she’d looked at. Well there were plenty with mangoes and rice, but they all seemed to use prawns, and of course we’d already had— One could only be thankful for small mercies, there.
This would have seemed more than enough—in fact it did seem more than enough. But no. The turkey wasn’t the only meat on offer, by no means. There was also a HUGE juicy ham, proudly bristling like a demented porcupine with unnecessary indeed totally redundant pieces of pineapple and preserved cherries on sticks, what sort of porcine monster must it have come off? At this point the housewifely thought occurred—perhaps I’d been brainwashed by the prevailing ambiance—will there be be room in the combined fridges of the restaurant and Greg’s kitchen for what was clearly going to be a huge mountain of leftovers?
The feast was completed by two elegantly curved sauce boats of gravy and four smallish crystal bowls containing variously cranberry sauce and cranberry jelly. One of the gravy jugs matched the vegetable dishes identified by Charlie as his mum’s and the other had belonged to Silvia’s grandmother. So there you were.
The lads watched in awe as Greg, old Charlie and Webber (whose sister and brother-in-law, the web designers, lived in Adelaide but were on hols. in Tazzie this year) happily helped themselves to piled hot vegetables to accompany their huge slices of turkey and ham and their triple stuffing balls, then slathering the bird, the veg. and the balls with thick gravy and mounding the ham with the preserved offerings of the American cranberry bush or as it were, tin. One would have said this was more than enough but no: tolerantly they allowed Silvia to give them spoonfuls of the salads.
Uncle Flossie and Clive Lamont weren’t far behind, the latter apparently determined, tho his helpings of each offering weren’t as large, to sample every dish on the table. Help.
Well I must say the grandes bouffes de l’Oncle Albert were not small either, no, but nevertheless poor Mireille was looking quite dismayed. Quickly Bean Minor helped her to a nice slice of white turkey meat and a smallish slice of ham, explaining (considerately in French) that she didn’t have to stuff herself, and no-one would mind if she didn’t have the roasted vegetables. She smiled weakly and whispered back that it was such a hot day…
Quite.
I'm afraid I stuck to some sliced meats, the salad with the vinaigrette, and a spoonful of the roasted Italian veg. mix, since it didn’t seem popular. Flossie, looking very neutral, followed suit.
The other lads had got their breaths and commenced to dig in…
By the time Clive Lamont cheerily proposed another toast, this one in a Château LeBec aged rather older than I was, I was feeling strongly that if I ate another mouthful I would have no room for pudding. Which I knew was coming up, and Silvia had been slaving over it. Or them, rather: puddings, plural.
“To a jolly fine Christmas dinner, and to the cook! To Silvia!”
And we all toasted the fierily blushing but terrifically pleased Silvia.
The main course was then cleared rather slowly, and as we waited for Silvia and Jamie to bring in the puds Bean Minor and I explained to Mireille that it would be a traditional English Christmas pudding, yes: she’d made one of those; but in addition a favourite Aussie dessert dish, dating from approx. les années vingt. Yes, the recipe must be about a hundred years old.
First the trad. English Christmas pudding was proudly borne in. Greg leapt up, er, staggered up, and helped lower it to the table, then grasping the bottle of brandy which had been sitting in the middle of the festive board unopened throughout, none of us foreigners asking why, tho from time to time we had all eyed it uncertainly. Okay, he was going to light the pudding!
Would the brandy be too cold in the air conditioning to ignite? Bean Minor wondered very quietly in French. One could only hope so.
… No. Gasps followed by expressions of admiration, as blue flames flickered round the mound of what looked just like a heavy English fruit-cake, the sort that one summer hols. when we were staying with the Ovendens their daily help, Mrs Terry, had made because Horrible Hearty Henry, Egg’s older brother, had expressed a wistful longing for one, misguided woman. Very dark, stuffed with dried fruit, oozing with booze—whisky, I think, in that instance—and really should have been left to mature for a bit before being eaten, the which didn’t happen. Very little actual cake mixture determinable in between the richly squashy and definitely alcoholic fruit. That sort of thing.
Mr Lamont by this time was on his feet, beaming, glass of Château LeBec in hand. “Come on, everyone! Fill your glasses! Let’s have the traditional standing toast to the pudding!”
Crumbs. Was it? Did one? Okay, we all staggered to our feet, filled our glasses, and drank.
“To the pudding!”
I didn’t dare catch Flossie’s eye, I just sat down again rather quickly.
Well I don’t know what a Christmas pudding would be served with in England but this one was destined to be served with plain vanilla ice cream, if desired. And the flames having died down, it was duly cut up and served. Just small slices, because there was also—
Admiring oohs and aahs arose as the second pudding, actually two of them, appeared. Quietly Bean Minor explained to Mireille that this was it, the Aussie speciality. We had had it before, yes. The name? After the famous ballerina: she had come out on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Tho they didn’t pronounce it quite as one might expect. A meringue topped with whipped cream and fruit, but not like millefeuilles: it was, um, high, see? And crisp on the outside but incredibly light and fluffy on the inside! Like a pretty tutu, really, he elaborated helpfully. The poor girl just looked at him limply.
Naturally one would not drink a heavy red with what Uncle Flossie declared was an angel’s breath of a pudding, so like her! So he opened more fizz and we all had another toast—why not?
“Pav-LOH-va!”
… A little later it was revealed that the proudly smiling Silvia had made the trad. English Christmas pud months in advance, giving it time to mature as successive libations of brandy were poured over it. She had had had a real problem “in our climate” keeping it cool, it was no use keeping it in the kitchen, it got so hot and steamy, so of course did the Cellar Door’s kitchen, and tho Duck had kindly offered, the cellars at the winery just weren’t convenient. So she’d turned up the air-con in the spare room (she meant down, not up), and popped it in there! Mm? Oh—for about three months.
What?
Okay, the woman was demented. And thank God for Clive Lamont! Because he’d told her that it was the best Christmas pud ever, and deserved to be put on the menu at the Ritz. Which no doubt it did, if one cared for heavy, fruity, oozing black trad. English pud.
There was some debate, as coffee was mooted to finish off, but the older males all seemed keen on trying those cigars that the two misguided English gents had brought out with them, so they decided, since Silvia had a firm rule of no smoking in the restaurant, to go back to the house, and duly disappeared.
“That leaves us chickens,” noted Crumpy into the sudden silence.
How true.
He got up, looking determined. “Silvia, you’re not to do another thing, after all your hard work over that splendid meal. We’ll clear up and bring you a coffee.”
“Yes,” I agreed, getting up quickly. “Of course we will. It was a magnificent Christmas dinner, Silvia: you must be exhausted.”
“Yes,” Mireille chimed in, also getting up. “Thank you vairy much, Silvia. It was all delicious.”
Flossie stood up slowly, grinning. “Allow me to add my poor voice to theirs. You did us proud, Silvia. Unforgettable: the sort of Christmas one tells one’s grandchildren about, in fact!”
Yes well one could take that any way one liked and given Flossie (James) Nightingale’s usual form he fully intended it. Heaven, however, was merciful—after all, it was His birthday, wasn’t it?—and the poor woman didn’t spot him, just blushed and disclaimed, looking terrifically pleased. Well he is extremely good-looking, of course, with a thick fair thatch and a charming smile, it goes down really well with persons of the opposite sex regardless of age. And of course he knows it, the blighter.
“Come on, Bean!” said Bean Minor loudly, as he and Trelawney got up and picked up plates and glasses.
Rather luckily the Bean had lately developed a sort of mild crush on Jamie, not going any further at present, as far as was discernible, than a few goopy looks, so he said: “Right-ho!”, looked hopefully at her, and picked up plates and glasses.
Crumpy, meanwhile, had heaved up the remains of the Christmas pud. “Egg!” he said sharply. “Put that down! Come and help!”
The Egg gave a silly smile and the creature next to him emitted a loud and very silly giggle.
“Crumpet, old chap, one has a guest,” he objected.
By this time Mireille and I were over by the bar, heading for the kitchen door, but we heard the rest of the exchange, all right.
“So has Mel,” said the Crumpet grimly, “and you don’t see her or dear little Mireille hanging back, do you?”
“Uh… Don’t see them at all, at the min., actually, old chum!” –Silly laugh.
“Are you going to help or NOT?” shouted dear old Crumpy, losing it.
“Not, I rather think. There are plenty of you, aren’t there? Doubt if that kitchen’ll even hold the lot of us. Besides, as I said: one has a guest. Think we might go and sit under a shady tree. Or even in a shady bedroom—Greg’s place has got both, actually. Coming, Anthea?”
This incredibly witty sally was answered by a loud giggle and: “Why not?”
With which they exited stage right, arms entwined.
Yes, the egregious, in fact unnecessary Anthea had turned up for Christmas at Silvercreek, all right. Boots and all, as it were. We hadn’t had a syllable of sense out of the blasted Egg since.
Calculated to mar anyone’s Christmas, as Flossie noted later that evening with superciliously raised eyebrows. Even a surreal Down Under one.
Well quite!
Next chapter:
https://theeggandfriendsdownunder-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/05/aftermath.html
No comments:
Post a Comment