Lunch with Prue Leith, out favourite food books of 2023, plus cooks and writers on their best meals of the year
Each Christmas Eve, jolly “uncle” Bob, family friend and master butcher, would turn up at our house with a turkey the size of a small family car. It would be roasted for our vast family lunch and then provide leftovers for an entire week. Until, one year, he didn’t. No warning or explanation. Jolly “uncle” Bob and the turkey just didn’t arrive. I remember the panic my father went into that Christmas Eve, desperate to track down a huge turkey at the last minute. On his increasingly anguished journey around the butcher shops he could have picked up a long loin of pork or a few ribs of beef, a gloriously fatty goose or a majestic, clove-studded ham, even a nut roast. But no, it had to be a turkey.
Truth told, none of us really loved the big bird, but the idea of not having a huge, glistening turkey on the table was unthinkable. (We ended up with one from the bottom of a butcher’s freezer that refused to defrost overnight, even in the low oven of our beloved Aga. Do not try this. Ever.) Tradition, it seems, had got the better of both good sense and good eating.
In this Christmas issue of Food Monthly, Jay Rayner questions why we eat what we do at this time of time of year. Could it simply be a misplaced belief in tradition. Yet, as he points out, who actually gets to decide on such important matters as the annual feast?
Prue Leith is our lunch guest and Tim Adams’s interview with the Bake Off judge and novelist brings with it a few (pleasant) surprises. We also have our annual postcards from many of our favourite cooks and writers on their best meal of the year. They do sound amazing. Especially Stosie Madi’s 80p samosas the size your hand and Tomos Parry’s sublime-sounding cheese on toast. We have also tracked down our favourite food books of the year and I hope you find at least one of them in your Christmas stocking. Something to read while the turkey defrosts. Merry Christmas.
Source: Welcome to December’s Observer Food Monthly | Food | The Guardian