Food & Drink

Before he was a celebrated travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor (who died in 2011 at 96) was a celebrated special operations soldier. In February 1944 he commanded a raid to kidnap General Heinrich Kreipe, the newly installed German commander of Crete, and take him to Egypt. Leigh Fermor, his fellow officer William Stanley Moss and three members of the Cretan resistance commandeered the general in his car and made a daring trek across the island pursued by the German occupiers. They spent one chilly night on the slopes of Mount Ida.

‘They must be fruit as they’re next to the pomegranates,’ thought I. Then I read the sign: persimmons. Perplexed by persimmons, I asked a Persian friend here in Montecito, California if she knew about them. ‘My grandmother had trees full of them in the fall,’ she told me, waxing lyrical about their sweet, juicy meat covered by a waxy but edible skin. ‘I used to pick them up from the ground and eat them like apples. They always seemed to be smiling at me.’ Her grandmother made jam from them. She told me I’d bought the fuju variety (the hachiya being astringent and less available in Central California).

The world as we know it may be in disarray thanks to the pandemic, but the British countryside continues its seasonal cycle unabated. Gregory Gladwin’s heritage-breed Sussex cows can sense the winter on its way and frankly they are not that keen on the torrential autumn rains. Instead of disappearing into the further grazing fields they cluster by the yard gates mooing for attention. Barns have been lined with straw in preparation: within the next 10 days our two herds will be brought into their respective sheds, ready for a cozy winter of shared bodily warmth and of course carving the next generation. There is no conclusive proof that Beef Wellington was created in honor of the first Duke of Wellington. Arthur Wellesley.

I’m not sure what it is about brandy snaps that have placed them so firmly in the Christmas culinary tradition: this simple biscuit lacks the dried fruits and nuts of other yuletide stalwarts, its spicing is minimal, and its shelf life is fleeting compared to the cakes and puddings that require festive forethought months in advance. But whatever the reason, I can’t imagine making or eating brandy snaps at any other time of the year. In fairness, my brandy bottle is rarely used other than in the lead up to Christmas — when it gets sloshed into every cake and bake that stands still for long enough — but the brandy in the name is misleading.

Discovering a secret hoard of chanterelles or a giant cepe hidden under an oak tree is one of the most exciting and fulfilling things a foodie can do. But please be wary: to the inexperienced eye, an innocent looking poisonous toadstool can easily be mistaken for an edible delight. Luckily, there are professional foragers out there who will discover, collect and vet wild mushrooms that you can buy in specialist food shops to fulfill this recipe. This extraordinary year seems to have made people much more interested and aware of the provenance of what they eat. Indeed, lockdown turned many of us into foragers as we looked to get better acquainted with the countryside. Outside of a kitchen our brother Oliver’s favorite activity is to go foraging for wild mushrooms.

Being a citizen of the world is difficult when you’re not allowed to enter the rest of it, much less travel across state lines without excessive burden. The ‘bad thing’ has made eating adventurously a tad harder. Some of us are meat-and-potato people. Others of us will unflinchingly and unknowingly order gizzard served in the basement of a Nepali restaurant in Queens because, as they say, when in Rome.Although I’ve been unable to travel or eat at restaurants, my enduring love affair with my stomach has not taken a hiatus. With Christmas fast approaching, neither should yours, or that of the citizen-of-the-world you love.These are items I’ve used or eaten, or that are also on my wish list, most of which are under $50. Bon appétit (and joyeux Noël).

Many moons ago, long before I learnt how to cook properly, I took it upon myself to make Scotch eggs. It seemed like a nice little weekend activity but, looking back, it was doomed from the get-go. My boiled eggs were too soft and threatened to splurge their yolks. The meat I used was mealy, not fatty enough, and crumbled when I tried to press it onto the eggs. I didn’t really understand how you coated food for frying so haphazardly stuck breadcrumbs to what little meat was forlornly clinging to my misshapen egg. I tried to fry them anyway: it did not go well. Scotch eggs shouldn’t be this hard, I thought. Who can be bothered with this? I ended up smashing the whole thing up (in resignation rather than anger), and turning it into a slightly strange hash.

Take your time. Measure twice. Finish what you start. How will you have time to do it again if you don’t take time to do it right the first time? Work hard at work, then come home. Loosen your tie and relax. Make a highball or mix a cocktail for your wife and yourself. Share the end of the day. We are brothers and we write here of a drink and the man who taught it to us, our father. Teaching us how to make it, he also taught us something of how to live. He was a chemical engineer, and so the formula was important. The drink was the Old Fashioned (or Old Fashion; it doesn’t matter), and this is how he made it.

If your family is like mine, you’ve spent the time and energy normally reserved for dividing up Thanksgiving potluck assignments determining how many people may attend your holiday, and under what public-safety conditions. The truth is, some families’ scaled-back Thanksgivings this year may actually mark an improvement on the traditional meal. We all know that turkeys are bland and fussy to prepare, one reason we don’t eat them all year round. (My father has a more gruesome objection involving the perceived similarity of turkey and human flesh, which I generally prefer not to consider.) Melissa Clark’s bacon-wrapped turkey breast is surely an enormous improvement.

When we talk to guests on The Spectator’s food and drink podcast, Table Talk, school dinners never fail to elicit strong opinions: from those who loved spam fritters, stodgy crumble and vats of custard, to others who shudder at the mere thought of a gloopy, tepid rice pudding. One dish that seems to have the fewest detractors is cornflake tart: a cheap and cheerful pudding, that required little more than store cupboard staples to make, and satisfied generations of children with its sky-high sugar levels. Food has the power to evoke nostalgia like almost nothing else. Dishes can be a shorthand to memory, to shared experience — good and bad; smells and tastes bringing back things we thought we’d forgotten.

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday, and not only because it offers an excuse to dine lavishly among friends. It also provides an occasion to live up to its name and give ourselves the pleasure of correcting Aristotle. Man, the old Greek said in a distracted moment, is the rational animal, ζῶον λόγον ἔχον. Clearly, what he meant to say is that man is the ungrateful animal, ζῶον αχαριστίαν ἔχον. Since Thanksgiving is all about enumerating one’s blessings, it is one of those rare opportunities in which everyone’s favorite pastime, virtue-signaling, can be indulged while thoroughly enjoying oneself.