December

I used to find food writing in December even more irksome than the relentless cooking for Christmas parties at Le Cafe Anglais. In all my years of knocking it out, I never really discovered a stylish way of presenting ‘turkey with all the trimmings’, and we were serving a lot of people we knew we would never see again. Despite that, the general air of merriment would always win you over in the end, and we’d also see lots of old friends who wanted an indulgent little lunch at that time of year.

The writing, though, was just as tough. Even the saintliest of editors who allowed you to romp free, presenting what you chose for the rest of the year had to bow to a little commercial pressure. They wanted interesting ideas for turkey. They wanted interesting ideas for Christmas parties. Even the option of an ‘alternative Christmas’ I regarded as a chore, since I am a traditionalist in some ways. I like the idea of the large bird on the Christmas table: I remember my Dickens – and a rib of beef, however wonderful, is not my idea of a Christmas lunch.