CHRISTMAS

The evening of Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day itself, is the big event in Scandinavia. I am sitting here, writing this while the rest of the family are in church at 4.00pm. It is me, who has to get dinner ready for the start of things at 6.00pm.

As a multinational family, we have always followed our own, slightly different, Christmas traditions. For a start, we have turkey; whereas most Danes eat duck, goose, or roast pork. That decision goes all the way back to our first Christmasses in Tanzania when the boys were very small, and when we managed to get hold of a turkey. I can still remember being surprised, after the plucked and dressed bird turned up at our house in Dar es Salaam in a rather battered cardboard box, having survived the 1,300km journey in broiling heat by rail from Mwanza on Lake Victoria. An elderly but rather eccentric German lady, who had built a wonderful house on the lake, kept a flock of turkeys; and a man I knew up there arranged for us to have one sent down each December. It always arrived.

It is me who cooks the turkey. We have sage and onion stuffing, bacon on the top, roast potatoes and brussels sprouts (another anglo-oddity; Danes have red cabbage). Plus caramelised boiled potatoes, prepared by my mother-in-law, and mashed celeriac in cream with pine kernels. I don't know where the latter came from, since I am not a great fan of root vegetables, but was something introduced some years ago by my wife; it has sort of stuck. And bread sauce and gravy. That's why I am not going to church. Bread sauce should be cooked long and slowly, with lots of stirring so that it doesn't burn. I'll start when I finish this.

For dessert we have the traditional Danish fare of ris à l'amande, a chilled rice pudding dish mixed with cream and almonds, that is served with hot cherry sauce. It's delicious. There is always a whole almond in it somewhere, and the person who finds it gets the almond present. My mother used to do the same with sixpences wrapped in silver foil in the Christmas pudding when I was a boy.

After dinner, the Christmas tree is lit with lots of candles, and there is singing round it. Then it's present time, washed down with coffee, Christmas sweets and biscuits, and special Christmas beer (the sitting room gets very hot, what with the wood-burning stove and the candles). Then off to bed in the early hours.

There will be seven of us for dinner, my family, plus my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law, who is divorced and doesn't have the children this year. It will be "hyggeligt", as it always is.

Have a great Christmas, today or tomorrow. Now for that bread sauce ....

Walter Blotscher