I love food, I love sharing food, I love traditions and I love Christmas. I’m almost ready for tomorrow! The table is set, sprouts peeled, turkey ready for the oven, prawn cocktail sauce made, wine chilling and all those other Christmas Eve foody preparations complete. I even have time for a cheeky little visit to the pub later.
Last night I went to the pub to sing in Christmas with the local Brass Band. This is called the singing of the ‘Sheffield Carols’ and it is local tradition in South Yorkshire from mid-November to Christmas. Each village pub has its own carols and music and it’s such a lovely tradition. It gets louder and more raucous as the evening progresses and more Yorkshire ale from the local brewery is consumed, and it always gets me into the Christmas spirit.
When I go anywhere, I’m always eager to learn about the traditions and culinary customs of an area.
I did not realise how ‘Yorkshire’ I was until I moved out of Yorkshire at the age of 22. It wasn’t until then that I also g0t a perception of what the rest of the world think to people from Yorkshire either. I moved down South, just outside London, chasing a career in banking.
In summary, people from Yorkshire are proud……we call it ‘God’s Own County’ because we say he created everywhere else, learnt from the mistakes and then created the perfect county……Yorkshire. Yorkshire people, although you might not be able to tell what we say when we switch to dialect, are renowned for being welcoming, funny, friendly but straightforward, we’ll tell you it as it is, we are quite direct. We also have the most glorious countryside, moors and coastline. People from down South can find us a bit uncultured and unsophisticated. I beg to differ, we have lots of culture, and are very sophisticated, but I’ll agree some of our traditions and customs are a little bit odd and can seem very bizarre to someone not from Yorkshire. But it’s these customs that I love and keep going hoping that my boys will continue them as it’s so important not to lose them.
My ‘Yorkshireness’ all became apparent when I had my first Christmas down South when I suggested to John, the Assistant Manager at the Bank that we have a ‘fuddle’. Now John looked absolutely aghast as if I’d suggested something completely inappropriate and to this day, I can’t decide whether he was relieved or disappointed when I explained that a ‘fuddle’ in Yorkshire is a pre-Christmas work lunchtime celebration where you pool food, and nothing else. So, for example, someone brings the cheese and biscuits, someone else the crisps, nibbles, sausage rolls, sandwiches, quiche, salad, desserts etc. etc. until you have a lovely little buffet. Apparently, ‘fuddle’ is only a Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire word and concept, but I didn’t realise that when suggesting to my line manager that we have a ‘fuddle’ together in the office. So, continuing this tradition, last Wednesday lunchtime was the school Christmas ‘fuddle’.
Then there is the Christmas Cake. Christmas Cake I know is a British tradition, not just Yorkshire. It is a very dark, rich fruit cake containing, if made properly, a fair amount of brandy. However, how we eat it in Yorkshire is deemed very odd. The correct way to make a Christmas Cake is months in advance. I made mine at the very beginning of October, almost three months before Christmas, and it takes an entire day as you bake it on a very low temperature for around 4 to 5 hours. Then every week I ‘feed’ the cake with brandy until the week before Christmas, when I decorate it in the traditional way with marzipan and royal icing and some decorations. It’s quite a laborious process which has to be done in stages and I was in a bit of a rush this year so it has just had some sugar frosted rosemary, holly and dried fruit placed on top but it still looks quite effective. The only thing is, in our house, there is only myself who likes Christmas cake. So on Christmas Day it gets cut, I keep my little bit, and then I distribute and give the remainder away because it’s huge. But Christmas would just not feel like Christmas if I did not make one.
However, in Yorkshire we eat our Christmas cake with cheese. This tradition is frowned upon elsewhere in the UK, but I did not realise this until I was observed with much amusement, down South, peeling off my icing and marzipan, placing it at the side of my plate and then proceeding to eat my Christmas cake with cheese. Not only that, but us Yorkshire folk are quite particular about what cheese we consume with our Christmas cake. Ideally it needs to be Wensleydale, made in Yorkshire. Wensleydale is creamy-white coloured cheese with a crumbly, moist and flaky texture made with milk from the farms in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire. It is made from a mixture of cow and ewe’s milk and goes perfect with fruit cake. At a push we will eat white stilton or white Cheshire with our Christmas cake if we can’t get Wensleydale, the key is it needs to be sharp, tangy and crumbly to complement the cake. I managed to find some Wensleydale earlier this week on my visit to Chatsworth Farm Shop so all is good!
So, these two, the Christmas cake and cheese combo, and the ‘fuddle’ are the two Yorkshire Christmas food traditions that I always have to observe.
Then there is the broader British tradition of the mince pie! Christmas would not be Christmas without the good old British mince pie. Christmas mincemeat has nothing to do with meat. It is a blend of dried fruits and spices in ruby port and brandy placed in a little sweet shortcrust pastry pie. I’ve made my third batch of 24 this week as they keep disappearing before Christmas but no-one is owning up to eating them!
Then my final English Christmas tradition is the trifle. A trifle has sponge cake in the bottom soaked in alcohol, usually sherry or another fortified wine. It’s then layered with fruit, custard, whipped cream and toasted almonds. Now, it’s each to their own but to me a trifle should never contain jelly. For me, the presence of jelly in a trifle absolutely ruins it. For me it has to be sherry too, to soak the sponge, and a proper Spanish manzanilla, so it’s not strictly speaking an English trifle, it’s part Spanish and the good thing is when you’ve made the trifle you can then drink the rest of the bottle with tapas or whatever else you fancy. It’s also traditional to make it in a cut glass trifle bowl. My bowl I’ve inherited from my Grandma and it reminds me of Christmas buffets at Grandma’s complete with trifle.
So, we have the Yorkshire food traditions, the English traditions, a bit of Spanish Manzanilla, and next, a tradition from my other favourite part of Europe……..Italy. Christmas would not be Christmas without home-baked Italian almond and pistachio Cantuccini. Some people call these Biscotti which is not strictly speaking correct. Biscotti translates as a more generic term for any twice baked biscuit or cookie, whereas Cantuccini are quite specifically oblong, dry biscuits studded with nuts, and at Christmas I also put orange zest in mine. These are good because all that etiquette you are taught in England about it being a bit rude and uncultured to dip your biscuits in your tea goes completely out of the window with Cantuccini, they are made for dipping!! That’s the reason why they are dry, so when you dip them in, they soak up the liquid. However, what’s even better is that the tradition in Italy is not to dip them in tea but to dip them in Vin Santo, an Italian dessert wine made predominantly in Tuscany. It’s a little hard to get hold of at the moment, none in the supermarkets, so I had to have it posted but it arrived just in time yesterday!
And last but not least, a little bit of Germany with the gingerbread Lebkuchen, so easy to make and definitely one for dunking in your tea. Eat the icing off the top first though or it just ends up floating in your tea!
So that’s the Christmas food traditions sorted. I’ll think about the diet in January. For now, I’ll eat my way through Christmas Yorkshire style with a bit of the rest of the UK and Europe thrown in for good measure! And with true Yorkshire generosity I will force everyone else who crosses my threshold to share my Yorkshire foody Christmas as it’s so much better when it is shared with friends and family.
Merry Christmas!!