Читать книгу Fortnum & Mason: Christmas & Other Winter Feasts - Tom Bowles Parker - Страница 7

Christmas at Fortnum’s. It’s the pure, 175-proof spirit of the festive season, the quintessence of Yuletide delight. ‘Is greediness a forgivable sin at Christmas time?’ gasped a smitten journalist, waxing lyrical about the store, some time towards the start of the twentieth century. ‘It ought to be, seeing how many well-nigh irresistible temptations one is exposed to at that delectable season.’

As a child, it was less shop, more glittering, spice-scented Xanadu, a sugar-coated stately pleasure dome. With the added advantage of being real, and sitting, ever-merrily, at 181 Piccadilly. Stepping into the shop, past the tail-coated doorman, was the nearest one could get to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. ‘At no time as now do the confectioners’ windows glisten with more enticing bait,’ sighed another scribe, in 1876. ‘Fortnum and Mason’s exhibition is enough to drive the whole race of children wild with delight.’

But this isn’t a book about childish delight, nor is it about Christmas alone. Not that we’d ignore the seasonal essentials, the likes of Norfolk turkey and York ham, porcelain pots of Stilton, sticky dates, smoked salmon, glorious griottes and Elvas plums. As if. Winter feasting, though, is at the book’s heart, feasting in its every guise. Once the nights draw in, and the temperature plummets, so the pleasures of the table, the age-old act of sitting down and breaking bread together, come to the fore. Food as succour, satisfaction, the great unifying force.

Keats rather nailed it (for a change) in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, falling on 19 January: ‘… he forth from the closet brought a heap/Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;/With jellies soother than the creamy curd,/And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;/Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d/From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,/From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.’ A particularly Fortnum’s-esque feast.

We explode into Guy Fawkes night, with its fireworks, flaming anti-Papist pyres, pasties and caramelised apple pancakes, before gliding through the Somerset House ice rink, and SKATE!, with a cheese-drenched, Alpine-inspired smörgåsbord of Stilton fondue and tartiflette.

Game, that much under-rated British seasonal star, has its own section, with everything from braised venison pappardelle to pot-roast pheasant. There’s an entire chapter on Christmas baking, things to munch on Christmas Eve, and things to devour on Boxing Day, too. Leftovers are given the Fortnum’s treatment, from austere to revere. And the recipes take in both traditional and modern, much like the store itself. So there are Christmas spiced sausage rolls alongside scallop ceviche, roast goose next to gin and orange gravadlax.

It’s not all rich winter succour, either. January may be a time for a new start, and a rather lighter menu, but that doesn’t mean that flavour and joy have to be thrown out with the tree. At Fortnum’s, the first month of the year is about vibrant eating, delight without any of that ghastly guilt. Because this is a book entirely devoted to the pleasures of cooking and eating in the colder months, a volume that embraces influences British and international alike. Above all, though, this is about celebration. Of winter feasts and Christmas, rib-sticking tucker and salads both light and lithe. ‘Baby, it’s cold outside,’ crooned Dean Martin. All the more reason to stay inside and feast. Eat, drink, and be truly merry.