Fortnum & Mason: Christmas & Other Winter Feasts. Tom Bowles Parker

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.

       Ingredients

      BURFORD BROWNS

      Our eggs of choice. The yolks have a deep yellow hue, and are wonderfully creamy, too.

      HONEY

      Show me the honey. Every variety has its own taste and character, and at Fortnum’s we have not only a range of London honeys (produced in our own hives), but types from all over Britain and around the world.

      BUTTER

      We have some amazing butter at Fortnum’s, but one we particularly like is Abernethy butter, churned by hand in Ireland.

      POTTED STILTON

      A perennial Christmas essential, this classic English cheese is rich, creamy, with the most elegant of bites. And if it’s not produced in Leicestershire, Derby or Nottinghamshire, it isn’t the genuine article.

      SMOKED SALMON

      One of the great fridge fallbacks, this is another Yuletide star. Serve with scrambled eggs for an easy Boxing Day dinner, wedged into a fat sandwich, or simply as it is, with a squeeze of lemon and a liberal dose of black pepper.

      GLENARM BEEF

      This magnificent beef, produced in Northern Ireland, is sold exclusively at Fortnum’s in the UK. It’s aged in a Himalayan salt chamber, which intensifies the flavour, producing some of the finest beef you’ll ever taste.

      SINGLE CASK MADEIRA

      This fortified wine is one of the great unsung heroes of the drink world, with hints of caramel, walnut, raisin and coffee. It also has a fresh acidity that balances all that richness.

      CAVIAR

      For me, the ultimate edible treat – the salted eggs of the sturgeon fish. Eat it on top of baked potatoes, on homemade blinis or simply on its own, with the merest drizzle of lemon.

      STEM GINGER

      A wonder spice, ginger is said to help everything from morning sickness to muscle pain. It also tastes sublime, especially when kept in sugar syrup. Add to ice cream or crumbles, or simply eat on its own.

      DOUBLE CREAM

      Slather it over Christmas pudding, drizzle it into coffee, whisk it into thick peaks. No fridge is complete without double cream.

      TIPS ON BUYING GAME

      Trust your butcher, because they will know how old the bird is (important when it comes to buying grouse, as you want a young bird for roasting), and how long it’s been hung. If it stinks to high heaven, it’s been hung for too long.

      Fireworks and Papist plots

      Ah, Bonfire Night. The dazzling fireworks, burnished sausages, steaming paper cups of searing mulled wine. Children, crazed by cola, their eyes agleam with sugar and glee, their spirits as high as those rockets above. All centred on that roaring, crackling inferno, spilling warm light into the inky black gloom. So it seems a little incongruous that this merry night commemorates not the start of winter, nor some pagan feast, but rather the ritualised burning of a Papist plotter.

      Which is, of course, the very reason for its existence – a celebration of the death of Guy Fawkes, who, along with his fellow conspirators, had planned to blow up King James I and the whole House of Lords.

      Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was originally known, was actually a mandatory day of celebration, enforced by the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act. But as ever in matters of the Protestant church, it quickly became a focal point for anti-Catholic abuse. While Puritans ranted and raved about the perils of popery, the common folk saw it as a time to rejoice, inspired more by the spirit of gin than that of the Lord. And, like the Christmases of old, festivities became increasingly drunken and raucous, with effigies of popular hate figures being burnt, including the Pope himself.

      As time moved on, children would go begging with effigies of Guy Fawkes, a strictly seasonal money-making opportunity. Hence ‘a penny for the guy’. And so the 5th of November transformed into Guy Fawkes Night. By the nineteenth century, things were getting a little more violent, with confrontations mired in class hatred. ‘A chance,’ according to an 1850 article in Punch, ‘for the lower classes … to pit disorder against order, a pretext for violence and uncontrolled revelry.’ In Lewes, there was ‘lower class rioting’, and the intimidation of ‘respectable