Christmas Food.

I love Christmas even if I do tend to get maudlin. And the food is always excellent. Over the years, I’ve fallen into routine and been in Madras for Christmas as my Grandparents, from both sides, live there but I wasn’t able to make it this year and hence will have to eat vicariously.

When my Grandfather was alive I have recollections of large Christmas parties with hundreds of people, two bars and a mahogany dining table that fair protested under the sheer weight of food. And what a spread it was.

Post-Church breakfast, on Christmas day, was always appam and chicken stew, with a side of egg roast. And dinner, that followed the massive lunch (detailed below), is almost always from Buharis or Blue Diamond. Buharis, being past its prime (even if it did create the original Chicken 65, chicken kebab was item number 65 on their menu and no other explanation is valid.) has more or less given way to the fabulous Sri Lankan Muslim food from Blue Diamond, egg and kheema parathas, ghee parathas, mutton kurma, kotthu paratahas…oh, so good.

Yes, so on with lunch. Us being Mallu, there’d have to be some food from “Our Land”, usually a chicken curry, beef fry, fish fry, red fish curry, two vegetables, papad and some pickle, and the ‘Continental’ side would feature roast turkey, roast chicken, duck if we were lucky, glazed leg of ham, sausages, roast potatoes, gravy, stuffing, Russian salad, bread rolls and crumb fried fish. The menu almost never changed, and still remains the same, except for one year when the Grandmother decided that a roast pig would be a good addition. Minor variations are allowed, some years we have smoked salmon and the Mallu food is prone to change. But the basic nature of the buffet remains unchanged, to this day. Dessert is always a steamed Christmas pudding (with a silver coin in it, for one lucky soul to wish upon.), served with brandy butter, lemon juice and Bosoto Brother’s cream (cream so thick you could invert the tub and it wouldn’t fall.)

This year, being in Bangalore and not having access to my traditional meal, I dined at Sunny’s. They had a set menu, which featured a French onion soup or a pumpkin and apple soup (both were good. Thought the latter could have used more spice to hide the overbearingly sweet base.), starters of smoked salmon rolls, fried nori shrimp, Vietnamese rolls and grilled Shitake mushrooms (all of them, barring the rolls were very good.), a salad of warm goats cheese, green apples and romaine (a fabulous paring but rocket would have worked even better.), a pomegranate sorbet (excellent. But obviously made from juice and hence maybe a little too sweet.) and a main course of turkey served with a sweet potato puree, stuffing and cranberry jelly. (I'm betting that it was a Butterball turkey. Not bad, but I like mine more flavorful, leg meat and all. Good gravy, I can't stand the cranberry jelly, and the whole thing was too nouveau with the sweet potato crap. I wanted roast potatoes. Stuffing was okay, but politically correct as it had chicken sausage and no organ meat) Unfortunately, there was no glazed leg of ham. And the X'mas pudding was more a cake. And no cream and piddlingly little brandy butter.

But for the company, I’d rather have been in Madras.

So, what did you eat for Christmas?