by Alice Taylor
Then it was time for the transfer. The tin into which such minute preparation had gone waited on the enamel-topped table beside the mixing bowl. With bowl and wooden spoon held in waterfall position, we began the big slide. If the mixture was too dry, it fell in lifeless dollops; if too thin it ran like a bad case of diarrhoea; but with the right consistency it slid like a dream during which you had to be mindful that the greaseproof-paper base did not shift or the surrounding paper walls collapse and fold under the mixture. If this calamity happened, we had to retrieve the fallen paper, which, by then, was layered with cake mixture that would burn black as soon as it hit the heat of the oven. This would take from a perfect result. And a perfect result was the aim of Benny’s game. Then the cake was baked in a moderate oven for about three and a half hours. On emerging, it was blessed with another quarter glass of whiskey or a beverage of similar potency.
Benny professed that the essence of good kitchen management was the presentation of a kitchen disaster as a dining-room triumph. In fairness, she practised what she preached, and throughout the year she rescued burnt offerings and showed us how to redeem them so that they did arrive in the dining room maybe not as a triumph but at least edible. But when it came to her Christmas cakes, Benny eliminated any possibility of a kitchen disaster by rigid quality control and strict supervision. Every batch of cakes out of the ovens was faultless, not a sunken top or fallen fruit in sight. When cooled, the cakes were firmly wrapped up in butter paper and then a layer of brown paper, and tied securely with white cord.
The first batch we made was consigned to a large press in the dining room from which they were occasionally taken out to be fed from a bottle of potent-smelling liquid that had found its way through the back door of the convent, via the yard man Tim. We never queried the source of these gurgling bottles that quietly made their way down from nearby Mushera mountain, where a home brewer catered for Benny’s baking requirements.
These cakes were for the house, or for the ‘friends of the house’. ‘Friends of the house’ was an expression that the nuns used for the good neighbours who lived around the convent farm or anyone to whom they had reason to be grateful. Christmas was the time to show appreciation for round-the-year goodness. Undoubtedly the home brewer up the mountain was counted amongst the friends of the house.
We also made cakes to take home, which we iced. Before we embarked on this Benny instilled in us the high cost of ground almonds so the making of that icing was treated as an exercise in tight-fisted economy. It began with the separation of the whites from the yolks of the eggs. This is an exercise in balancing, to contain the yolk within the shell while the white slides effortlessly down into a waiting bowl. The end result should be a perfect, unbroken yolk and a clear, untainted white.
Not a result easily achieved by the uninitiated, and Benny wailed in protest when egg whites were infiltrated with golden yellow. The yolk was used to make the almond icing and the whites for the white icing. Some of the white was brushed onto the bald head of the cake to act as an adhesive for the layer of almond icing. With the almond layer in place, the cake was left to rest for a few days, and then came the challenging undertaking of white icing. When this had set firmly, it was time to decorate. This was a hit-and-miss affair, depending on the artistic skill of the decorator. When all our cakes were complete, they were displayed around the dining room for inspection by Reverend Mother. But no matter what she thought of our efforts, we felt that we had created masterpieces.
We also made mincemeat and plum puddings. A plum pudding is far less challenging than a cake because once the ingredients are good success is assured. There is no question of a sunken top or fruit not quite making it to the surface. While all the recipes were plentiful in butter, for the mincemeat and puddings we also used suet, which came from the local butcher and had to be teased out and cut into tiny fragments. I shudder now to think what that did to our cholesterol levels.
Once I began cooking in my own home I often silently thanked Benny for the practical rudiments of cooking which she had succeeded in instilling into my uninterested teenage head. Now, like my mother, once November comes, I visit my special shop to check if their fruit has arrived. They have large juicy fruit in old-fashioned timber boxes and mixed peel floating around in a sea of gooey juice. The smell of this shop brings back memories, and there is a feeling of sheer delight in helping oneself, ladling the succulent fruit into different containers.
My first step into Christmas baking now is the making of the mincemeat because the longer it has to mature the better it gets. As soon as I arrive home with the special fruit, my large stainless-steel marmalade saucepan is landed onto the kitchen table. Into it go three-quarters of a pound of butter and a pound and a half of brown sugar, a pound of sultanas and currants, two ounces of mixed peel, six chopped apples, the juice and rind of two oranges and two lemons, four ounces of ground almonds and a teaspoon of mixed spice.
There is immense satisfaction mixing all these wonderful, rich, flavoursome ingredients together, and, once mixed, they are generously blessed from a bottle that has come in via my own back door, plus a good dash of rum. There is great body in rum, and it makes its presence felt in the mixture. My marmalade saucepan is the ideal container because when the ingredients are fully mixed the heavy cover goes on and then it can be left to its own devices in the back porch for weeks, during which time the flavours of the different fruits blend and absorb into each other. To encourage togetherness it gets an occasional stir of a wooden spoon, and an added slosh of rum stimulates the Christmas spirit.
Next, the cake and the plum pudding. I roughly follow Benny’s recipes, increasing the mixtures if required. For the pudding, into a large bowl go four ounces each of breadcrumbs, currants, sultanas, raisins, butter and brown sugar, two ounces of flour, two ounces of peel, one ounce of ground almonds, the rind and juice of an orange or lemon, one grated sour apple, a half teaspoon each of mixed spice and salt. I mix all the dry ingredients then stir in three well-beaten eggs, two tablespoons of whiskey and half a small bottle of stout. Then I divide the mixture into greased bowls and cover them with greaseproof paper. I stand them in saucepans of boiling water and put them into the bottom oven of the Aga to steam at their leisure.
The blessing of the Aga is that it is totally sealed so not a whisper of steam escapes during the entire cooking period. When the puddings emerge they are baptised from the special bottle that looks as innocent as holy water, and, together with the cake, they await Christmas at the bottom of Aunty Peg’s press.
When I was on a visit to America recently a New Yorker heard my accent and declared with delight, ‘I am Irish.’ In my naivety I inquired which part of Ireland did she come from, only to be enlightened that her great-great-great (not sure how many greats) had come from Sligo. Our roots, like those of old trees, may take many twists and turns but deep down within us all is the desire to link back to our original germination. Through the year these roots may lie dormant, but Christmas awakens many memories and we feel the need for contact.
Eight generations had lived in our old farmhouse, and, like all over Ireland, many had emigrated to different parts of the world. Come Christmas, their thoughts turned homewards, and the only way to link back to their own place was with Christmas cards. There were no phones, no emails, no Skype. The American Christmas cards brought a flavour of the New World back to the old Ireland that had formed these people and that had now, for some of them, transformed itself into an enchanted land. Some cards came early, probably because many of the emigrants had reason to remember that their homeland marched to the pace of a different drum. Johnny the Post, who was our deliverer of missives, swept them out of his bag with a flourish, declaring, ‘The Yanks are on the move.’
They arrived in big envelopes, some even bright red, with strips of multicoloured stamps and stickers across the top like rows of medals decorating the chests of military veterans. To us children they were manna in the desert. Bright, brash and beautifu
l, they shot colour into a black and white Ireland. My mother opened the envelopes slowly, with decorum and respect, as if she were unveiling a work of art. We circled her like a ring of demanding calves waiting to be fed. Our thirst to see what was inside was held in bounds only by the knowledge that beneath our mother’s kind and gentle demeanour was an impregnable wall of defence, unbreachable by any tide of attack.
The top of the envelope was not torn open but was prised slowly back from the gummed edge. If the edge was not for lifting, a kitchen knife was brought to bear, eased in and slid slowly along the top. During this undertaking the contents of the envelope often shifted and rustled, further whetting our curiosity. Finally the exit was clear, and, very slowly, out emerged the object of all our curiosity. It was greeted with open-mouthed wonder. The big, crimson, potbellied Santa, bristling with snow dust, had yet to penetrate rural Ireland, but here he was with a big bag of toys tumbling off his back. We were speechless with awe. My mother’s face took on a peculiar look, and I was never sure if she was impressed or dismayed. Did she see this Santa as introducing into her simple world yearnings for more than it could ever give us? But the look was quickly replaced by one of curiosity as to the name of the sender and the verse.
The verse in a Christmas card was of huge significance to my mother, so much so that it became a bit of a family joke. It also turned Christmas card shopping with her into a challenge of patience.
The overseas cards had to be sent off early because if money was not free-flowing, which it was not, you had to go on a slow boat to faraway places. If you wanted your cards to wing across the skies via airmail you had to pay accordingly. The problem with this was that my mother was never on time for anything. One of her few failings was that she was no respecter of deadlines – they were totally alien to her world. She took her time, and, as a result, always arrived late.
As the last date for overseas posting appeared on the horizon, she had a clash of priorities that brought her onto the outer fringes of the stress zone – a foreign land to my mother. Even my father, who normally forged ahead, leaving her on her slow boat to China, became aware of her predicament. He decided that something had to be done, but he was certainly not going to do it. Christmas card writing was not within his sphere of activities. He deemed it to be a daft exercise for children or people who had nothing better to be doing.
His solution was to turn to his five daughters, who were normally the source of all his problems. (His refrain, whenever he concluded that he was buried in petticoat government, was, ‘God pity the man who has five daughters.’) My father was not a man of pious persuasion, but that did not prevent him, in moments of desperation, invoking heavenly bodies and even the Man Himself to intervene. After a litany of saints being called on for aid, he concluded, ‘Holy divine Jesus, will one of ye useless bloody women help yer mother with those cursed cards before she drives this whole bloody madhouse madder’.
Then, because he realised that what is everyone’s job is nobody’s job, he decided on delegation. ‘Aliceen, you are always bloody wasting time reading and scribbling, will you do something useful for a change and do those goddamn cards with your mother.’ So ‘doing my mother’s cards’, as I called it, became my job. At an early age it gave me a wonderful insight into the art of card selection and allocation.
In her head, my mother had a list of the people to whom she was going to send cards, and each card was bought with that person in mind. The illustration had to be based in the reality of her own Christmas, and the verse had in some way to be relevant to the needs of the receiver. A tall order? That is exactly why the undertaking took so long. We had only two shops selling a very limited selection of Christmas cards in our small town, and she inspected and read every card in both of those shops until she came as near as possible to meeting her requirements. If she had ever made it into a modern card shop, with their mind-boggling selections, she would have had to stay overnight in order to get it all worked out to her satisfaction.
In our local town, Hallmark was not yet packing the shelves with dancing reindeers and glistening sleighs. Our palette was limited to Brian O’Higgins and other traditional scenes. But that posed no problem to my mother because, as far as she was concerned, it was all about the crib. Her Christmas was rooted in Bethlehem. If somebody were to wish my mother ‘Happy Holiday’, she would probably have thought that she should be packing her case to go to Ballybunion. Neither was she going to send Christmas cards of long-coated, high-hatted gentlemen accompanied by hoop-skirted and bonneted ladies singing carols, which were just as alien to her world as Santa Claus. Not one of those cards would be dispatched to her family, be they at home or across the seas – especially if they were across the seas.
Cards bought, her job was still only half done. Next came what she termed ‘doing the Christmas cards’. This entailed Sunday afternoons and many nights after supper sitting under the oil lamp at the kitchen table, writing letters to all the overseas relatives. Years later, many of them talked of their delight on receiving her Christmas card as it always contained a letter full of interesting home news and little details which she knew would be of interest to them. To her, Christmas was all about connecting with extended family and friends, and this included my father’s family as well as her own because she knew that there was no way he was going to put pen to paper.
Years later, when we had all left home, I usually tried to make it back to ‘do her Christmas cards’ with her. Her Christmas card list was long, but in doing them with her I learnt bits of family history that I might never have heard about otherwise.
The fallout from those early days is that I still frequent card shops picking out suitable cards for special people. If at all possible, I try to put in a note for those with whom this is our only yearly link. It is so lovely to receive a card with a letter enclosed, and it enriches the sending and receiving of cards. I am not talking about typed-out sheets of a family’s yearly achievements plonked like business circulars into every envelope, but a short personal note, which, in this era of mass production is a little bit of gold dust.
Like my mother, I now take time when opening my cards to savour them properly. I put them aside until there is sufficient time to sit down and do so with an appreciation of the effort made by the sender. A beautiful card coming out of an envelope accompanied by a meaningful message is one of the joys of Christmas. One of my friends has two of the most handsome big dogs that you ever laid eyes on and every year they bounce into my house on her large Christmas card caught in the most ha ha poses. Sometimes smothered in snow, other times peering out the door of their colourful doggy boxes. She is a superb photographer, with the eye of the professional, and her two dogs are gorgeous. Many times over the twelve days of Christmas my eye falls on her card and it brings a smile to my face. When their cards decorate your house, your friends are all around you, gathered in spirit to celebrate Christmas with you.
Santa would make his first appearance of the season in the local paper. Then known as the Cork Examiner, that title was perceived as too provincial and was changed to the Irish Examiner. At first, a little Santa peeped in at the top of the paper, and as Christmas drew nearer he grew bigger and bigger. Then the special Christmas paper, the Holly Bough, appeared and it was time to send Santa a letter. Writing to Santa was a serious undertaking that occupied the hours between supper and bedtime for one night. There was much arguing and mind-changing, until, assisted by Bill, the well-thumbed and grubby pages, covered in writing and crossing-out that only Santa could interpret, were stuffed into envelopes. It was my father’s responsibility to post them the following day on his way to the creamery. After that it was up to Santa.
Published by the Cork Examiner, the Holly Bough found its way into every Cork home at Christmastime. My father bought the Examiner on his daily trips to the creamery but for some reason did not think that the Holly Bough should be on our list of Christmas requirements. It was my brother Tim who brought it and any additional Christm
as reading matter into our house. It contained weeks of nightly reading. Though not really geared for children, we were still delighted to see it as it was a signal that Christmas was on the way.
Another welcome arrival was the Christmas edition of Ireland’s Own. Two pages were given over to songs, and from this we learnt the words to songs for which we only had snatches up to then. When Bill came on his nightly call, we coaxed him into reading the stories in Ireland’s Own to us. We loved to hear of the exploits of Kitty the Hare, a nosy gossipy woman who travelled from house to house around the county, distributing local news as she went. My mother did not really approve of Kitty the Hare, but we and Bill loved her.
A magazine called the Far East came to us via our school, where one teacher distributed it. The only bit that was of interest to us was Pudsy Ryan, who got up to all kinds of tricks in the Children’s Corner. We sat on a little stone bridge on the way home from school, and one of the eldest, who had the best reading skills, kept us up to date with ‘Pudsy’s Diary’. The remainder of the Far East, however, paid very little attention to Christmas, which was very annoying.
The Messenger, which my mother got from a woman who ran a pub in town, was a bit more Christmassy, with its red cover, but the Irish Catholic, sold from a little timber hut on the way into mass, was not colourful enough for our liking. It did sometimes have a beautiful picture of the Holy Family on the front page, and that appealed to us. Our mother constantly kept us aware that that was the reason for the season.