Merry almost-Christmas

Merry almost-Christmas.

Here we are, half a year down the line and what I’d hoped - that there might be an audience for it if I wrote weeklyish to whatever seemed right without someone commissioning it - has been given a point by you reading it. There are already thousands of you, which feels slightly surreal.

It is a huge pleasure to write for you, to find myself following a metaphorical mouse down the side of a skirting board and having a point in turning where it goes into words.

Thank you - a genuinely bottom-of-the-heart thank you - for being part of making this exist. It means a great deal.

There is much to come. I hope you are enjoying what has been.

Today, I have a couple of festive things for you that may come in handy, either for your own consumption or someone else’s: a drink and some music.

Advocaat adverts were always on the telly at Christmas when I was a kid. It seemed like a drink for people who lived in big houses, who were friends with the Margot and Jerrys: people who pretended they didn’t like proper drinks like cherryade and Tizer.

Despite it looking like liquid omelette, I assumed advocaat was made with avocado for two excellent yet incorrect reasons: avocados appeared in the supermarket overnight (though no-one knew what to do with them) at the same time as advocaat, and avocado is an almost-anagram of advocaat. Welcome to my childhood brain.

What I didn’t know then, is that pretty much everywhere has its version of eggnog. The Dutch have advocaat*, Trinidad and Tobago has Ponche de Crème, and if you live in the UK a bottle of Warninks was what you got, conferring a lifetime of sophistication with one sip.

There are - to my knowledge - no advocaat recipes that include avocado: spices, egg yolks, dairy in one form or another plus booze is the usual combination. This beauty is an interpretation of Venezuela’s eggnog, and you’ll find a dark rum version of it in my book SPICE/a cook’s companion.

Keep it cold: it’s best served straight from the fridge, and - according to the quarter bottle now acting as a scientific experiment - it keeps for 14 months old and counting and still tastes incredible.

If - as is easy to do - it thickens too much once cold, stir in a little cold milk to loosen it. Serve cold over ice, with a generous pinch of cocoa on the surface if you fancy.

It tastes like Christmas, makes such a fine present, ,and is quick and easy to make.

Ponche crema 

Makes 1 litre

400ml whole milk

400g condensed milk

6 egg yolks, lightly beaten

180ml brandy

1 nutmeg, ground

1½ tsp ground cinnamon

Zest of 1 lime

Warm the milk in a medium sized pan over low heat. Stir in the condensed milk and the spices. Bring it to a bare simmer and remove from the heat.

Whisking constantly to avoid the eggs scrambling, spoon a little of the hot milk to the beaten eggs, adding around a quarter of the milk gradually. Pour the mix back into the milk, return to the heat and whisk constantly as it thickens. When it reaches the consistency of thick paint, remove from the heat.

Whisk in the rum and lime zest until fully incorporated. Blend on high to eradicate any lumps and agitate the spices a little. Using a funnel and sieve, decant into a bottle and allow to cool. Refrigerate.

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If you are after a few more recipe ideas, I’ve organised previous newsletters into Into The Kitchen (for recipes and more), Into The Garden (plants and the garden here), and Writing A Book (for those looking to write a book/professional development). Archive includes all the posts; most recent first.

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A Christmas playlist

I do like to listen to something Christmassy when wrapping presents, cooking and all that, and in case you fancy a bit of it to, here you go. It is, of course, heavy on cheese - nobody wants a punk too-cool-for-school Christmas playlist (or do they?).

If New Year is about looking forward, Christmas feels like looking back. My ears fancy a bit of yesterday. The playlist is a bit over a couple of hours long: pop it on repeat and it’ll see you through a morning, afternoon or evening of festive background**.

There are a handful of songs that, magnificent as they are, are not on here as I never want to hear again. They are tracks that - like getting Cinzano-pissed - shift you into a very firm ‘thank you, but no, never ever again’. Fairytale of New York might be the definition of this. I loved it and now - marvellous as it may be - I’ll pay good mince pies never to hear it again.

So until more from me on the other side, Merry Christmas to you and loved ones.

Mark x

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*I’ve resisted the temptation of a very easy joke about Dick Advocaat, the former Dutch football manager, for which I hope you are suitably grateful.

** Click the button with the blue triangle in the white circle and the playlist should play embedded in the webpage; click the button with three blue curves in the white circle and it should open spotify to play it.