December 1, 2013

A Christmas pudding needs no introduction in Australia. However, back in 1956 it did need explaining for us. We had never heard of a pudding dedicated to a religious event in Holland. Mind you, it was only a few years ago when I mentioned a spongy type of chocolate cake with shredded coconut that this was called a lamington. For most of my life I was ignorant of one the most hallowed and revered delicacies, as British as fish and chips or a Beefeater on his watch.

It is still the same with Christmas puddings. An event and tradition I have been excluded from till now. The exclusion was never deliberate. I never really experienced it, it was my own ignorance. The esoteric world of the dietary and culinary delights of Britain is lifting its veils and I am most honoured to have been accepted.

Little could I have foreseen that in my post middle age, but not yet in my final pre burial stage, I would be called upon to help and prepare and cook a Christmas pudding. Not only that, the lady who politely requested my help is English, very English. I have to be very careful not to mention my support for Australia’s push into a republic. It would not be a good ‘show’. She has taught me the whole lineage of English Royalty right back to the Prince of Orange of Nassau and a diversion even further back to William the Silent. I learnt to be just as polite ( and silent) not wishing to point out that the Dutch Royals are also Oranges of Nassau related.

The lady is our good and very lively neighbour. Too old to have bothered about the ways of her new stove, computers, skyping and all that electronic wizardry. I too have problems with this stove. As usual, too many options. I am surprised it doesn’t have photographic capability or Windows 8.1 Clouds with Sky-drive.

All the help she required from me was to simply switch this beast of an oven on with about 4 hours of cooking time on 140c heat. Please, could you be at my place at about 6 o’clock, she asked? On arrival she had a large ceramic container filled with all the fruity looking ingredients including bright red and viridian green glace bits. Most of it were what looked like raisins and lots of dark brown dried fruits, perhaps dried plums, apricots, persimmons, dates, currants and some nuts. The lot she kept turning and mixing in a churning type of electric powered machine.

I fulfilled her request by trying out all the buttons to find the 4 hours cooking time. On our own similar stove I usually put on many hours and just keep track on the required cooking time before switching it off. I rarely use the oven. In fact I cook mainly outside lately.

Before I go any further I must add that our neighbour cannot be hurried. Her cooking is more of a slow meticulously laboured organized way of life rather than cooking. I swear that the walk between the kitchen bench top and the oven takes her about two hours. She gets waylaid by lots of diversions. She will shake the salt or just look at the bowls contemplating something. She surveys her vast array of cake dishes, ladles, spices, and like a conjurer keeping rabbits well hidden or…a voodoo priest contemplating in deep concentration a beheaded chook, finally makes a decision…she calls a good friend on the phone!

I decided to give the oven a couple of extra hours, just in case! When I left, she was still on the phone. Next day I enquired. She said, “oh, I think I forgot the baking powder.” “It did not rise”. “It is solid though.” “It tastes alright.”
Very nice Christmas cake, thanks Gerard, she added.

Tags: British, Christmas pudding, Holland, lamington
Posted in Gerard Oosterman

The dreaded Gasman’s Knock

The dreaded Gasman’s Knock.

The neighbourhood has been unsettled this week. The Gasman is around. All letterboxes have received notices that gas connections need updating. The ‘next-generation’ of newer and better gas deliveries will be installed, the brochure lauded. It all started some years ago with ‘logistics’, followed hot on the heels with ‘solutions’. All problems are now solved with ‘next-generation’ technologies. The elderly, already on tenterhooks when the butcher started selling ‘meat solutions’ instead of good old honest sausages and mince are now further pushed into nervous anticipation of ‘next generational’ improvements. They suspect their lives will just become more complicated with higher bills, no matter how much the gas delivery improves. I mean, gas is gas isn’t it?

“Your gas will be disconnected between 6am and 7pm this Tuesday,” a curt little notice in our letterbox heralded. I went to bed intending to get up before our gas would be cut off. The morning coffee would go through no matter what sacrifice would be asked for. I slept restlessly as is my wont when unexpected interruption to routine are foisted upon us and outside my control. Retirement was always seen as a steady flow of unquestioned and calm supply of essential commodities including gas. The turmoil of earlier adventures during life’s proclivities were always supposed to come to rest in the calm waters of ‘retirement’. The very word implies a retraction or retreating from previous action. Even so, the anticipated knock of the Gasman on our door was hardly reason for my nervousness. I have searched my fickle conscience where this stems from. I can only come up with this feeble excuse. Ever since our upheaval from Holland, and before that, the bombing of Rotterdam, I have been subject to feelings of imminent dread. What next; the reading of the riot act while gas is turned off, a street curfew?

Nothing has ever been improved on, as a small boy of seven or eight, my watching the re-building of Rotterdam. I have been fascinated by giant holes in city scapes ever since. Giant cranes would lift a weight of several tonnes only to release it onto wooden beams driven by this pile driver into the muddy ground necessary for the foundations to be built. The noise was thunderous but not quite like the V1 rockets that used to come down earlier during the war.

Give me a building site, preferably with large cranes and giant holes and I’ll happily neglect everything. What a Louis Vuitton David Jones shopping front with skinny mannequins might be for women, a building site is for men. Next time you walk past a building site, you will hardly ever see a woman peering through the gaps of the fence. Men, on the other hand can be transfixed by the noise and commotion on building sites for days. It’s back to the meccano set for them.

Our street was uprooted during the next gas generational logistical supply solution. The whole street was blocked off with traffic diverted by bearded men holding signs with ‘stop’ and ‘go’. Huge mountains of sand piling up and lots of men with mobile phones in hand while wearing yellow helmets and iridescent jackets shouting to bulldozers. Enormous coils of yellow pipes were being fed underground to apartments, houses and domestic abodes including ours. It was worth a morning off from the usual duties. Our Jack Russell ‘Milo’ was on special alert, listening in to all those exotic noises. Jackhammers and a petrol driven compactors, the smell of Diesel, the shouting.

It was a good day, terrific really.
Can it get any better?
Yes, it can;