It’s a few days before Christmas and it’s dark outside. In the dining room, Mum’s red tablecloth from the 1980s is laid on the table and the blue placemats are out.
The house is filled with the smell of the spruce tree from the living room and the heating is on just a tad too high.
From the kitchen, seasonal hymns buzz through the radio; from the living room, the canned laughter of Only Fools and Horses fills the room. As does my father’s light snoring, legs up on the footstool, hands clasped over his belly.
One of my nieces is dancing while another cartwheels and one more colours in a picture. My nephew, grinning, has his hand in the box of Quality Streets. My youngest niece is asleep in her cot. The rest of the grownups are slumped around watching the kids or the TV.
Back in the kitchen, the hobs are on and the water is boiling in a large pot as Mum tips in the dried pasta. In another pan a sauce of chopped tomato, onion, sweetcorn, smoked sausage, bacon and chunks of chicken simmers.
“Concoction” is what Mum calls it – and so did her mum before her. You know what I’m talking about. Every family has one. A blend of bits and bobs from the fridge and the cupboards, used up before they go to waste.
It doesn’t matter where we spend Christmas, whether it’s our old house where my siblings and I grew up, or the new house where my parents have retired to. What never changes is this dish, this Concoction. A memory that tastes of home.
My nieces and nephews love it just as much my brother, sister and I did growing up. A mound of pasta, the sauce not mixed in but poured into the centre. The kids like to pick out the plain pasta left behind in the strainer, too just as I did. If I have children one day, I have no doubt I’ll carry on the tradition.
I think of Proust’s madeleines, how the narrator of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ ate a piece of the small cake and ‘at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence’
As we get older, Christmas becomes less and less about the presents and the parties. For me it’s now about coming home – and realising you’re lucky enough to have one.
It’s when I go home that I realise how strong the link between food and family is. How important the meals we share are. Coming home is... a strange pasta passed down and shared.
There’s nothing culinary about Concoction. I have no idea about the balance of its flavours. In another circumstance, I’d probably avoid a tomato sauce of bacon, chicken, smoked sausage and sweetcorn. But Concoction made by Mum is different.
I think of Proust’s madeleines, how the narrator of In Search of Lost Time ate a piece of the small cake and “at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence.”
One forkful of Concoction – sausage, bacon, overcooked pasta and all – and it all comes back to me. The memory of my mum slipping me a piece of the sausage from the chopping board before it was cooked (always bigger than the bit she gave to my father); or dunking great hunks of ciabatta into the sauce and wolfing it down. Ciabatta was a treat back then, known in our household as the “posh bread”.
Concoction is no longer just a vehicle for using up what we’ve got left in the cupboards – that’s just where it started. Now, it’s a deeply personal, time-honoured family tradition. That’s all it takes to start one.
Everyone remembers their favourite dishes from when they were children, the Concoctions, the way only their dad makes toast in the morning or the secret ingredient they put in your sandwiches, a soup made from a medley of vegetables. Everyone thinks their family’s roast is the best, their Christmas dinner second to none, their spaghetti bolognese unbeatable.
You probably don’t eat those made-up dishes much anymore. I’ve certainly never cooked Concoction for myself since I moved out years ago. But at Christmas, when I go home for a week or so, nothing else to do but be with my family, I look forward to one thing the most. Not the presents. Not the Christmas movies. I will eat that pasta, feel that “precious essence” Proust was on about and be transported back in time.
This is where your taste is made. No matter how many Michelin stars a restaurant might have, nothing will be better than home.
