One of the things I love about food is the memories it is capable of evoking, partly through association of a particular dish with a place, and no doubt strongly driven by smell. Smells in particular seem to be a very powerful memory driver matching the power of music to do the same thing. Moussaka is one such dish that brings back pleasant memories of Greece and Athens in particular, and our young child-free days.
I’m not working from a large or statistically valid sample size here, but I think that by the standards of most home cooks these days I have a lot of cookbooks, somewhere close to 100 and growing. To this you can add a stack of magazines, a file full of clippings and handwritten things, additional electronic recipes I keep in my recipe software, and then there’s the internet. However, the subject of my interest here today is cookbooks rather than these ancillary sources, because (apart from witty, well written blogs <cough, cough>) cookbooks can offer insights and entertainment not available by other means, as well as other tangible and intangible value that appeals to me.
With just 39 days until Christmas, it’s time to think about making those longer lead time items, that in essence need some time to fester in your fridge or cupboard and consist of things containing fruit. This relatively small category includes favourites such as Christmas cake and the subject of this post, Christmas pudding.
