t’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. Into another pan bubbles a sauce of chopped tomato, onion, sweetcorn, smoked sausage, bacon and chunks of chicken.
“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. If I have children one day, I have no doubt I’ll carry on the tradition.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.