Cooking at Twixmas

Twixmas is a name I heard recently for this strange time between Christmas and New Year; it’s no longer Christmas but it’s not yet 2025. We often have a Reid / Anderson meet up at this time of year, and that is what we had planned for today. However the best laid plans gang aft agley as Robert Burns reminded us, and about twelve days ago Christine suffered a detached retina, which has been treated by laser and she needed to rest lying on her side for ten days before finding out if it will need further treatment. So we decided that it would be easier for Christine if we all travelled to Dunlop, but since I didn’t want her to be on her feet cooking all afternoon I offered to bring the meal. And this all worked very well. Yesterday I cooked a beef stew in the slow cooker, and a spicy bean stew for the non meat eaters (Cat and me.) I also made an old favourite for dessert; chocolate charlotte. This afternoon I packed everything into two big shopping bags and after collecting Davie from Uddingston the four of us set off to Dunlop. Cat very kindly helped me to find what I needed in the kitchen and also introduced me to the delights of a proper AGA cooker, which is very different from anything I have used before. I felt as if it took us ages to get the easy starter (smoked salmon and blinis) onto the table because we were heating up the constituent parts of the main course at the same time, but actually we were only twenty minutes later than I had planned and the others were all very happy chatting in the living room. Once the meal started it went extremely smoothly and everyone said that they enjoyed it. I had been worried about the beef stew which wasn’t quite thick enough, but James told me privately that while not perfect, it really was fine. It still didn’t look or smell as good as Ewan’s Tuscan beef stew though. No stew could. The spicy bean stew was very good (in my humble opinion!) and I served it with grilled halloumi which went with it very well. Euan and Gerry both tried some of it after their beef stew. The chocolate charlotte went down well too and then we had the cheeseboard, with chutneys on the side. I was so pleased that it had gone so well; Christine is a brilliant cook and I didn’t want to let the side down! It was a friendly and fun evening in great company.