Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [122]
Made, for the most part, from pinot noir, the grape of the great Burgundies, champagne is pale in color because the grape skins are quickly removed from the liquid during the pressing. Blanc de Blanc, however, is a champagne made from chardonnay or white pinot grapes.
Like all white wines, champagne should be drunk fairly young—except when it is high quality—preferably from a tulip-shaped glass, rather than the wide, flat type that allows the bubbles to quickly dissipate. The bottle should be chilled but not icy. Champagne, like wine, has vintages, some good, some not.
The driest champagne is labeled Brut, then comes Extra Dry, Sec, and Demi-Sec. The larger bottles have, together with burgundies, marvelous biblical names. After the Magnum, which contains two bottles, they are:
Jeroboam—Four bottles
Rehoboam—Six bottles
Methusalem—Eight bottles
Salmanazar—Twelve bottles
Balthazar—Sixteen bottles
Nebuchadnezzar—Twenty bottles
Balthazar was one of the three Magi. Nebuchadenezzar, a great king of Babylon, conquered Judea and destroyed Jerusalem five hundred years before Christ.
CHRISTMAS EVE
For years it was past midnight before the various toys were finally assembled and the gifts laid out under the tree with its strings of lights. Morning came very early, as might be expected. There was the long ritual of the opening of presents amid strewn paper and boxes, who had given what to whom sometimes becoming lost in the confusion.
Peter Matthiessen’s wife, Maria, with her German heritage, did it differently. Christmas was celebrated on Christmas Eve with real candles on the big tree. First there was a fine dinner, then the opening of presents. You went to sleep on the full happiness of it.
We adopted her way and also began to always read something aloud on Christmas Eve, sometimes with just the family, sometimes with friends. Most often it was “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” Dylan Thomas’s glorious remembrance of this holiday, very different from but in a way rivaling Dickens, with its thrilling language and warm heart.
For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding,
and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire,
loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over
their watch chains, groaned a little and slept …
We passed the book around, everyone reading a part. We opened presents—most, not all of them—and if it was cold and clear, went out to look at the stars. And so to bed.
CHRISTMAS DINNER
The Christmas dinner that Scrooge foresees being served at the Cratchits’ in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol stands as perhaps the most famous meal in English literature.
Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy … hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits sat chairs for everybody not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried Hurrah!
BOXING DAY
Boxing Day, celebrated in England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, has grown out of the Feast of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death. On Christmas Day, presents are exchanged between family members, friends, and associates, but on Boxing Day, gift-giving is meant to flow all in one direction: from the richer to the poorer or from employers to staff. The name probably came from the opening of the church alms boxes to distribute