Mince pies and sherry

One of the traditions of my childhood Christmases was that first thing on Christmas morning my mother would go into the kitchen, make pastry and turn out a batch of a dozen mince pies.

Her pastry was wonderful beyond imagination - I watched her make it countless times, she gave me the recipe, she even stood over me while I made it, and mine has never even come close. I think the secret lay partly in the lard and partly in her very cold hands - Trex is the nearest vegetarian equivalent to lard, but it isn't the same, and now we have central heating my kitchen is never as cold as hers always was - but even with the exact same ingredients and conditions I could never make it as well.

Anyway, no later than mid-morning a dozen mince-pies with the flakiest pastry stood cooling on the rack. And as soon as they were cool enough to eat, she would sit down with a glass of sherry and enjoy one of them, before getting on with the business of preparing the Christmas lunch.

We always had mince-pies after dinner on Christmas Day, the family believing that noone could do justice to a pudding after a full roast dinner (which wasn't much more than an ordinary Sunday lunch with the addition of bread sauce, in fact), and we had the pudding on Boxing Day, after cold meat. But the mince-pies we had after dinner were never as good, never as mouth-watering, as the one we had mid-morning, still warm.

My mother died thirteen years ago and my family now don't care for Christmas cake, pudding or mincemeat, so the festivities are nothing like they were when I was a child. But if I have time on Christmas morning, or even on one of the other days over the Christmas holiday, I still have a (shop-bought) mince-pie and/or a glass of sherry, remember my mother and wish I could have one of her home-made ones again.