"feasts" news and stories

Christmas is over for another year. The presents have been opened, traditional breakfasts have been eaten (in our house, it's fried eggs, turkey bacon and sliced of toasted Panettone) and dinner feasts have been consumed. Once I again this year, I found myself confronted by one of the injustices of holiday eating, which is that a meal that takes all day to prepare gets demolished in less than half an hour. It never seems quite right to me.

Each year for Christmas, my family remakes the traditional Thanksgiving meal (we just like it so much) - turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gingery squash, brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce. We finished the meal with pumpkin custard (pie without the crust) and an apple crisp. It was lovely, although hours and hours later I still feel the need to waddle instead of walk.

I want to hear about the holiday feasts the rest of you partook in. Did you have turkey, ham or roast beef? A cookie platter or an assortment of pies? Tell us about your successes and failures and feel free to point us all in the direction of a truly excellent recipe.

These fine specimins above are called calçots, a type of scallion grown in the Tarragona province of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. In spring, locals eat calçots at community feats called calçotadas - essentially barbecues, but with onions instead of cheeseburgers. Calçots are roasted on a grate over coals, leaving them charred on the outside but creamy on the inside. They're served on a terracotta roof tile or wrapped in newspaper to keep them warm, then peeled at the table and eaten dipped in pungent red romesco sauce, made with tomatoes, garlic, ground almonds and peppers. The local version is called salbitxada - see a recipe for it here. If you're not living in calçot country use it on leeks or roasted sweet onions.