Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks Number 6 - Smoking Bishop

Towards the end of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens gives the central character Scrooge - newly converted to the merriment of Christmas following a busy night the details of which you’ll probably recall from the book/play/film/puppet show/muppet show/episode of Blackadder etc and don’t concern us here - this short speech. The reformed miser says to his clerk (to whom he had formerly refused a day off for Xmas day):

“A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit.”

The “...Christmas bowl of smoking bishop...” intrigued me, so I looked it up and there’s a whole family of mulled wine recipes that were so popular in Victorian times that a reference like Scrooge’s above could be dropped without further explanation.

Here at the home of the Finnginn blog, we are always saddened to discover that a once-loved Xmas tradition has bitten the proverbial dust. Fortunately, we have a voice, and a host of readers and together we might just reinvigorate the corpse of the smoking bishop tradition.

What is it?

Smoking Bishop is a mulled wine made from port wine and roasted spiced citrus fruits. The Victorian cookbook writer Eliza Acton has a recipe in her Modern Cookery for Private Families first published in 1845.

Eliza Acton deserves to be better known. She was the first in print to refer to plum pudding - that delicious combination of flour, fruits, sugar, spices, brandy and kidney fat - as Christmas Pudding. She also introduced the English speaking world to Spaghetti and to Brussels Sprouts. Now’s not the time to open up an argument between two ladies long since departed but a certain Mrs Isabella Beeton plagiarised quite a few of her recipes. And although I’m firmly team Acton, what’s good enough for Mrs B is certainly good enough for me, so here’s that Acton recipe in full:

“Make several incisions in the rind of a lemon, stick cloves in these, and roast the lemon by a slow fire. Put small but equal quantities of cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice, with a race of ginger, into a saucepan with half a pint of water: let it boil until it is reduced one-half. Boil one bottle of port wine, burn a portion of the spirit out of it by applying a lighted paper to the saucepan; put the roasted lemon and spice into the wine ; stir it up well, and let it stand near the fire ten minutes. Rub a few knobs of sugar on the rind of a lemon, put the sugar into a bowl or jug, with the juice of half a lemon (not roasted), pour the wine into it, grate in some nutmeg, sweeten it to the taste, and serve it up with the lemon and spice floating in it.”

Those of us not possessed of a slow fire can simulate that step with an oven or that air fryer you bought yourself last Xmas.

Another delightful fact is that the smoking bishop is but one of a handful of mulled wine recipes in a family known collectively as the Ecclesiastics. They all follow the same pattern as above but have different names according to the wine you use as the base.

Substitute port for whichever of the following you happen to have in your wine store and change the name:

• Claret - smoking archbishop
• Champagne - smoking cardinal
• Burgundy - smoking pope

But the one that will be mulling away in the Finnginn slow cooker to greet Xmas guests returning rosy-cheeked from the Boxing Day walk will be the smoking beadle - which has added raisins and is made with that most Xmassy of wines: Stones Ginger Wine.

Teetotal Alternative

One for the ankle biters to enjoy alongside the grown-ups is hot Ribena which is made by adding boiling water to blackcurrant squash.

What are you mulling this Xmas? Can you help us revive the tradition of the smoking bishop? Let us know how you get on in the comments below and on the social media.

Photo by Hannah Pemberton on Unsplash

Finnginn’s Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 7 - Stout

All tastes are acquired, but some tastes take more acquiring than others. No child, mistaking a parent’s glass of dark bubbly stout for a cherry-cola, ever took a sip and thought: “Yes! This is the drink for me!” Liking stout takes practice, and the effort is its own reward.

A solid bottle of stout is a bit like a solid marriage. With any luck there will be sufficient notes of joyful liquorice, coffee and dark chocolate to prevent the undercurrent of bitterness from overwhelming.  

What is it?

Stout is a dark beer brewed from barley that has been toasted until burnt. For purists, stout is traditionally made with unmalted barley and it is this that distinguishes it from the maltier-tasting porter. But in practice there is a lot of overlap between the two and mixing of malted and unmalted grains to get the desired flavour in the brew.

Guinness or Murphy's?

The stout with the best international marketing campaign is undoubtedly Guinness. I’ve worked many St Patrick’s Days in an Irish-owned bar, in a typical week we’d order 2-3 barrels of Guinness. For the 17th March we’d order (and sell) an extra 10. People would tell you how much they disliked the drink as they ordered another tray of 4 pints to get their hands on another Gunness-branded tall nylon hat (known unaffectionately in the trade as a wanker hat). 

The stout with the best local marketing campaign is undoubtedly Murphy’s. I accidentally moved to County Cork briefly in the late 1990s (a story for another time). The town I lived and worked in - Youghal (pronounced like the American second person plural pronoun: “y’all”) - was the only town in Ireland where Murphy’s stout outsold the brand leader Guinness. As a reward, the brewery ran a loyalty card scheme where for every three pints you drank you got a fourth free. The stickers and cards were like a second currency in the town that summer.

When to drink stout

Back to Christmas day - veg prepped, turkey’s in the oven - you’ve got a couple of hours before the spuds need to go on. For me, this is the perfect time to pop down your local boozer for a pint or - if your luck’s in - a bottle of Guinness. Bottled Guinness (sold as Guinness Original in the UK) is a lovely bitter stout with a sharper effervescence than the nitrogen bubbles that give its draft cousin its famous creamy head. A delicious mid-winter warmer.

(Nearly*) Teetotal Alternative: Kvass

Did you ever take a bite of an Eastern European rye bread and think: “My god! If only this was available in drink form!”? Well then you need to get some Kvass - the drink that tastes like bread - in your drinks cabinet. You can even make your own Kvass.

*The minimal research that I do for this blog informs me that the fermentation process leads to trace amounts of alcohol in Kvass - but they give it to children in Russia - so you’ll probably be alright. 

What do you drink in the pub at Christmas time? Let us know in the comments below or on the social media.

Photo by Gary Zhang on Unsplash

  

Finnginn’s Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 8 - Buck’s Fizz

Like a once-beloved sitcom whose protagonists haven’t aged well, this blog likes to return for the Xmas Specials in the hope that some audience approval ratings and a favourable broadsheet review will mean getting greenlighted for a series in the new year. 

Last Advent, we probed the murkier depths of my Xmas music playlist for some forgotten and some best-forgotten Xmas classics. This year I’m dusting off my bartender’s tasting notes to review some of my favourite Xmas drinks. Feel free to drink responsibly along - and we’ll be including non-alcoholic alternatives for anyone who happens to be reading this blog whilst pregnant, driving, under age, hungover or just not in the mood for booze. 

As Jimmy Saville Dave Lee Travis might have been overheard saying in 1981: At Number 8: it’s Buck’s Fizz…

What is it?

Buck’s Fizz is a mixture of sparkling wine and orange juice. Get out your biggest jug, slowly pour in an entire bottle of bubbly and top up with OJ to taste. This is a great pre-breakfast drink for parents to drown out thoughts of over-commercialisation as they watch their kids tear the paper from the carefully thought out educational stocking fillers and cast them aside in favour of the selection box of Cadbury bars.  

Even if you can afford to drink Champagne, it seems a bit of a shame to be drowning an expensive bottle in a carton of ‘made from concentrate’. Far better to save the champers for toasting the Queen’s King’s Speech. If you can’t afford to toast with Champagne, Cremant is your friend here.

But for true value for money in your Buck’s Fizz (and naturally I’m ruling out those dreadful pre-mixed bottles here - we have standards on this blog) you’re going to want to get yourself a bottle or three of Lidl’s Arastel Cava Brut (currently priced around the £5.50 mark but frequently discounted in the build up to Xmas). I’m open to a sponsorship deal if anyone from Lidl wants to send me a case.

Then the trick is to up your Orange Juice game. Forget cartons, forget even the branded ‘not from concentrate’. Go out and source some large oranges and extract the juice from them. If you have one, you can use a juicer for this purpose. If you don’t have one - word to the wise - don’t buy your girlfriend one for Xmas.

(Before we were married, I thought it would be a good idea to buy my partner a juicer for Xmas one year. This turned out to be a terrible idea because a juicer comes in a big box. So naturally, she thought the giant wrapped box was secretly containing a little box with a diamond ring in it. Imagine her disappointment when the giant box actually contained a giant juicing machine! Still once a year, I dust it off to make the best damned Buck’s Fizz you’ll ever taste!)

Teetotal Alternative: St Clements

British readers will be familiar with the nursery rhyme that starts with the sweet refrain “Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements” and ends with the brutal beheading of a child by candlelight. This mocktail cleverly draws its name from the friendlier end of this rhyme and is a combination of equal parts: Schweppes Bitter Lemon and Orange Juice. 

What do you like to drink Xmas morning? Leave your comments below or on Facebook.

(Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash)

 

Finnginn's Festive Countdown: Number One

I spent what I could of today listening to my Xmas playlist and choosing something appropriate for the number one slot. There were a few contenders and if I was writing this on a different day, it might easily have been a different result.

Compiling a list like this has really helped me to define what I like in an Xmas tune. I particularly like genre takes on classics. I have developed a strong taste for military style snare-heavy drumbeats. And you can’t go wrong with a pretentious Latin title and a bonkers angelic inspiration. 

Number One: In Dulci Jubilo by Mike Oldfield

I feel an extra appreciation for this work of genius is added by being able to view Pan's People's dance interpretation from 1975's Top of the Pops. My Xmas gift to you all.

The tune’s history is pretty interesting too. I recommend listening to a choral arrangement such as this one by the choir at King’s College and you’ll hear Pearsall's partly English translation of the words and music that dates from the 14th Century.

German Mystic Heinrich Seuse wrote down the music he heard angels singing in a vision brought on by mortification  - an extreme religious practice for which Heinrich Seuse  invented and wore underpants studded with 150 inward facing brass nails. They really knew how to get close to God in the 14th Century. 

The underpant craze remained a niche practice, but the song really caught on. JS Bach loved the song so much that he wrote a prelude for organ (JBV729).

You might think that such a distinguished musical pedigree might put off the average prog rock studio musician, but Mike Oldfield realised that there was a banging tune hiding in In Dulce Jubilo  - it just needed speeding up and the addition of two slightly stifled electric guitars and some snare drums.

Well, this has been a gas, can’t believe that I have managed to write all eight of these before Xmas! It's kept me sane whilst also writing hundreds of near identical corporate Christmas messages for my day job writing the internet. 

Thanks to everyone who’s got involved and joined in the comments and shared their favourite Xmas tunes and their opinions on my choices. I hope the list has provoked thought more than it has disappointed.

Happy Xmas everyone!

Finnginn's Festive Countdown: Number 2

Some songs happen to have been popular at Xmastime, but have little discernible Xmas content or theme: Here in the UK, East 17's Stay Another Day is a case in point - sleigh bells notwithstanding. My mum, who has been following this countdown closely, keeps messaging me to remind me of the existence of David Essex’s A Winter's Tale (which I can exclusively reveal has not made the number one spot). Even Jingle Bells is pretty heavy on the delights of winter equestrianism and light on any actual Xmas references.

Because Xmas music is a fuzzy category, there are plenty of songs that can be in or out of the set depending on who’s making the distinctions. 

When I worked as a bartender, back in the days of CDs, we had the Best of the Pogues album behind the bar. Inevitably, if ever the familiar piano chords of the opening track would start to play, you could guarantee some member of the public would pipe up: “Why are you playing Christmas music in July?” But for me, A Fairytale of New York is a Xmas song that is not just for Xmas - it’s great all year round. 

But Fairytale of New York is not the Pogues’ best Xmas song. That honour goes to…

Number 2: Dark Streets of London by the Pogues

“Now the winter comes down, I can't stand the chill

That comes to the streets around Christmastime.

I'm buggered to damnation and I haven't got a penny

To wander the dark streets of London.”

Honourable mention should go to Thousands Are Sailing which is frequently my favourite Pogues track and includes the line "...from rooms that daylight never sees, where lights don't glow on Christmas trees..." I feel like Shane Macgowan really had a handle on Xmas lyrically and wasn't afraid to reference it in unexpected places, including songs about failed relationships, troubled souls feeling lonely in capital cities, and the Irish immigrant experience in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Have I missed any Pogues Christmas references? Let me know in the comments here or on Facebook.

Finnginn's Festive Countdown: Number 3

In the minimal research that I conduct to lend this blog an air of credibility, I read that this song only reached number 40 in the UK charts. It has only become familiar because it is used as filler on so many Xmas Hits records, CDs and… er… festive countdowns.

Chris de Burgh may be best remembered for his saccharine ballads about rubbing cheeks with scarlet clad ladies, but we’re here to celebrate the strand of bonkers religiosity hiding in that falsetto croon. Spanish Train - in which the Devil outwits God by cheating at games of poker and chess over which they have wagered the souls of the dead - was a favourite of mine as a child. But this is a festive countdown so today’s song can only be:

Number 3: A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris de Burgh

In my view, A Spaceman Came Travelling is a song in three parts:

Part One is the set-up: a grade one reimagining of the Nativity story in which the star that guides shepherd folk and wise men to Bethlehem is not a star at all but an alien spacecraft bearing a message for mankind to hear. This is brilliantly Christmassy - if there’s one Christmas song element that we are fans of here at the Finnginn blog, it’s reimaginings of the Nativity story. We love it when songwriters are like: The Greatest Story Ever Told? Nah, it would be better if it went like this...

Part Two is a bit of a letdown as the spaceman reveals that his message is:

“...blah blah blah blah, la-la, blah blah blah blah…” 

Lyrically, it’s like Chris thought, ‘I’ll write that bit later’ and then never did.

But the song is redeemed in Part Three when the stranger/spaceman character departs leaving only the cryptic hint that:

“...when 2000 years of your time has gone by,

 this song will begin once again…” 

That’s right! The twist is that you’re not listening to a Chris de Burgh festive pop song at all - you are actually hearing the interstellar music of the angel-being that blessed the birth of Jesus! 

It’s this incredible hubris that earns A Spaceman Came Travelling a prominent place in my Christmas playlist.

Finnginn's Festive Countdown: Number 4

I’m slightly behind schedule on these. Looks like I’ve got to publish one on most of the days left between now and Xmas otherwise I will be breaking my own rule that Xmas music should only be listened to during Advent and on Xmas day itself.

The Kinks have long been a favourite band of mine. They had a string of hit singles in the 1960s: starting with two - You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night - that kind of invented the chord-heavy riff metal sound before completely abandoning it in pursuit of a character-led almost theatrical style of music.

Many of the 1970s Kinks albums are overly-long single-concept albums that play out like stage plays. They took to touring with a full brass section and their stage shows featured actors and multiple costume changes. Record sales dwindled until they reinvented themselves as a stadium act in the 1980s, drawing on their huge back catalogue to play just the hits to packed crowds.

At the peak of their late 1970s unpopularity. They released a Christmas song:

Number 4: Father Christmas by the Kinks

The christmassy glockenspiel intro gives way to a trademark Dave Davies guitar peel. Lead singer Ray Davies sings the song from the perspective of a mall santa who tells the story of a time he was mugged by a gang of children who taunt him with the central refrain:

“Father Christmas, give us some money

Don't mess around with those silly toys

We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over

We want your bread so don't make us annoyed.

Give all the toys to the little rich boys!”

In 1977, pipe bands not glockenspiels were the Christmas music theme du jour, so Paul McCartney’s ode to his estate in the Scottish lowlands, Mull of Kintyre got the number one spot. This Kinks song failed to chart. 

What are your favourite forgotten Christmas anthems? Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook.