*Written from my father’s point of view* It’s your first year in your own home. The first year you get to experiment with flavours, techniques, and traditions. It’s the first year you get to make the Christmas Eve dinner! And it may be your last, depending on the outcome. Your grandmother used to make her Chilean pastel de choclo (corn pie) from when she was a kid. Your aunts tried to recreate it when she died. But to put it lightly, they failed. As a kid, on Christmas Eve some of your friends would stay up for midnight Mass, then open their presents and eat a Québécois tourtière until morning. “Reveillon,” they called it. “We’ll mix the two traditions,” you decide, “ and add some maple syrup, because Lita’s pastel de choclo could always have used some maple.” You’ve got the basics: creamed corn, olives, boiled eggs, and ground beef. Remove the mashed potatoes from the pastel, and add some puffed pastry from the tourtiere. Remove the rabbit meat as well, your salaries can’t afford that. It’s an exquisite corpse of flavours, traditions, and inspiration.
Your wife makes the pastry. The baby babbles on the floor, a paper crown on her head, and a boiled egg in her hand. You mix the ground beef in the blue cast iron pot - a wedding gift. If you had a garlic crusher, you’d use it.“You need to let it aerate while it’s cooking”, your mother-in-law tells you. Well, you learn something new every day. You poke the top with a fork, the series of four holes makes an image of mistletoe. Peering over your shoulder, she compliments the work of art, a glass of S.Pellegrino in her hand.The pie was good enough that your wife let you make it again the next year. Over the next decade and a half, you build on the recipe. You experiment with spices, more or less salt, or flat out forgetting the olives. The kitchen changes with a move, then a reno. The family grows, the faces change - you’re an odd bunch at that table. You wrap books with care, and set them on the plates - another invented tradition. You light the candles, peel the oranges, and read the jokes. You carry the name, and your children will too. The labour of love is always worth it. You can nearly see your grandmother at the head of the table. You haven’t failed.
