There’s always one non-negotiable snack in Jimi Famurewa’s fridge at this time of year: a spicy, homemade scotch egg. How did it become a family favourite?
T
he culinary essence of the festive season is a kind of sanctioned chaos. Never mind that, from one angle, Christmas is mostly just rigidly observed collective food traditions and grown adults dying on the hill of whether yorkshire puddings should be served with turkey.
I don’t think I ever really feel that warming yuletide rush until I have turned a disparate assemblage of leftovers into what, to the casual observer, looks distinctly like a completely unhinged plate of food. I think most of us will know the sort of thing: there will be ragged hunks of surplus cheese, brine-slicked olives, stray bits of fruit and thick slices of the last of the cola-glazed ham; there will be a splat of cranberry sauce, a wodge of stewed red cabbage, and a dense, sticky slice of breathalyser-troubling Christmas cake. It is, I suppose, what most people think of as a Twixmas picky tea. Or maybe even a TikTok “girl dinner”, where the specific “girl” being channeled is an exhausted Mrs Claus pouring herself a massive Baileys on Boxing Day.
However, in our household, these fridge-forages tend to feature one constant: a hulking, golden-yolked half of one of the peppery homemade scotch eggs that have become my mum’s most beloved signature and our family’s most sanctified, non-negotiable Christmas food tradition.
