Bonfire Night Bash

For some reason not entirely unconnected to my date of birth we regularly have a party near Bonfire Night. There was no intention to make it an annual thing when we started, but it has become that way and I'm not complaining. Traditions can be enjoyable. Apart from anything else it gives me the chance to force a small crowd with no alternative sustenance to hand to try what I think should be eaten on such occasions.

One of those dishes is inevitably pumpkin-based, as we grow stupidly large ones for Halloween and then need to make the most of the flesh they yield. I bet that 95 per cent of all the pumpkins shifted by the supermarkets this week will make lanterns and nothing more, a sad waste. Pumpkin soup or curry, and almost definitely pumpkin pie will use some of ours, plenty more bulking out stews later on.

Another dish, and this is one with serious repercussions, will be Lancashire Pea Soup made with two boxes of dried peas and about a pig's worth of bacon ribs. Bacon ribs which have become expensive now, joining the ranks of lamb shanks and monkfish in my whinge-list. It's something I associate with Bonfire Night bashes, my Lancastrian-family-in-exile in Norfolk in the Sixties and Seventies adhering to such culinary traditions I guess more than those who remained in the county. Home-made bonfire toffee always featured too, made by my dad as the soup often was, and parkin (again, not shop-bought).

Maybe the third planned dish will become something my son will want to make a tradition of his own in the future. There's a good chance as his culinary ideal is large pieces of flesh. I'm nicking the Man v Food thing of a slowly-cooked dry-rubbed brisket served with BBQ sauce, the brisket ordered well in advance as it's not something always on the butcher's counter. The house on the day will be filled with the smell of herbs, spices, sugar and steaming-roasting beef.

Traditions start like that, being taken up without being purposely created. At my first university, which was a post-WWII creation and very wonderful too, some twit tried to make an instant tradition by having 'Fresher's Gate' painted over one small entrance beside a huge one. No takers, whereas borrowing refectory trays when it snowed, the polished wood becoming a perfect makeshift one-man sledge, certainly was adopted. Which may mean Sternest Critic goes for the pumpkin pie instead when he rules his own roost.