Car­ol Quash

Dionne Ovid’s house­hold is all about tra­di­tion, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to Christ­mas good­ies. So much so that the fam­i­ly’s Ponche de Crème recipe has ex­tend­ed its tra­di­tion­al reach to Ovid’s med­ical team at the San­gre Grande hos­pi­tal, where she works as a crit­i­cal care nurse.

“I start­ed bring­ing my Ponce de Crème to our get-to­geth­er, and peo­ple ex­pect it now. Just re­cent­ly some­body asked me, ‘Are you mak­ing Ponce de Crème this year?’ I told her no, and she said, ‘Then I want back my mon­ey,’ so I think it has be­come a high­light of the par­ty it­self,” Ovid told WE.

Ovid’s moth­er, Gem­ma, got the recipe from a friend decades ago, and since then, not one Christ­mas has gone by with­out a full pro­duc­tion in their kitchen.

“From ob­serv­ing and some­times par­tic­i­pat­ing, even­tu­al­ly I start­ed to make it my­self. In fact, I took it over now be­cause mum­my doesn’t make it any­more.”

She has even start­ed ex­per­i­ment­ing with oth­er flavours, such as cof­fee, and is open to try­ing the sor­rel. But some tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments are set in stone.

“We still give the spir­it its due when we open a new bot­tle of rum,” she chuck­led. “You know, break the seal, put a lit­tle in the bot­tle cov­er and throw it over your shoul­der.”

She said there are no writ­ten recipes for their fruit cakes, but some­how every­thing seems to turn out per­fect­ly. Her fa­ther, Noel, is the cake mak­er, and he knows ex­act­ly how much of every­thing to add with­out con­sult­ing a recipe.

“And to make sure that the con­sis­ten­cy is right, he would stick a spoon in the mid­dle. If the spoon doesn’t stand up­right, it means that it needs a lit­tle more flour.”

But, she said, in or­der to pre­serve the recipes for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, she has de­cid­ed to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of doc­u­ment­ing them.

“Be­cause I am a kind of bridge be­tween my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion and my son’s gen­er­a­tion, I’m start­ing to de­vel­op a lit­tle more of a me­thod­i­cal way of do­ing things, like mea­sur­ing and doc­u­ment­ing.”

Ovid al­so makes pastelles through­out the year, but she sticks to the fig leaf tra­di­tion.

“Mak­ing pastelles is a lot of work, and you can spend a whole day do­ing it. So I would make batch­es spo­rad­i­cal­ly dur­ing the year and freeze them so it’s easy to just take one from the freez­er and steam it.”

As a work­ing moth­er, the pastelles are con­ve­nient as an easy lunch or din­ner for her fam­i­ly. But, of course, she doesn’t yet have a writ­ten recipe.

“It’s just a toss of this, a lit­tle bit of that, a dab of this, and when the spir­it tells you, ‘Stop’, you stop. And, for some rea­son, it hits the nail on the head.”

She likened the process to us­ing a mor­tar and pes­tle as op­posed to a blender.

“When you’re pour­ing in all these in­gre­di­ents and grind­ing it in a mor­tar and pes­tle, even­tu­al­ly it de­vel­ops this flavour that every sin­gle time you add some­thing to it, you’re able to taste a dif­fer­ence, rather than just blend­ing it all to­geth­er.”

She is all about em­brac­ing evo­lu­tion and the use of tech­nol­o­gy to make life eas­i­er. But there are cer­tain things on which she re­fus­es to com­pro­mise.

“There are tra­di­tions that act as the glue to hold­ing a fam­i­ly to­geth­er. This is ours.”

Recipe

Ponche de Crème

In­gre­di­ents

2-3 small nut­megs

6 large eggs

1 750ml bot­tle of white rum

4 tins con­densed milk

1 lime, peeled

An­gos­tu­ra bit­ters

Method:

Grate nut­megs and boil in ¼ cup of wa­ter. Set aside to cool.

Wash eggs, crack one by one and place in­to a bowl.

Wisk thor­ough­ly.

Add milk to the egg mix­ture and whisk thor­ough­ly.

Add the skin of the lime to the mix­ture and whisk for about two min­utes.

Add the al­co­hol and whisk un­til every­thing is well blend­ed.

Add bit­ters to taste.

Strain boiled nut­meg, pour liq­uid in­to mix­ture, and whisk.

Pour Ponche de Crème in­to ster­ilised bot­tles and re­frig­er­ate or store in a cool place.

Serve chilled.