Sebastian Kirsch: Blog

I celebrated with my family yesterday, on Christmas Eve, with the traditional exchange of gifts, a four-course meal, and some fine champagne. No singing of christmas carols; we stopped doing that when I was twelve, despite my mother’s insistence.

For supper, we had

• a clear vegetable soup
• salad with parmesan and pistachios
• monkfish in lemon-grass sauce, with green asparagus and oyster mushrooms
• chocolate-almond soufflé with a tangerine sauce

As regards presents, they were wonderfully utilitarian this time. My parents are going to pay for the hotel during my christmas holiday as a present, plus they gave me a blanket. I got a new wallet (very stylish) from my brother and a Tommy Hilfiger sweater from my aunt, and that was it.