A good Christmas Eve supper after the food shopping in the morning.

It is a nonsense call something it is not (carbonara should really be eggs, cream eggs and ham) but there are similarities here particularly if you have previously made your spagetti carbonara with smocked bacon. This is a smooth, fulfilling dish – a good way to start an indulgent weekend. It will go well with most types of pasta but I think it works well with thick strips of tagliatelle, the creamy sauce and flakes of haddock clinging to the strips of pasta.

1 glass of white wine

500 gr un-dyed smoked haddock

500 gr thick-ribboned tagliatelle

350 ml crème fraiche

juice of half a lemon

finely chopped dill or parsley

salt & pepper

Put on water to boil in a large pan.

Warm the wine in the bottom of a wide pan until it starts to simmer. Put in the fillets of smoked haddock skin side down and poach until the skin can be pulled away from the flesh.  Take the fish out of the pan and leave to cool for a few minutes. Then, using your fingers, pull away the skin and discard. Break up the flakes of flesh, but not too small. Lick your fingers.

As the water for pasta comes to the boil add the crème fraiche and lemon juice to the pan the haddock cooked in and start to warm through.

Cook the pasta. It will probably take about 10 minutes, but check the instructions, and taste until it is ready.

In the meantime put the  fish back in their pan and stir gently into the creamy sauce. Check for salt and pepper and add half of the chopped dill.

When the pasta is done, drain and pour back into its pan. Stir into it half of the cream and smoked haddock sauce and then pour into a warmed serving dish. Pour over the rest of the sauce and sprinkle over the rest of the dill or parsley. Serve with Low in the background doing their Christmas album. Possibly the best Christmas record of them all. Happy Christmas..

After Diane Arbus we had coffee and fresh orange juice in the cafe in the basement of FOAM. The Dutch are good at coffee and orange juice. The orange juice comes cold and freshly squeezed, round the back by the bins there will be a pile of the discarded skins and pith, there are bits in it and it puckers the mouth. The coffee is strong and black – as it should be.

There was talk of a market on Albert Cuypstraat and without giving it much thought four of us walked down there. The sky was grey and heavy over the city but after the rain of the previous evening the air was still. As we walked down through the streets there was a sense of a city and its people going about its business on the Sunday before Christmas. It was more low key than at home, the pressure to celebrate was not pushed up hard against your face, but there were lights and red Father Christmas hats.

We were not sure what to expect of the market and a lot of it was like markets anywhere, cheap fashion and tat, people walking through, eyes open for a bargain. Although, being Holland, a lot of the people were taller than elsewhere. Along the half kilometre street it ran down we passed stalls selling the whole range of Dutch food you could hope for.

There was a stall selling soused herring out of wooden barrels to be slathered on white rolls and eaten with finely chopped onions and lip smacking relish. A  stall selling loempia, great, fat Indonesian Spring Rolls stuffed with bean sprouts, Chinese greens and a variety of chilli sauces. Two stalls selling poffertjes, small puffed up Dutch pancakes, just over an inch across covered with a thick dusting of icing sugar. And at the very end of the market a giant bag of frites advertising the stall next door, a jumble of chairs under some bare trees and a small queue waiting to pay for a cardboard white cone of the crisp hot potato and its covering of mayonnaise.

At the end I was sorry not to have picked up a handful of the smoked eels we had seen at one of the fish stalls. Those would have fitted into the hand luggage.

After a long breakfast in the The Estherea we walked along the Keizersgracht to FOAM to walk round its Diane Arbus exhibition. On the way we passed a small shop on Oude Spiegel Straat selling large tin Dutch lanterns. Quite a lot of time was spent working out if they were not quite big enough to fit in my hand luggage. We came to the conclusion that I would not be allowed through but I know what I want for Christmas next year.

The Diane Arbus was the perfect way to help clear the head after the one too many Corsendonks in a bar I found called Cafe Gollem . Cafe Gollem was one of those perfect bars that you always wish existed round the corner. It was only two minutes from the hotel and I came across it late in the afternoon when I went out for a wander whilst the rest of the party was sleeping or getting ready for the evening.

The room was squashed in around a small bar, half a dozen stools, a shelf of sorts around the back wall and a tiny staircase leading to an upper floor with a few tables. It was dark and smelt of old wood and beer. There were four or five blackboards on the walls listing the 200 hundred or so beers there was available. There were about ten beers on tap and as Roger and Anne-Marie had just called from Antwerp I had a glass of De Koninck listening to Joy Division and then a glass of Gollem Blonde before joining the rest of the party back at the hotel for the evening out in Amsterdam.

The evening then finished at Cafe Gollem all sat upstairs squashed up to one of the tables of plain wood looking like drowned rats having walked through the thick sheets of rain that had settled over Holland that day. I will have to make an effort to go back there.

The black and white clarity of the Diane Arbus’ photographs and the clear eyed focus she brought to the lives of the misfits, freaks and nudists all helped to subdue the fug. I found myself taking my glasses off to peer up close to the pictures to try and see through the line that she had created between reality and the quicksilver of light she had caught.

Sadly the oven has been mended and no charcoal bought. So the the barbecue will have to continue sitting forlornly in the garden all the way through Christmas Day. By way of compensation grandpa has fallen asleep already and Titanic is on the telly.

This evening we ate chicken with noodles. The chicken was chicken breasts from The International Store and they were outsized. The kids got scared as they I fried them off in the pan and there was talk of emu’s and ostrich’s. I  have a sneaking admiration for the size of their chicken breasts  but if I worry, I worry for where they have come from.

With the broth we had black long beans steamed with pak choi.

As grandpa snores we are listening to Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald singing Cheek to cheek. Some of the best, and most sophisticated music you could hope for.