Cawley Julia - New York Christmas: recipes & stories

THE AIR IS FULL OF ANTICIPATION...

w hen an icy wind sweeps through the streets of New York in the early days of December and plumes of white steam rise from the manhole covers in the ground, it usually doesnt take long before cold, moist air from the Great Lakes brings the first snow of the season to the city. Suddenly there are snowflakes dancing through the streets, and in the blink of an eye this great city turns into a winter wonderland. Time seems to stand still and New York business seems to hold its breath just for a moment. Anticipation takes hold on peoples faces. As snow settles on the Big Apple like glittering fairy dust, the city starts to resemble the famous New York snow domes tourists love to take home as souvenirs.

Visitors from all over the world flock to the city year after year to enjoy New Yorks famous Christmas shopping or to don ice skates for a few rounds in Central Park. Gliding across the rink set against the wonderful backdrop of the city skyline, defying gravity, they share a sense of magic and unlimited possibility. In the pre-Christmas weeks, the city dresses up for its residents and tourists: this is when New York sparkles more than at any other time of the year, intoxicating locals and visitors alike with a sea of thousands of colourful lights and illuminated Christmas trees.

The ebb and flow between the pulsating power of the city and the magical spirit of the Christmas season is both thrilling and fascinating not only along Broadway, but also in quiet side streets, in small, cosy, charmingly decorated cafs and even on enchanted benches in Central Park, where Julia Cawley loves to sit, enjoy the moment and simply watch time go by. Julia, a photographer who lives and works in New York, again and again finds herself drawn to the city as the focus of her work, creating a homage to this ever-changing metropolis.

New Yorks many-faceted character is also reflected in its food culture, and of course both the city and its surroundings have a lot to offer to gourmets, especially at this, the most beautiful time of the year. We have found just the recipes to bring this atmosphere to you. We have adapted sugar and butter quantities to local tastes and styled and photographed these sweet, savoury and sparkling delicacies with a great deal of love and care.

Join us on an exciting trip, immerse yourself in the stories of a mesmerising city, and taste the essence of what makes New York so unique in the world.

Merry Christmas

Lisa Nieschlag and Lars Wentrup

auggie wrens

Christmas Story

Paul Auster

i heard this story from Auggie Wren. Since Auggie doesnt come off too well in it, at least not as well as hed like to, hes asked me not to use his real name. Other than that, the whole business about the lost wallet and the blind woman and the Christmas dinner is just as he told it to me.

Auggie and I have known each other for close to eleven years now. He works behind the counter of a cigar store on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, and since its the only store that carries the little Dutch cigars I like to smoke, I go in there fairly often. For a long time, I didnt give much thought to Auggie Wren. He was the strange little man who wore a hooded blue sweatshirt and sold me cigars and magazines, the impish, wisecracking character who always had something funny to say about the weather, the Mets or the politicians in Washington, and that was the extent of it.

But then one day several years ago he happened to be looking through a magazine in the store, and he stumbled across a review of one of my books. He knew it was me because a photograph accompanied the review, and after that things changed between us. I was no longer just another customer to Auggie, I had become a distinguished person. Most people couldnt care less about books and writers, but it turned out that Auggie considered himself an artist. Now that he had cracked the secret of who I was, he embraced me as an ally, a confidant, a brother-in-arms. To tell the truth, I found it rather embarrassing. Then, almost inevitably, a moment came when he asked if I would be willing to look at his photographs. Given his enthusiasm and goodwill, there didnt seem any way I could turn him down.

God knows what I was expecting. At the very least, it wasnt what Auggie showed me the next day. In a small, windowless room at the back of the store, he opened a cardboard box and pulled out twelve identical black photo albums. This was his lifes work, he said, and it didnt take him more than five minutes a day to do it. Every morning for the past twelve years, he had stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street at precisely seven oclock and had taken a single color photograph of precisely the same view. The project now ran to more than four thousand photographs. Each album represented a different year, and all the pictures were laid out in sequence, from January 1 to December 31, with the dates carefully recorded under each one.

As I flipped through the albums and began to study Auggies work, I didnt know what to think. My first impression was that it was the oddest, most bewildering thing I had ever seen. All the pictures were the same. The whole project was a numbing onslaught of repetition, the same street and the same buildings over and over again, an unrelenting delirium of redundant images. I couldnt think of anything to say to Auggie, so I continued turning pages, nodding my head in feigned appreciation. Auggie himself seemed unperturbed, watching me with a broad smile on his face, but after Id been at it for several minutes, he suddenly interrupted and said, Youre going too fast. Youll never get it if you dont slow down.