Traditional Christmas dinner in England or how we prepare for Christmas with Beatrice and the Faces! Traditional Christmas dishes Christmas food

I found some time and energy to write a post. Writing posts is probably very easy and simple for some, but not for me. Sometimes there is not enough strength or time.
In general, the first half of the week was spent “in the kitchen,” one might say.
By Wednesday morning, the previously planned items on the list were prepared:
- gastronomic panettone
- focaccia
- chocolate lights
- honey-ginger “gingerbread”
+ I even managed to bake, unplanned, details of a honey-ginger future house for celebrating New Year’s Eve at home

All this, along with other dishes from the “Christmas” lunch, was eaten yesterday in my husband’s office to cheers. Among which was a call to repeat such a lunch next year, a proposal to “feed” everyone like this every day, and a particularly warm assessment of the “gingerbread” (from what was left from lunch) by the office concierge, who asked my husband to give it to his wife, i.e. me that he had never tasted such “tasty and aromatic sweets before.”

In general, everyone especially liked the focaccia and chocolate lights that I cooked.

Under the cut there are a lot of photographs of all the “dishes” and the recipe for “fires”.

The preparations began with honey and gingerbread, the dough for which I kneaded on Saturday. On Sunday I baked them and painted them as best I could (I was already pretty tired, so my imagination was practically zero)

In the evening a pattern was made for the future gingerbread house.

On Monday I made chocolate lights and baked details of the house. I will show the house literally in one photo, since there is still work to be done on it.

Well, now I’ll move directly to the chocolate lights. Recipe and some photos.

For the shortbread:
500 g flour
300 g softened butter (or margarine)
300 g sugar
4 egg yolks
1 packet of vanillin, a pinch of salt

For the cream (filling the lights):
300 g milk chocolate
250 g cream (fat 32-35%)
half a glass of rum

To cover:
2 packages (125 g each) chocolate glaze

Prepare shortbread dough for the base of the “fires”. Grind the sugar with the yolks, add salt, vanillin, diced butter, and gradually adding flour, knead the dough. Form a ball from the finished dough, wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
After that, roll out the dough into a layer approximately 0.3-0.5 cm thick and cut out round cookies from it (approximately 4-5 cm in diameter).

Bake the base cookies in the oven until ready at a temperature of 180 degrees, about 6-10 minutes (depending on the oven). Then cool completely.

Prepare the cream filling. In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a boil, remove it from the heat as soon as the first “bubbles” appear on the surface. Add milk chocolate broken into small pieces to the hot cream and stir continuously until it completely “melts”.
Pour the resulting mass into a well-chilled (previously) bowl, pour in half a glass of rum and start beating with a mixer at maximum speed. If the cream does not whip, that is, it is still warm, you can put it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. As a result, you should get a cream with persistent peaks so that you can form it into fire cones, but here it is also important not to overdo it with whipping, otherwise it will turn out to be “grainy” in taste.
Using a pastry bag, form “lights” from the cream on a sand base. Refrigerate them for 2-3 hours.

Melt the chocolate glaze (I had it ready-made) and dip each “light” into it. The lights can be decorated with chopped walnuts or confectionery sprinkles on top.
This time, my lights were “pure” chocolate.

Well, on Tuesday I baked focaccia and collected gastronomic panettone. This time my focaccia was not very airy, but despite this, I really liked it.

Now I’ll move on to a more detailed description of panettone. In general, of course, sweet Italian panettone is better known, but there is also gastronomic panettone, or “salty” - one of the traditional Christmas dishes.
To prepare it, you need, first of all, a “loaf” of white bread in the form of a tall Easter cake, which is cut into disks approximately 1 cm thick. Next, the gastronomic panettone itself is formed; the fillings can be completely different - meat, vegetables, fish.
I just had panettone that suited “all tastes.”
We bought the bread ready for stuffing.

And she came up with the fillings herself, based on the fact that among the normal “eaters” there should also be a vegetarian.
I decided to start with “meat” fillings, gradually moving to fish, and then to vegetable-vegetarian ones.
The first layer was made from the only smoked sausage sold in Italy called “Hungarian” (don’t be surprised, sausages here are traditionally made only dry-cured), laid on a thinly spread layer of mayonnaise.

The second layer was a thin layer of mascarpone and Parma ham.

Next, the fish layers were planned, so I decided to separate them from the “meat” with a layer of fried vegetables in the form of zucchini to neutralize the taste.
This was followed by a layer of tuna with capers and finely chopped chives and parsley on a bed of mayonnaise.

Next came a layer of lightly salted smoked salmon on a bed of soft cream (Philadelphia cheese, a little cream and finely chopped chives).

After it, I planned to make a layer of mascarpone, remaining salmon and red caviar.

But upon opening a jar of caviar, recently purchased in Moscow time, a pillar of a very unpleasant smell rushed towards me. Apparently, the caviar was far from fresh, and besides, it looked suspiciously fine-grained... In general, the entire jar was thrown into the trash bin... ((
And I had to come up with an alternative layer on the fly. I decided to separate all the previous layers from the next one and repeat the sausage and meat taste. For this layer, I cut both the sausage and the ham into small squares and layered them mixed together.

Next came three vegetarian layers:
the first is made from Caprino cheese with cream, a small amount of tomato paste and black pepper with finely chopped red radicchio (chicory);

the second - from champignons lightly fried in butter, and then stewed in cream, with freshly chopped parsley
the third - zucchini fried in olive oil with garlic, sprinkled with freshly chopped parsley

In general, I collected all the “food” ordered for lunch for my husband.

And “in return” he also brought me a box of gifts.

Inside which were:
Bottle of Barbaresco
Bottle of Prosecco

Several types of different sauces and creams

And also pasta based on Barolo (which we brought last winter from the homeland of Barolo - Piemonte)

Sauces and creams make me think about their possible use at upcoming holidays. Tomorrow I have a big shopping day ahead of me.

2 years ago

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Christmas is considered one of the greatest Orthodox holidays throughout the world. In Russia, Christmas is celebrated on January 7, this day ends the forty-day fast. The day before, on Christmas Eve, it is customary for the whole family to gather around a table set with twelve Lenten dishes. This meal is called a rich supper; every dish on the Christmas table has a sacred meaning. So, traditions of the Christmas table.

Traditional dishes for Christmas

Christmas Eve

The festive family dinner on January 6 includes 12 Lenten dishes - the same number of apostles who took part in the Last Supper. On Christmas Eve, it is customary to prepare dishes from vegetables and fruits to bring good luck and prosperity into the house for the whole year.

The main dishes of the table on the Holy Evening before Christmas are: Kutya and Uzvar .

Kutie called porridge, cooked from whole grains, with the addition of honey, crushed nuts, raisins, and crushed poppy seeds. Christmas kutia can be made from wheat, barley, rice or pearl barley. It is with the tasting of kutya that the Christmas Eve meal begins.

Each component of kutya has a symbolic meaning. Grain is a symbol of renewal of life, honey symbolizes health and well-being in the home, poppy and nuts symbolize prosperity and success in business. According to folk traditions, tasty and “rich” kutia ensures a good harvest and becomes a talisman for the family home throughout the year.

Traditional drink on Christmas Eve - uzvar This is the name for compote made from a mixture of dried fruits - apples, cherries, pears, plums and others. It is customary to add honey, dried rose hips or rowan berries, and aromatic herbs (mint, lemon balm, rose petals) to the Christmas dinner. This drink is rich in vitamins and minerals, has tonic properties and strengthens the immune system.

The first course on Holy Evening is Lenten borscht or thick soup with millet and fresh or sauerkraut. In different regions, boiled beans, dried mushrooms or abalone (dough products with a lean filling, similar to small dumplings) are added to lean borscht.

On Christmas Eve, cabbage, mushrooms, stewed cabbage, lean or mushrooms, or millet porridge, or with fruit fillings are served as a mandatory dish on the table. A mandatory attribute of Christmas dinner is boiled peas, beans or broad beans with fried onions in vegetable oil. Also served on the table are fried fish and homemade pickles - sauerkraut, pickled tomatoes and cucumbers, peppers, pickled apples.

Dinner on Christmas Eve begins after the first star appears in the sky - until this time, only children were allowed to eat. After the prayer, all participants try kutya, then borscht and other hot dishes are served. The meal traditionally lasts 3-4 hours; this evening carolers go from house to house, sing songs and wish the owners well-being. They are presented with sweets and pastries and invited to the table. In many families, on the evening of Christmas Eve, children bring kutya to their godparents or grandparents.

What to cook for Christmas

The fast ends on January 7th , meat and poultry dishes appear on the table - boiled pork, goose or duck with apples, and more. The Christmas menu also included dairy dishes - porridge with milk - or milk noodles.

Table setting for Christmas

In the process of preparing for the Christmas holidays, it is important not only to prepare treats, but also to pay attention to table setting. Most often in decor there is a combination of white with red or green.

Lay out an elegant tablecloth with a pattern and complement the decoration of the festive table with paper or textile napkins in a contrasting color.

For decorative elements, you can use figured candles and figurines of angels.

A traditional decoration for the festive Christmas table is the didukh - a talisman woven from ears of corn or straw.

Multi-colored garlands and an elegantly decorated Christmas tree will help create a festive atmosphere in the room.

Treats prepared with love and a beautiful setting of the Christmas table are the key to a rich harvest, prosperity and well-being in the home. May 2017 bring health, love and prosperity to every home!

On my website you will find recipes for treating friends and family at Christmas. Share your family's traditional Christmas treats in the comments.

2017, . All rights reserved.

Christmas is celebrated by almost everyone and is eagerly awaited all over the world. Each nation puts its own special meaning into this holiday, which is reflected in culinary traditions. HELLO.RU tells what is served on the festive Christmas table in France, Great Britain, the USA, Japan and other countries.

France

Le Reveillon, also known as the Yule log, is a traditional French dessert that is almost always served with champagne. In appearance, it most closely resembles a fallen log, sprinkled with powdered sugar “snow,” around which meringue mushrooms “grow.”

Christmas "log"

As the main dish on the Christmas table, roast goose stuffed with chestnuts or turkey, either simply fried or baked in white wine, are served. Also on Christmas, the French treat themselves to delicacies: foie gras (goose liver pate), oysters (both fresh, salted or smoked), and cheeses are served for dessert.

United Kingdom

Traditional English Christmas food consists of pudding and stuffed turkey with a side dish of vegetables and gooseberry sauce. Pudding (plum-pudding) is made from bread crumbs, flour, lard, raisins, eggs and various spices. The most spectacular detail of this recipe is that before serving, the pudding is doused with rum, set on fire and placed on the table flaming.

Christmas pudding

In Scotland, Ireland and Wales, it is customary to serve roast pork or lamb, as well as baked goose and blood sausage for Christmas dinner. And they wash it all down with sherry and whiskey.

As in many other countries, stuffed turkey is considered a traditional dish in America. The turkey is stuffed with everything: bread, cheese, prunes, garlic, beans, mushrooms, apples, cabbage. In addition, mashed potatoes, boiled corn kernels and Brussels sprouts or broccoli are served as a side dish for turkey. Cooked turkey is often served with cranberry sauce. They also prepare a Christmas eggnog cocktail. This is a sweet drink made from raw eggs and milk.

Japan

Under Western influence, Japan also began to celebrate Christmas. True, the Japanese holiday table is very different from the traditional dishes of Europe and America. Thus, the holiday is not complete without cold appetizers “o-sechi-ryori” - cold beans with rice, rice cakes, pickled and fresh vegetables. They also serve foods that, according to the Japanese, bring happiness: seaweed gives joy, fried chestnuts - success in business, peas and beans - health, boiled fish - calmness, good spirits, herring caviar - a happy family, many children. The meal is very restrained without excessive fun and alcohol consumption, which is quite natural for this country.

Japanese Christmas cakes

Austria

In Austria, goose, duck, chicken, and turkey dishes are not served on the Christmas table due to an ancient superstition. They believe that you can’t eat a bird that evening - happiness will fly away. Instead, Austrians serve a variety of flour dishes. On Christmas Eve, bread is placed on the table, which symbolizes the unification of the family and clan. They also prepare various dough products with filling: sweet, sour, without filling, etc. under the general name Krapfen, as well as apple strudel.

Austrian apple strudel

For Christmas dinner they can serve: traditional porridge Bachlkoch, which is boiled in milk and topped with butter and honey; Mettensuppe (strong broth); sausages; pork and beef with horseradish and sauerkraut; Wiener schnitzel; fish dishes (carp).

Spain

In Spain, the grapevine has long been considered a symbol of abundance and a happy family home. It is not surprising that the Spaniards, when the clock strikes at midnight, eat twelve grapes - according to the number of strokes of the clock - and make 12 wishes.

By tradition, holiday tables in this country are filled with meat dishes: roast lamb, turkey, suckling pig, smoked sausage and ham. On the first day of Christmas, soups made from shellfish and other seafood are served. All this is washed down with sherry. For dessert they serve: almond soup, honey-nut halva (turron), milk rice porridge, etc. They also eat special ritual cookies.

Traditional spanish turron

Germany

In Germany, the traditional dish on Christmas Eve is fried carp or pickled herring, and on Christmas Day they serve roast goose with apples or pork with sauerkraut. A dish brightly decorated with apples, nuts, raisins and pies is also a must. There is also symbolism here: the apple is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, nuts with their hard shell and tasty core symbolize the mysteries and difficulties of life. In Germany they say: “God gave the nut, and man must crack it.”

Special ritual cookies

Italy

Regular dishes of the Christmas meal include roasted meats, Italian antipasti, pastas and wine. Symbols of health, longevity, and prosperity on the festive table are, as in Spain and Germany, grapes and nuts. Meat dishes are given special attention; here they prefer to cook pork leg (zampone) - it is boiled in a bag made of the skin of the back leg of a pig, maintaining its shape, as well as pork sausage (kotekino), it is boiled for at least two hours and served hot.

Traditional Italian sausage - cotecchino

For the New Year, we now make herring under a fur coat this way, without potatoes and onions. And in the middle of the year I can do it traditionally. Because there’s already a lot on the New Year’s table, why bother with potatoes?

This is not just a recipe, it is a whole story, with a great sense of humor, as Tatyana Tolstaya usually writes. I didn’t shorten anything, read it and smile)) For some expressions, please forgive the author))

There are people among us - well, I’m not pointing a finger - who believe that you shouldn’t put an apple in a herring under a fur coat. Well what can I say! pathetic! they rob themselves, pushing away with an idle hand the transcendental pleasures so generously - and almost freely - sent to us by Nature and Correct Science.

On the other hand, there are those who destroy the tender, trembling herring trembling under their fur coat with blunt and sticky potato briquettes, killing the one for which all the fuss was started. Stuffing a potato under a fur coat is like dressing a bride in warm winter long johns. At least he'll sweat.

Finally, there were those who throw onions at the fur-coated herring! Yes, yes! And the dish disappeared: the next day you can eat it only in a state of severe hangover, suffering from belching and not sorting out the paths on the table: I caught a cigarette butt in the salad - I’ll eat the cigarette butt. So, on New Year's Eve, when no one leaves the table for hours and all the dishes are not warm enough, the smell of tired onions from under the wrong fur coat is especially terrible.

And as a separate, non-aligned group, those who do not like: 1) beets stand aside; 2) testicle; 3) herring. Then why are you here? There are beautiful flower beds for you over there, but here allow us, ambrosia lovers, to settle down.

So. INGREDIENTS, - the correct list, calibrated over many years of both Soviet poverty and current abundance.

Herring.
Beet.
Carrot.
Apple.
Egg.
Mayonnaise.

Now, I don’t know how to use a graphic editor, or whatever it’s called, when you build a table and draw arrows, but if I could, I would draw a diagram of the mutual influence of these products. It will have to be in words.

1. Herring contains all the salt needed in this dish, so no other salt is needed. Mayonnaise contains a little salt, and if you choose the right type of herring, the dish will not cause thirst (or, in popular parlance, dry herring). After all, you can’t have a herring under a fur coat without vodka, right? And vodka, salted fish plus, I repeat, onions will respond with such dryness with belching that the next morning we will hear the familiar: “mmmmmmmm... I knew it... it’s always like this... why did I...”, etc. To prevent this from happening, you need to choose lightly salted, fatty canned or barreled herring; usually it’s also cheap, because they didn’t mess with it, but threw it haphazardly into brine, and that’s the best thing. She doesn't need any dill. In Moscow, however, I rarely see such herring, people are glamorized to the point of disgust, they put everything in jars with herring - wine sauce, and tomato, and coarse sour mustard; and if it weren’t for the crisis, they would have started putting in rhinestones, and we would have seen herring “from Yudashkin”, “presidential”, “zhukovka-plaza”, all sorts of vulgar rubbish. But, thank God, you can buy Matias herring almost everywhere, which suits us perfectly. But again, no “new products” with additives! You need to take the “classical” one, that is, speaking and understanding Russian, simple and bare. It rests in bad oil, this oil must be removed. As a rule, there are no bones in “Mathias”. Earthly bow to Matthias.

NOTE. If you don’t want herring under a fur coat, but want herring in mustard sauce - and this is a completely different dish, nothing in common - then I’ll tell you about that later.

Typical mistakes: incorrectly chosen herring - pickled (throw it away immediately), spicy Norwegian pickles, over-salted (it needs to be soaked in milk for 2-3 hours), with missing bones, chopped too coarsely.

2. Beets are a tricky thing. Obviously, like other flora, it has varieties, but we know nothing about them, and they sell it to us without varieties. And there are terrible ones. Some kind of feed. Now I bought a decent-looking beet, but it cannot be processed in any way and remains hard and dull. Obviously, the variety is “Stone”, and the Iron Men eat it. Young beets are usually beautiful, but on New Year's Eve they are no longer young and smell like earth.

Americans, by the way, fear and hate at least two dishes: everything beetroot and jelly (aspic). I managed to convince my American friends to eat both borscht and herring under a fur coat, and four people out of the 300 million US population overcame their fears; but nothing with jelly. They cannot imagine that jelly can be salty. God be with them.

So, you need to cook winter beets until there is no hardness left in them, and this can take a very long time. For vinaigrette, I torture beets in the microwave, but the “Stone” variety was not broken by this type of torture. After three treatments, when all living things should have died, the beets continued to resist the knife. “But you remain firm, calm and gloomy.”

The microwave is not suitable for fur coats; the beets must be soft. There is an old way to speed up this process: the beets are boiled for 40 minutes - 1 hour, and then immediately transferred to cold water and cooled in it. Then at some point a miracle happens and the stone softens.

Typical mistakes: undercooked beets, chopped beets too large.

3. Carrot. It is used to soften the earthy taste of some beet varieties. Carrots are rarely bad; they are a quiet, grateful vegetable, affectionate and user-friendly. It needs to be boiled in its uniform, and when it cools down, start cutting. Some people cook it in the same pan with beets, taking them out earlier, this makes them crimson on the sides, but this does not harm them either. This will not be visible under a fur coat.

A typical mistake: they didn’t put in enough carrots, they were stingy.

4. Apple without Yavlinsky. Preferably sour, what they give us as Antonovka, but strong and sweet will also do, there are pink ones on sale, of unknown varieties. Only Jonathan is no good; well, Jonathan’s plantations should be bulldozed. A soft, cotton apple is also not suitable. The meaning of the apple is in the mysterious ratio and contrast of sweet / sour taste - salty. The beets and carrots are sweet without acid, the herring is just salty, something is missing. A correctly chosen apple will balance the fur coat, but an incorrectly chosen one will not spoil it too much. Plus, the consistency of the apple helps keep the whole thing from turning into mush. You need to chew something. Beets should not be harder than an apple, at most on par - this will be correct. The third meaning of an apple is its crunch. Onions, as was said, should not play this role in a fur coat, because they quickly die and poison everything around them.

Typical mistake: grated apple! There is no need to grate anything, the juice will come out and the rot will lose its taste! You need to cut it into cubes, about the size of a large pea.

5. Egg. You don’t mind boiling hard-boiled eggs, but they will come in handy in every way. The point of an egg is that it tastes good. It, like carrots, softens both beets and herring if they are salty. The egg also needs to be cut, not grated.

Typical mistake: no.

6. Mayonnaise. I already praised the Moscow mayonnaise of the Sloboda company (not St. Petersburg!) But they went bad, like everything else around. Instead of an even, smooth, yellowish and fluid mass, they began to sell some kind of white bubbly shit that does not stir, but stands in a stake. Who is the chief technologist there? Quit! Who is the owner of Sloboda? Shoot yourself! You've lost me! I'm leaving you!

Mayonnaise should be stirrable and contain as little vinegar as possible. If you know how to do it yourself, do it! I haven't mastered it yet.

Typical mistake: incorrectly chosen mayonnaise.

Christmas is a bright holiday, and in Rus' it was always looked forward to and celebrated widely and cheerfully. In a series of traditional festivities, skating and fortune-telling, the Russian people did not forget about the feast. But what about it? After all, Lent preceded Christmas. It might not be the strictest, with permission to eat fish sometimes, but still a fast.

We didn’t have a special Christmas fish dish; on the Easter table you can’t do without fish, but on the Christmas table the main thing is meat. They slaughtered cattle for Christmas, salted hams, smoked ham, stuffed sausages, pig heads and stomachs. They caroled - they walked through the streets on the pre-Christmas night and sang: “Give me a gut and a leg through the window!”

They did not spare meat for the cabbage soup. After lean fish, with sturgeon head or smelt, they broke their fast with rich cabbage soup - with boiled lamb or beef, whitening them with sour cream, milk or cream.

But the breaking of the fast did not begin with meat at all - in Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, with the first star we had to try Sochiva (aka Kolivo, or Kutya). And only then, after Matins, raise a glass to a roast goose or pig's head. It came and came Christmas! Have fun, guys, it's Christmas time!

In some provinces, special pancakes were baked for Christmas - from oatmeal. They gave them to friends and invited relatives to oatmeal pancakes. Oats were generally considered one of the symbols of Christmas celebrations. Vasilyev's evening, New Year's Eve in the old style, was also called Ovsen.

A special dish goes perfectly with oat pancakes - pryazhenina. In Belarus it is called machanka, from the word “dunk” - not only pancakes, but also traditional Belarusian pancakes, boiled potatoes, and simply freshly baked bread are dipped into thick meat gravy.

For sweets in the northern Russian provinces they baked roe deer. Intricate, in the form of cows, sheep, goats, deer. In every house, housewives and their children sculpted them with their hands, passing on traditions from generation to generation. Sometimes tin recesses were used; they are not difficult to make yourself from a simple strip of tin. Children's molds for playing with sand are also suitable - you just need to grease them from the inside with oil. The dough options for roe deer are very different, from simple unleavened rye to gingerbread - made with butter and egg yolks. The Novgorod region has its own version - voluminous “cows” made from unleavened dough mixed with milk. Not necessarily in the shape of a cow, by the way. Even birds made from such dough, fashioned and baked for Christmas, were called cows.

We warmed ourselves up on Christmas with sbiten. Children were offered a non-alcoholic option, adults - a strong one, with beer, brandy, vodka or wine.

The Christmas table in any Russian home looked especially festive. Often it remained covered the entire time Christmastide(12 days from Christmas to Epiphanies), and a wide variety of treats were not removed from it - in anticipation of an uninvited, but always welcome guest or carolers. It was customary to place a bunch of straw under the most elegant tablecloths - as a reminder of the birth of the baby Christ in a stable near Bethlehem. In some Russian regions this custom has been preserved to this day...