Christmas Dishes

[Danik 2016]

Christmas is approaching and there are different ways of celebrating it all over the world. For some religions the special date is Christmas Eve, for others the 25th.

But there is usually a family dinner with special dishes.

In Brazil the old Catholic tradition of the festive midnight mass followed by the Christmas supper has changed. Mass and dinner are earlier now. If the family gathering is big the main dish is the Turkey or duck "à California", a turkey stuffed with "farofa" (a toasted cassava flour mixture), and garnished with canned fruit and served with rice with raisins. If the family is small the turkey is replaced by Chester or chicken.

Now, what do you have for Christmas in your country?

[YesNo]

My ancestors are part Czech and part German. What I remember my mother making, with everyone's help, was something called "apple strudel". She laid a clean sheet on the dining table and coated it with flour. She kneaded dough in advance to develop the gluten and we would all help stretch it out. The final layer of thin dough covered the entire table. Then we layered the ingredients on the dough: apples, raisins, spices, butter, nuts. After that she lifted the corner of the sheet and rolled the strudel into a long object, placed it on a cookie sheet and baked it. It tasted nothing like the apple strudel I have ever tried elsewhere.

[Danik 2016]

A nice recollection, Yes/ No. I love "apple strudel"!
This reminds me of another German apple dish my mother sometimes made. It is called "Beggar", but there is nothing beggarly about it, besides being a means of recicling old bread in a tasty way.

One takes a glass recipient proper for oven temperature and pincelate it with butter or oil and cover the fat with a thin layer of flower as if preparing the form for a cake.
One cuts round loaves of bread (old or new) in round slices and acomodes a first layer of bread in the recipient. One covers this layer with an layer of apple slices which have been kept for some hours in the fridge in a mixture of lemon juice and sugar. Then one alternates bread layers and apple layers until the recipient is full. The last layer is of buttered bread slices. Over it one sheds a sauce made of milk, eggs and sugar, filling all the gaps between the slices and layers. Then one puts it in the oven (for 40-60 min dependind on your oven) until the uppered layer is toasted and the whole dish is consistent. It is delicious hot or cold and very nourishing.

I have made it for Christmas sometimes.

[YesNo]

I don't think I have ever eaten such a cake. After looking it up, I found something called a "soul cake", which I hadn't heard of before either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_cake

[TheFifthElement]

A nice recollection, Yes/ No. I love "apple strudel"!
This reminds me of another German apple dish my mother sometimes made. It is called "Beggar", but there is nothing beggarly about it, besides being a means of recicling old bread in a tasty way.

One takes a glass recipient proper for oven temperature and pincelate it with butter or oil and cover the fat with a thin layer of flower as if preparing the form for a cake.
One cuts round loaves of bread (old or new) in round slices and acomodes a first layer of bread in the recipient. One covers this layer with an layer of apple slices which have been kept for some hours in the fridge in a mixture of lemon juice and sugar. Then one alternates bread layers and apple layers until the recipient is full. The last layer is of buttered bread slices. Over it one sheds a sauce made of milk, eggs and sugar, filling all the gaps between the slices and layers. Then one puts it in the oven (for 40-60 min dependind on your oven) until the uppered layer is toasted and the whole dish is consistent. It is delicious hot or cold and very nourishing.

I have made it for Christmas sometimes.

That sounds an awful lot like bread & butter pudding but using apples rather than sultanas. It is considered a 'cheap' dish because it uses stale, leftover bread. It is also delicious and very fulfilling: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/22508/simple-no-fuss-bread-and-butter-pudding.aspx

My favourite Christmas foods are my husband's trifle and pigs in blankets (chipolata sausage wrapped in bacon). For the past few years we've had a Christmas afternoon tea rather than the full roast dinner, but the pigs in blankets remain an essential part of it.

[Danik 2016]

I don't think I have ever eaten such a cake. After looking it up, I found something called a "soul cake", which I hadn't heard of before either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_cake
I don´t think I heard of those "soul cakes" before. Here we have some people who organize Christmas meals or Santa Claus distribuition of presents for poor comunities.

[Danik 2016]

That sounds an awful lot like bread & butter pudding but using apples rather than sultanas. It is considered a 'cheap' dish because it uses stale, leftover bread. It is also delicious and very fulfilling: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/22508/simple-no-fuss-bread-and-butter-pudding.aspx

My favourite Christmas foods are my husband's trifle and pigs in blankets (chipolata sausage wrapped in bacon). For the past few years we've had a Christmas afternoon tea rather than the full roast dinner, but the pigs in blankets remain an essential part of it.
It is a kind of rustic bread and butter pudding. I googled it because I wanted to include a picture but the examples of "Bettelmann" I found where all more sophisticated, made with the flour and not with the pieces of bread and with other fruit or ingredients.
I just learned though you that those big seedless grapes are called "sultanas". My Brazilian aquaintances prefer to replace the apples by pineapples or bananas.

[Lendo]

Just out of curiosity, are you brazilian? I'm portuguese ;)

In Portugal, the most traditional Christmas dish is codfish, with potatoes, boiled eggs, cabbages, carrots, all this temperate with olive oil, garlic and coriander. A dish to die for! The meat traditional dishes are kid or lamb.

And there's a lot of portuguese traditional desserts, the most famous one is "Bolo Rei", in english it mean's King Cake. Another one is "Filhoses", there's no translation to english. It consists on fried eggs, flour and sugar.

[Danik 2016]

Yes, I`m Brazilian, Lendo. Codfish is also one of the Brazilian Christmas dishes on account of our Portuguese tradition.
Some Portuguese desserts we have here are: "Fios de Ovos"(kind of yellow strands made of eggs, suggar and other ingredients) and "Pastéis de Santa Clara", a sweet pastry.

[Lendo]

Yes, I`m Brazilian, Lendo. Codfish is also one of the Brazilian Christmas dishes on account of our Portuguese tradition.
Some Portuguese desserts we have here are: "Fios de Ovos"(kind of yellow strains made of eggs, suggar and other ingredients) and "Pastéis de Santa Clara", a sweet pastry.

Quando quiser falar português, já tenho com quem o fazer! :)

Fios de Ovos are very good, but here in Portugal the most famous pastry is not Pastéis de Santa Clara, but Pastéis de Nata, that you probably know too.

ps: i recently bought a book of Machado de Assis, when i finish reading it i'll review it and you let me know what you think about the book.

[Danik 2016]

Será um prazer!:)
I have heard about Pastéis de Nata, but I am not sure if I have eaten them.
I hope you like Machado de Assis. What book are you reading?

[Lendo]

Será um prazer!:)
I have heard about Pastéis de Nata, but I am not sure if I have eaten them.
I hope you like Machado de Assis. What book are you reading?

I didn't start to read it yet. It's the short story "A Chinela Turca".

[Danik 2016]

I´ll have a look, Lendo. I have all his short stories.

[papayahed]

I made Chicken Parmesan for our Christmas Dinner. It is not our tradition which is why I made it, I wanted to shake things up a bit. It's usually Ham, Kielbasa, Green Bean Casserole, and sweet potatos.