What Are You Eating This Holiday?
Posted by Mark Busse on Thursday, December 25th, 2008Tags for this Article: holiday, recipe, traditional
Turkey or ham? Mashed or roasted? Sweet or savoury? Christmas cookies or Hannukah latkes? Eggnog or fine wine? Meat or vegetarian? European, North American, Latin, Asian? There are so many traditional dishes that make up holiday family dinners. We want to know what you’ve been eating over the holidays.
Add a comment below, or better yet, take a photo and send it to us along with your recipe so we can share it with our readers. The most original submission will receive a prize every cook would cherish.
Every year we choose a new country and explore traditional foods of that nation. This year we are doing a Russian fusion. Main dish is a fish pie made with fresh black cod and carrots babka. A little wine on the side, and lots of love and good family surrounding us.
We are trying to widen our families experiences with culinary tastes, and we are really tired of turkey dinners!
cheers!
My family celebrated a 100 mile Christmas this year. Local vegetables, bird, beer, and a disappointing pinot noir from the Gulf Islands. So seasoning was limited, and local flour is hard to find, so no flour firvrhe gravy. Damned tasty dinner nonetheless.
We try and fit most of those in.
The solstice meal (after parading through Kensington Market with lanterns and drums chasing off the darkness) is at House of Gourmet for a big feed of Hot & Sour Soup, BBQ Pork, Singapore Vermicelli, and as many extra dishes as we can squeeze in. (This year Beef w/ Black Pepper on a sizzling plate, Spicy Beans with Minced Pork, Spicy Eggplant & some yummy chicken dish I didn’t catch, but did eat)
This year’s Xmas Eve dinner was a 5 course feed at a friend’s house – Janeen’s Brown Sugar Baked Brie (http://foodists.ca/2008/12/07/brown-sugar-baked-brie.html), pates and crackers, vichyssoise, mushroom salad, roasted goose, trifle or gingerbread pudding and a massive cheese plate.
Xmas dinner was a smaller event of Prime Rib with a wine & blackberry reduction, Yorkshire Pudding, mashed potato w/ rosemary butter, minted peas, corn and spinach pomegranate salad, followed by a Figgie Pudding. Recipe & photo to follow once I recover from the wine that was poured with every course and the outstanding homemade Baileys… (which is flavouring my coffee as I type this.)
Happy Hohoho or equivalent ;->
We had shrimp salad to start (it’s a New Zealand thing).Our main was roast turkey, stuffing, candied yams and bacon wrapped green beans. Our finish was a delicious chocolate fondant.
Today we had grilled turkey sandwiches with extra old cheddar and cranberry sauce. Yum.
Every Christmas, mom pours out her love in 2 days of intense cooking–combining traditional fare with chinese faves–resulting in a menu of: roast turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, homemade gravy, prime rib roast, white rice, stewed abalone and chinese mushrooms with mixed vegetables, stirfry garlic & green onion prawns, sticky glutinous rice, chicken chow mein, apple crisp, lemon meringue pie, pound cake, and shortbread cookies.
Us kids were asked to bring homemade lasagna, red & white wines, and mandarin oranges. My eldest sister went all out, giving her 4 siblings a homemade Tin of Sweets complete with list. She too, was cooking for a couple of days, baking a wide variety of little sugary morsels for our enjoyment.
Tonight, my dinner of prime rib with gravy & stuffing on multigrain was incredibly good…but so was her jam thumbprint cookies.
By the way, the image above is of dishes we prepared for Xmas dinner. They include roasted turkey, creamed peas with onions and garlic, roasted Hasselback potatoes with crispy parmesan breadcrumb crust, carrot and raisin salad, mashed rutabaga and carrots with rice and brown sugar, and apple and walnut Waldorf salad.
My family usually does a big turkey dinner with a gaggle of family friends, but the festivities were cancelled due to inclement weather.
So, we started a new tradition: Christmas pizza. Not just any normal pizza, though – the dough and sauce were homemade and just waiting for such an occasion. With olives, sundried tomatoes and capers on top, it was a fine and dandy Christmas dinner.
We finished with an assortment of my Christmas baking: gingerbread, shortbread, chocolate cookies, and orange-almond sablees. I also made chocolate caramels.
I’ve said a couple of times this holiday season that, while the holidays are normally thought of as gluttinous, this year has been especially outstanding in terms of both quality and quantity. Christmas eve started with a spread for some friends; kir royals to start, followed by rum and eggnog, chicken livers marinated and grilled with red onion, cold cuts on home baked Parkerhouse rolls, cheese on crackers we made ourselves, smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes stuffed with feta, carrot soup and mulled wine on the stove…
Christmas day was a most traditional dinner at my dad’s place with a roast turkey, Waldorf salad, mashed yams, roast potatoes and parsnips, figgy pudding and lots and lots of wine.
On the 27th, Boris was having people over for an open house to his parent’s place on Bowen Island. He was already planning a spread of stomach-stretching proportions (homemade creton on homemade soda bread, Czechoslovakian cabbage soup, etc) when his mom found a fawn that had froze to death in the backyard. Initially he dragged it up the property for the ravens, but James arrived and knew what to do with it, so it got butchered and made into 4 courses of venison; steak sauteed rare with grapeseed oil and salt and pepper, heart cooked with a bit of garlic on a cracker, roast with dried apricots, cranberries and prunes, garlic mayo and wine (among other things, I’m sure), followed up with venison shank cooked to perfection in the aforementioned cabbage soup.
Last night Travis made his traditional (for Christmas eve, but late because we were busy) broiled shrimp in butter, garlic and scallions and there is still more food coming. I am going to die of eating, but I’m going to die so happily…
(not to leave out the tortiere extravaganza from the list above, but I thought you might want to do the honours of describing it)
“when his mom found a fawn that had froze to death in the backyard. Initially he dragged it up the property for the ravens, but James arrived and knew what to do with it, so it got butchered and made into 4 courses of venison; steak sauteed rare with grapeseed oil and salt and pepper, heart cooked with a bit of garlic on a cracker, roast with dried apricots, cranberries and prunes, garlic mayo and wine (among other things, I’m sure), followed up with venison shank cooked to perfection in the aforementioned cabbage soup.”
Comment of the year.
Possibly the meal of the year. Seriously outstanding.
Here are some of the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/degan/sets/72157611812344767/
Jer — I think the Bowen Open House between Christmas and New Years is going to become a tradition. You’re invited next year. I’ll do a post here about the Christmas Deer. It really is a heart warming, or at least, stomache filling story….