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A Christmas Food Tour
by Gabriella True
Across this great globe, many celebrate Christmas by
exchanging gifts, decorating a tree, going to church, setting up a crèche,
hanging stockings or putting shoes out for St. Nicholas. But when you think of
the quintessential Christmas feast, what do you picture? What do you smell?
Throughout Europe the answer to these two questions would be quite different.
What remains the same is the love of friends and family gathering around a table
filled with delicious food. Join me in a tour of European Christmas time
feasts.
France
Across France many delicious meals are served
at Christmas time. Dishes include oysters, ham, roast poultry of all sorts,
salads, bûche de Noël. In Alsace, roasted goose and foie gras are serve. In
Brittany, buckwheat cakes are the central part of the meal. In Burgundy,
chestnuts and turkey take prominence and in Paris oysters, foie gras and bûche
de Noël are the prime dishes. Bûche de Noël, meaning Christmas log, is
traditional because it represents the Yule log burned from Christmas until New
Year's Day to bring good luck in the coming year. They would scatter ashes in
the fields to ensure a good harvest, some in the barns to repel rats, some in
their home to protect them from lightening. Parisian pastry chefs created the
bûche de Noël cake in the late 19th century. It is a rolled cake filled with
chestnut cream and coated in marzipan or icing. In Provence, the Christmas meal
is called le gros souper (the big supper) and is finished with thirteen
desserts. Each dessert represents the 12 apostles and Jesus. Raisins, hazelnuts,
and figs represent the four orders representing that Christ came from the Middle
East, black and white nougat to represent purity and evil, quince jelly, pompe a
l'huile (flat bread made with olive oil), thin wafers, and fresh and preserved
fruit including oranges, pears, raisins, and melons. They also serve calissons
and butter cookies.
Italy
Christmas lunch is often a
seven-course meal including antipasto, pasta, roast meat, salads, puddings,
cheese, fruit, and chocolates. Italy is known for their Christmas cakes that
vary from region to region: struffoli, panpepato and pan forte in Central Italy;
frutta secca from Southern Italy; panettone, pandoro, and torrone in Northern
Italy. The Italians feast on cotechino, a fresh pork sausage, with lentils
during the week between Christmas and New Year's.
Portugal
In
Portugal, the quintessential Christmas Eve dish is made from dried
codfish
called bacalhau which is served with boiled potatoes. The dessert is often
rabanadas, almost like French toast with slices of white bread soaked in wine
and eggs coated in sugar and fried until all that remains is a candy caramel
glaze.
Spain
The Spanish eat turrón which is a candy similar to
the French Nougat. The Christmas day meal consists of chestnut soup, cheeses,
white sea bass coated in breadcrumbs and roasted with olive oil and lemons,
roast capon or turkey stuffed with bread crumbs, pork sausage, mushrooms, garlic
onions, and olive oil. Another traditional way of serving turkey is pavo tufado
de navidad,
a turkey with truffles.
Malta
Before the British
Empire was stationed in Malta, the rooster (serduq) was served for Christmas
dinner. After WWII, the British tradition of serving turkey (id-dundjan), and
plum pudding (il-pudina tal-Milied) became the norm. Two other traditional
dishes are baked macaroni that is covered with pastry, timpana, and treacle,
qaghaq tal-ghasel.
Austria
Throughout Vienna on Christmas Eve,
braised carp is served in a ginger and beer sauce with vegetables. And then for
dessert, topfenpalatschinken, which are sweet cheese crepes with an apricot
caramel sauce are served. On Christmas Day, a roast goose is the main part of
the holiday feast.
Germany
Germany introduced the world to the
Christmas tree and to many delicious holiday treats. Christmas Eve is often
called dickbauch (fat stomach) because those that don't eat well on Christmas
Eve will be haunted by demons during the night. Like in Austria, carp,
Gebackener Karpfen, and goose are often served. The Germans serve potatoes,
cabbage, pickled vegetables and parsnips with their goose. In the rural regions
of Germany, wild boar or venison is often found on the Christmas table. For
grand feasts, a roast suckling pig is prepared. A popular cookie known as
Christbaumgerback is made from sugar dough, rolled, then stamped into shapes of
Christmas trees, gnomes, and snowflakes. Stollen is a quintessential German
cake. First created in the 14th century, stollen is a dense yeast cake with
dried fruit throughout resembling Christ in swaddling
clothes.
About Gabriella True
She is from New
York/California writes articles on France, Holidays and Food for www.splendidpalate.com
and other websites. She can be contacted at gabriella@splendidpalate.com.
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