The Christmas Dinner

You will find tips and recipes for Christmas lunch at the page Natale

All kind of important celebration lunches or dinners have many course, always of complex taste.
They will always take time first because they celebrate something important, but also because our stomachs need time to absorb and enjoy all dishes with pleasure, without being tired and doing honor to the table.
Today, more and more often these meals, especially in family, are in a shortened version
But traditionally of the list of course has always been quite long.

Ghirlanda di Natale

Cliccate l'immagine per sapere come realizzare questa ghirlanda.

The menu of a complete Christmas meal after an initial aperitif with appetizers could provide

1. Starters
2. First course
3. Main course with side dishes
4. Frozen fruits sweets or Sorbets
5. Desserts
6. Coffee and liquors

SWEET & SOUR PAMPKIN called “Söche trombe”

This recipe for pumpkin was a "must" on the Christmas Table in my family, both among starters but also as side dish in the main course.
I'm not sure that it was a popular dish in my country, or only a traditional recipe of my family .
Certainly it is a typical recipe of Italian Jewish cuisine in the part of the recipes collection of the Giuliana Ascoli book "The cuisine in the Jewish tradition".
In my house it was always prepared with the kind of pumpkin called "trumpet " for its shape of elongated neck flask, a quality of pumpkin not powdery nor too sweet which is particularly suited to be cooked this way.

Prepared in advance and put in tightly sealed jars, it will keep for a long time .

le zucche con il sale per eliminare la loro acqua.

Ingredients: ½ kg pumpkin, olive oil is for frying and for the carp, 1 cup vinegar, 2 cloves of garlic, some dried fig.

Cut pumpkin into thin slices. Fry in deep oil and put them in a jar, alternating with some dried fig.

Marinated Eel called “la Bissetta”

A traditional dish of the Milan area, often offered among starters of the Christmas celebration dinner

Image from the "Cucchiaio D'Argento"

Ingredients: 1 large eel ( but not too much large… ), some flour, olive oil for frying
For the marinade: good wine vinegar, 2 stalks of celery, 1 carrot, 4 spring onions, 3 leaves of sage, 1 garlic cloves, pepper, salt.


Even if you buy it alive, ask to your fishmonger to kill it just to avoid tragi-comic situations.
Clean and cut it into pieces long less than 10cm and dry them with paper towels.
Flour each piece and fry them in abundant oil. Set aside in a container or in a bowl.

Prepare the marinade: Cut garlic clove in half and fry it gently in a little oil and butter until browning.
Boil 2 cups of vinegar adding the vegetables finely chopped and the fried garlic and the crushed pepper corns. When the marinade is reduced to about a half, pour it on the fried eel.
Let marinate for at least 24 hours.

Fresh Appetizer of Prawns and Langoustines

It 's a fine appetizer particularly suitable for the Christmas table. If necessary, it can also be enriched with other crustaceans.

Ingredients for 6 people: 1 lettuce, 1 medium tomato, 6 grapefruits not bitter, 1 can of crab, 100gr peeled prawns, 1 cup mayonnaise, ½ cup yogurt, 18 blanched langoustines, salt and pepper

Peel, wash and drain the lettuce. Remove the seeds and cut tomatoes into small cubes.
Peel one grapefruit and remove the skin from each slice. Put aside for decoration as well as the best crab pieces, chop the rest of crab removing cartilage.

Cut the other grapefruits in small pieces and mix them in a bowl with tomato cubes, half of the prawns, the chopped crab, yoghurt and mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to make the taste intense.

Share into individual bowls lined with lettuce leaves, garnish with grapefruit slices, prawns and langoustines. Serve well chilled

You can do without langoustines.
If you use blanched fresh crab instead of canned, this appetizer will be even better.

Blinis Demidoff

We have an example,  though incomplete, of this excellent dish in the film Babette's feast

from "Babette's feast"

For 10 persons: 20 blinis, caviar, smoked sturgeon or salmon thinly sliced, Salsa Smetana.

On a service dish, arrange the blinis (1 or 2 for each person), very hot, and put on each a tsp of caviar, a slice of smoked fish and 1 Tsp of Smetana Sauce.

Serve immediately.

This recipes requires several ingredients and the preparation of both, Blinis and Smetana Sauce.

I like very much salmon caviar, which is less expensive than dark sturgeon caviar, so I use indistinctly both types. I also like the delicious smoked sturgeon and, if I can find it at a convenient price, I buy it.

If you use these blinis as entrée you would not need a large quantity of each ingredient.

It will be different, instead, if you will make them the main course of the dinner. In this case, blinis as well as salmon and caviar will be abundant.

Leavened Blinì

Blinis are small pancakes, typical of Russian and Ukraine cookery.

They are similar to crêpes but smaller, more similar usual pancakes.

I tasted them for the first time in Paris was in the russian restaurant , "À la Ville de Petrograd" in Daru street. This restaurant recently have changed management.

From that time I have tried to reproduce them and at last I had success.

Ingredients: 500g plain flour, 30gr baking yeast, 1 Tsp sugar, 1 egg, 50g butter, 250g yoghurt.

Dissolve the yeast in a glass of lukewarm water and add it to the flour, mixing in a bowl. Combine with it yogurt and sugar, melted butter and finally the egg .

Smetana

Smetana is a sour cream sauce (in Italy is simply call it sour cream).

It is a sauce that in Russia is sold ready-made. In Italy sometimes we replace it by a good greek yogurt. 

Its preparation is complex, but we can make an excellent imitation of it with some products that are on the market.

Ingredients: 100g mascarpone 200g whipping cream, the filtered juice of 2 lemons

Pour the mascarpone in a large bowl, add cream and stir vigorously with a whisk.

Then add the filtered juice of lemons and mix again very well all ingredients.

Let stand.

In my experience, it is better to prepare Smetana the day before eating, so the sour of lemon juice will integrate with the other ingredients, creating the special taste of this sauce.

It is possible to keep Smetana in the refrigerator for a few days in a glass container, tightly closed.

It is a very versatile sauce that can be combined in many dishes, both sweet and savory.

Orange Sauce

A sauce of many uses, ideal for roasted duck but also pork meat.

To garnish 2 Magret: 3 oranges, 2 tsp honey, salt and pepper

Squeeze 2 oranges and put their juice in a small saucepan.
Peel the third orange and divide it into small cubes, slices or wedges, as you want. Put them in the pot with the orange juice. add 2 teaspoons of honey, salt and pepper and simmer for 5 minutes.

You can also enrich this sauce with a teaspoon of vinegar, balsamic if you like, and even with a little Grand Marnier and orange peel, cut in thin slices and then scalded in hot water.

Magret de Canard with Orange scent sauce

A Magret is the breast of a Duck or Goose. It is different from the usual duck we find easily at the supermarket, because it comes from a special breed of duck.

The term Magret comes from the Occitan word magre meaning lean meat.

Now it’s more easy to found it, not only in the finest shops but also, vacuum-packed or frozen, in some supermarkets

It can be smoked and treated as a ham but it is more often cooked in a pan or on a grill and served, rare or pink, cut into thin slices.

The cooking is very simple but it requires attention

Ingredients:  One magret will  serve 2 persons

After unpacking the breast remove with a small and very sharp knife the thin film on the flesh side.  It is a natural film that usually enveloppe any muscle. Then, simply cut slits in a diamond pattern across the breast fat side and season this side only with salt and pepper. That will prevent the fat will distribute into the meat when you cook it.

Use a heavy iron skillet or cast iron pan and absolutely don’t oil it.

Place the breast, fat-side-down, in the cold heavy pan and cook until it’s an appetizingly golden-brown color  and fat is melted.

The Magret will "inflate" when seared and it will render lots of fat in no time

Turn the breast and continue cooking in its own fat for 2-6 minutes depending on the point you desire the meat will be cooked.

Do never poke Magret to return it but use pliers kitchen or wooden spoons. After cooking, let your duck breast to rest for at least 5 minutes, loosely covered in foil. This ensures that it will be juicy and easy to slice.

Arrange it on a dish and serve

To garnish  I have made a simple orange sauce with mashed sweet potatoes aside.

Mashed sweet potatoes

Ingredients for 4 people: 800g sweet potatoes, 1 cup cream (20 cl), Olive oil, Salt, Pepper

Cook in a large quantity of water sweet patatoes, peeled and cut into pieces. Cook them in boiling water for 10 minutes.

When cooked, after draining, mash them and mix with cream and olive oil. Salt and peppe.

Note:

This mash goes perfectly all your meat, expecially pork or duck meat, and spicy fish but but also beef and poltry stews and gravy.

How to cook red meat

This video from youtube is really well done, complete and clear.
It is in French but I think that no one will have trouble understanding.

Good cooking meat is measured by its firmness.

To help us to measure it well, we need the of our hand, as you can see in the video.

• Near Raw: join the thumb and forefinger, the muscle of your thumb will have the same firmness that must have meat with this cooking 
• Rare: join the thumb and middle finger 
• Medium: join the thumb and ring finger 
• Well done: join the thumb and little finger

I am testig Meat Pies

I am testing meat pies. In fact, it is a long time I am doing this, but considering that we are near  Christmas, these tests have taken a certain acceleration.

Pâté of my experiment are made by meat and poultry and especially liver which, in recent months I've cooked quite often.

It is not something new. I've always loved these meat pies because they are gorgeous when they are good, and finally not particularly difficult if we are well organized .

The final result is every time better and better and superior to the effort and cost.

It is convenient  to clear some misunderstanding thet you can find on the net, many of which are created by a certain linguistic ignorance, to give precise information

One of the best sources of information is Wikipedia, which is not always completely reliable when talking about foods and recipes.

First, the name: Pâté is a dish prepared by combining different ingredients mixed together.

Today they are a specialty of French cuisine but we find various Pâté in different European national cuisines .

Until less than a century ago, they were part of the few systems available to our ancestors to preserve food.

French have the best references about them because their ancestors, Celts and Gauls, were known to be excellent in preservation of meat, as mentioned by many ancient authors such as Polybius, Cato and Pliny. Strabo in the first century BC wrote that Gaul was a country where people were able to preserve meat. It is not strange that over there we find excellent confits and terrines.

Today that storage and transport are no longer a problem, these preparations belong only to the domain of gluttony .

Generally the mixture of a meat pies is rather coarse, even it is not a rule.
In the past, they were often wrapped in dough and dipped in jelly. Sometimes inside there was even whole portions of meat.

Terrines and mousses are always pâtés. Terrines are prepared, as the name implies, in their own container and mousses are generally very refined and spreadable. Making a mousse, was in the part very challenging because the mixture was sifted by hand, but todayeverything it is more easy because we have blenders, food processors and mixers. Mousse contains always also a large amount of butter .

Dolmades by JeanPierre Coffe

In one of the 2009 editions of  Michel Drucker program on French Antenne2 TV-network, Jean- Pierre Coffe, the famous French gourmet (and also chef, actor and writer),  prepared a dish to make a tribute to Charles Aznavour after an idea of Drucker himself.
After an enthusiastic talk about winemaking traditions of the South Caucasus territories and in particular of Armenia, the original country of Aznavour, and about the simplicity and the friendliness of its people and its food, he offered to the company a dish of cabbage dolmades.  
(Coffe says among other things that even the wooden barrel was conceived in Armenia , an assertion which may not coincide with reality) 

Dolmas is the term used in Turkey for stuffed vegetables and their particular preparation.  In Greece, the same word indicates only stuffed grape leaves and all other kind of stuffed vegetables are generically called Yemista.     

The recipe whose origins span across all Near South-East could be created in Armenia and South Caucasus, although in Greece it is said that the idea of wrapping food in vine leaves dates back to the time of Demosthenes, during the first defeat of Chaeronea, 338 BC, at the time of the siege of Thebes by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. 
Such an argument that dates back to 400 BC, does centainly silence everybody!   
However, considering that territories around Mount Ararat, Armenian territories now partly independent republic and partly annexed to Turkey, in ancient times were called Lands of Wine and also that History, Bible and legends reference this country for excellent wine production, I guess I can say that these rolls could be born over there.    

The stuffing in the best-known version includes aways rice and minced meat or rice and herbs in a common home edition. In Armenia, however, it can also consists of burghul, the dried & chopped sprouted grain prevalent in Middle Eastern cuisine and certainly more ancient than rice.    

This is the simplest recipe. If you want to make it much richer, follow what Coffe says in the video for his cabbage leaves version. 
One note: Coffe does not bend very well cabbage leaves so rolls could be damaged during cooking.   

Read below how to do. 

Ingredients for 6 servings: about 40 grape leaves fresh or frozen, 250g of rice , 2 or 3 scallions or onions , 2 tablespoons pine nuts , olive oil , chopped parsley  end herbs(chives , fennel or dill, mint) and coriander ground and heated in a dry pan to release its aroma, the juice of 2 lemons , salt and black pepper     

Pine nuts are almost never lacking and even chopped herbs such as mint, parsley and fresh coriander.  This simple stuffing can be enriched with other tasting ingredients like ground beef or lamb, raisins of Corinth that in many Mediterranean recipes replaces minced meat.   

Pittule from Apulia

Today I want to recommend the Facebook page ricette di Nina because it is full of gorgeous recipes, most quite traditional, other more imaginative but all tasty and innovative.

Among them there’s the recipe of Pettole from Apulia, which are pretty much the same of the zeppole from Naples.

In Apulia this is a traditional preparation of holidays periods of Autumn, when the new wine is ready.
Ingredients are simple: flour, salt, yeast and water and sometimes even boiled potatoes. That’s all. Simple to make and even easier to eat.

In Naples they’re generally a street food that you can eat while walking .

Frying pettole at the Pettole Festival in the town of Noci

In Apulia, however, the preparation is almost a ritual occasion to gather the whole family around the kitchen, where the family mama frys these simple but delicious pancakes.

In few seconds they go from the pan into the mouth of some of the presents, immediately, without any seasoning or just sweetened or salted, depending on people taste, or dipped in honey, must or figs wine.
It’s said that ... pettole attract the new wine.
What do you think, might be true?