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.

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.

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?