What was your Christmas Menu?

[Gonz]

What did everyone enjoy this year? Special breakfast, brunch or dinner?

We had the same brunch I've been having since I was a kid, except now I've stolen all my Mom's recipes and am cooking it myself.
Cheese-baked eggs
Glazed ham
Dutch Baby
Cheesy HashBrown bake
Biscuit Coffee Ring
and of course, Mimosas.

Then for dinner this year, we feasted on:
Garlic & Rosemary rubbed Prime Rib w/Red Wine reduction
Rosemary Parmesan Foccacia
Mashed Potatoes
Corn
and of course, a nice Pinot from '97.

And for dessert a '98 Fundador.


ps - recipes provided upon request!

 

[Not A Nice Person]

We celebrate the day at my mother's, and always have a cheese board, sliced sausage, olive and relish tray, and chocolates set out . . . this year's cheeses were an English oak-smoked cheddar and Stilton with dried cherries.

Yule dinner was . . .

Baked ham
Candied yams
Garlic mashed potatos and gravy
Mom's hot rolls
Artichokes with dipping sauce
Salad of field greens, pecans, dried cranberries, and feta cheese.
Peppermint ice cream in Belgian dark chocolate serving cups

Yule Eve dinner was at my house, and was the traditional South Texas tamale dinner . . .

Chicken and Jalapeno Pork tamales
Ranch beans with shredded brisket and andouille sausage
Salad of field greens with heirloom tomatoes and capers
Tortilla chips served with gourmet salsas over Neuchaftel cheese
White chocolate and macadamia nut cookies

~Boar

 

[SewerRanger]

I'm a little late to the thread, but I just joined and I love Christmas so I thought I’d share. I’ve been doing Christmas at my place for 5 years now. It's always been a big deal in my family and thankfully, we're all close enough that everyone (21 of us this year) can still gather together to celebrate. This year was crazy hectic as usual, but I managed to pull it off. Now you have to understand, we're all foodies in my family. My Aunt worked for a cheese shop, my uncle was a cook, my cousin is studying to be a chef, my younger brother worked under Rudy Speckamp, and my soon to be sister-in-law is a head waitress at a zagat rated French restuarant. Roasted chicken simply will not do. I took off the week from work and began the great cooking journey. The first thing I made is called gravlax. It's a Scandinavian fish dish. You basically take fresh salmon and cure it with pepper, sugar, salt, and dill. It tastes fantastic on crackers. You have to start that about a week before your dinner though. So that was well on its way to being done the week I took off. Unofficially I started with Desserts since they stay fresh the longest. I made a simple banana cream pie (pregnant cousins favorite, how could I say no?) first. No problems there. Next up was a fresh tiramisu (and I mean completely fresh, I make the lady fingers and all). My final dessert caused a bit of a problem though. It was so rich it completely drowned the flavor of the much more subtle tiramisu. It was a chocolate zabaglione trifle. It's like heaven in a bowl. The next day was for side dishes. I made spicy Japanese cucumbers (cucumbers, sesame oil, sesame seeds, a bit of soy sauce, and red peppers), 5 cheese macaroni, pan roasted vegetables, and this strange little soufflé that I found a recipe for that actually ended up tasting like the best corn bread you'd ever had. The day of the event I woke up and seasoned two giant lamb roasts with various herbs and left them in the fridge and began making a chipotle mango BBQ sauce for them. With the BBQ sauce simmering away, I put the lamb in and waited. Around 4ish, my Aunt brought over some fresh cheese and every one else slowly trickled in. We gorged ourselves in traditional German manner (loudly and with little regard for manners or silverware, oh and lots of frosty adult beverage drinking) for several hours until the gift exchange. Man, I love Christmas!

 

[Devil Doc]

Christmas day wasn't anything special, because I worked my ass off Christmas eve preparing, Calamri, octopus, lobster, baccala, Shrimp,two ways, boiled and scampi, smoked salmon, and baked stuffed rainbow trout from the pristine waters of Vermont.

Doc.

 

[Franco593]

Christmas day wasn't anything special, because I worked my ass off Christmas eve preparing, Calamri, octopus, lobster, baccala, Shrimp,two ways, boiled and scampi, smoked salmon, and baked stuffed rainbow trout from the pristine waters of Vermont.

Doc.

Sounds familar....no smelts Doc?

 

[ironpeddler]

Christmas day wasn't anything special, because I worked my ass off Christmas eve preparing, Calamari, octopus, lobster, baccala, Shrimp,two ways, boiled and scampi, smoked salmon, and baked stuffed rainbow trout from the pristine waters of Vermont.

Doc.

Seven fishes for us too Doc....no eel?

 

[Franco593]

We do it too Gary...My job is to take the deep fryer out to the garage. I start with the Squid ( we do some fried),then some flounder and a few shrimp. I finish with the smelts. The entire process take about 3 hours ,
a half a bottle of whiskey and 2 good cigars.

Can't wait till next year..

 

[ironpeddler]

We do it too Gary...My job is to take the deep fryer out to the garage. I start with the Squid ( we do some fried),then some flounder and a few shrimp. I finish with the smelts. The entire process take about 3 hours ,
a half a bottle of whiskey and 2 good cigars.

Can't wait till next year..

Funny you mention the whiskey & cigars on Christmas Eve Frank.

My brother stopped by the other night to pick something up and I poured us a quick scotch...a Highland Park 12 yo single malt. So I pour the drink and put the bottle on the table and we start BSing. After a minute or two, my brother takes a look at the bottle and says...

"Remember 3 years ago when we killed a bottle of this before dinner on The Eve?"...and my response was, "NO." Then we laughed our asses off.

That year I bought a bottle for us to drink as I always buy something different (always scotch) for the special day. You know the times when you're really in the mood and take that first sip and that whiskey taste better than anything you've ever drank in your life? :laugh: This was the case that night. We started drinking over the cold antipasto (about 3PM) while we started to cook. As Italian men who married non-Italian women....us guys do all the cooking on The Eve as our 90yo Mother comments (criticizes!) on our technique. Well, we killed half the bottle before 5PM Mass, laughing the whole time like 2 kids in church. Our sons had to keep nudging us to shut up. We came back, continued on the second half (while also drinking beers to wash the food down and a bottle of chianti), and to tell you the truth, it all got fuzzy after that. If I didn't see the videos shot from that night I had no idea what we cooked, how much our Mother yelled at us, and how the meal turned out. On Christmas day, I said to my family, "geez, I forgot to make the zeppolis yesterday"....they said that I did, I have NO recollection to frying them up! I said no way...back to the video tape and sure as hell, there I was, apron on, frying way.

The family said the meal was one of our best!

The phone calls on Christmas morning were hysterical and the two of us had to promise not to get THAT drunk on Christmas Eve again...although we get very close every year!...it's our stress release from a hectic 2 days of preparation and the fact that it's the best time of the year for our family!

I had to look in my ash tray on Christmas Day to see what cigars we smoked in between cooking the different dishes...if I didn't, I had no idea what we even smoked!

Aren't the Holidays great Frank?

 

[MadMonk]

While I normally do like my other Italian descended brethren, cooking for 2 or 3 days and the resulting feast, we took it easy this year.
Just a very hearty, and healthy "Loaded Baked Potato Soup".


Edit to add: This got me thinking. My Nona was an exceptionally good cook. She followed some "rules" during selection of various foods. For instance, she always said there were male and female eggplants, and that the male tasted better. Less seeds, less bitterness.
The one I never understood was some criteria she had for selecting eel. We would go to the eel tank at the fish monger. A mass of swimming eel and she would point her finger and say "that one"! The poor fish monger would desperately retrieve and put back eel after eel as my nona would keep her finger on the glass, following her selected eels every movement. A great and funny as hell memory.

 

[Devil Doc]

Christmas day wasn't anything special, because I worked my ass off Christmas eve preparing, Calamri, octopus, lobster, baccala, Shrimp,two ways, boiled and scampi, smoked salmon, and baked stuffed rainbow trout from the pristine waters of Vermont.

Doc.

Sounds familar....no smelts Doc?

Christmas day wasn't anything special, because I worked my ass off Christmas eve preparing, Calamari, octopus, lobster, baccala, Shrimp,two ways, boiled and scampi, smoked salmon, and baked stuffed rainbow trout from the pristine waters of Vermont.

Doc.

Seven fishes for us too Doc....no eel?

You two sound like your mothers! :laugh: When you live in a culinary waste land known as N. New England, ya make due. Besides, as my Nona used to say, "The Pope should eat so good".

Doc.

 

[Franco593]

We do it too Gary...My job is to take the deep fryer out to the garage. I start with the Squid ( we do some fried),then some flounder and a few shrimp. I finish with the smelts. The entire process take about 3 hours ,
a half a bottle of whiskey and 2 good cigars.

Can't wait till next year..

Funny you mention the whiskey & cigars on Christmas Eve Frank.

My brother stopped by the other night to pick something up and I poured us a quick scotch...a Highland Park 12 yo single malt. So I pour the drink and put the bottle on the table and we start BSing. After a minute or two, my brother takes a look at the bottle and says...

"Remember 3 years ago when we killed a bottle of this before dinner on The Eve?"...and my response was, "NO." Then we laughed our asses off.

That year I bought a bottle for us to drink as I always buy something different (always scotch) for the special day. You know the times when you're really in the mood and take that first sip and that whiskey taste better than anything you've ever drank in your life? :laugh: This was the case that night. We started drinking over the cold antipasto (about 3PM) while we started to cook. As Italian men who married non-Italian women....us guys do all the cooking on The Eve as our 90yo Mother comments (criticizes!) on our technique. Well, we killed half the bottle before 5PM Mass, laughing the whole time like 2 kids in church. Our sons had to keep nudging us to shut up. We came back, continued on the second half (while also drinking beers to wash the food down and a bottle of chianti), and to tell you the truth, it all got fuzzy after that. If I didn't see the videos shot from that night I had no idea what we cooked, how much our Mother yelled at us, and how the meal turned out. On Christmas day, I said to my family, "geez, I forgot to make the zeppolis yesterday"....they said that I did, I have NO recollection to frying them up! I said no way...back to the video tape and sure as hell, there I was, apron on, frying way.

The family said the meal was one of our best!

The phone calls on Christmas morning were hysterical and the two of us had to promise not to get THAT drunk on Christmas Eve again...although we get very close every year!...it's our stress release from a hectic 2 days of preparation and the fact that it's the best time of the year for our family!

I had to look in my ash tray on Christmas Day to see what cigars we smoked in between cooking the different dishes...if I didn't, I had no idea what we even smoked!

Aren't the Holidays great Frank?

Yes they are Gary....I'm looking for an excuse for Easter Dinner now.


Think my wife will go for deep fried Ham?

 

[MadAl]

Spend Christmas with my inlaws, I make Cioppino for them on Christmas Eve dinner and help my MIL make the main course for Christmas Day, LASAGNA!!!

 

[gardkarlsen]

Hi

In Norway quite a lot of people eat pork steak where we roast it so that the fat skin becomes nice and crispy This is served with sauerkraut and a red cabbage mix and other vegetables. It is also served with some meatballs and small white sausages (see photo below

And for dessert we normally have something called "riskrem". You make rice porridge and cool it down. This is mixed with whipped cream and vanilla sugar...quite delicious when served with e.g. fresh, mashed strawberries.

Some are really brave and eat smalahove...half a head of lamb...see photo below ;-)

 

[MoeCizlak]

I'm fairly certain anyone sitting at my table would promptly leave if I served half a lamb's head to them. Hmmm, on second thought, it just might be a way to get rid of unwanted house guests. :laugh: Thanks for the tip Gard. :thumbs:

 

[2K6TBSS]

Sounds like some really good eats....We celebrate x-mas eve with a brunch of all the close friends and family. Then do x-mas dinner with just family....And I usually do all of the cooking...

X-mas eve brunch:
French toast
Cranberry/cream cheese french toast
cheesy scrambled eggs
hash brown bake
baked and pan fried bacon
fresh home made doughnuts


X-mas dinner:
Baked pork chops with a cranberry/wine glaze
twice baked loaded potatoes
green salad with home made vinaigrette
Grands dinner rolls (didn't feel like making fresh rolls)

 

[{tpc}]

Very interesting Gard....but I have to concur with Moe's statement.

I also kinda have my own rule of thumb about not eating anything that stares back at me from my plate lol...

We had ham, green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes....normal for us. Xmas is too much eating in one day for me. Thanksgiving too. But on both days I end up at two dinners, one around noon and the other later on. Makes it easy not to eat the next day lol.

 

[MadMonk]

My Italian Grandfather used to eat lambs head and brain, apparently. As the story goes, my big sister would frequently pass out if he happened to be eating it when she would visit with my mom.