Christmas food

[Levin]

My ex wife will be bringing me a chocolate covered marzipan pig back from Norway after Christmas and I'm very tempted to try and find some Dominostein after being given some a couple of Christmases ago by a German friend.

What other seasonal specialities can be found around the world that sound tasty? The UK obviously has pudding, cake and mince pies.

[Incandenza]

Christmas food

Tamales on Christmas eve throughout Latin America. We're picking up ours on Christmas eve from a place in East LA--making them is a big communal tradition, but it's also a lot of work.

[Sporting]

We're having goat this year. Kid goat.

[ad hoc]

Standard Christmas lunch fare round these parts (both in Hungary and Romania) is töltött káposzta (HU) or sarmale (RO). This gets translated as "stuffed cabbage" (indeed that's the literal meaning of the Hungarian), though it's not really stuffed cabbage, rather pickled cabbage leaves wrapped around a filling and then cooked. The filling is basically rice and minced pork. When I first arrived in this country my extended family would cook a vegetarian version for me, with mushroom and carrot in it (frankly it always looked much nicer than the trad version), and they still do, but rather than just being for me, it now feeds about half the group (partly because my extended family is sadly significantly smaller than it was when I first got here, and partly because 3 other members have become vegetarian in that time)

[Sporting]

For some reason I wouldn't have expected there to be many vegetarians in either Hungary or Romania.

[ad hoc]

They are a fairly recent phenomenon. Remember how in Spain 20-30 years ago a "vegetarian restaurant" was also macrobiotic and salt free and basically terribly bland food? That's where we are here now. People are a bit stunned when I cook for them and serve rich vegetarian food with flavours and stuff.

[hobbes]

They sound pretty good, Ad hoc.

Tunis Cake is the Christmas thing for me. I'll be making one this afternoon, because you can only buy them with ganache on the top not proper chocolate these days since Mary fucking Berry did a recipe and fucked it up.

[Sean of the Shed]

Tunis cake is a way better cake for Christmas than a stodgy traditional Christmas cake. And Mary Berry is lazy corner-cutting out of touch middle England Tory twat who should be packed off to the glue factory.

[Disco Child Ballads]

I've offered to make a vegetarian dish for my family for Christmas dinner this year, but I'm still not entirely sure what to make. I might go with stuffed aubergines. I'll be making braised red cabbage as well.

[Duncan Gardner]

3 different types of fish in a whipped cream environment this year (in a restaurant, extended family having swerved my offer to cook).

The Black Sea Brassica ensemble looks good- if only AH could overcome his S*jtphobia...

[treibeis]

The Lady I Walked To The Registry Office With has been granted leave from the hut on Christmas Eve so that she can prepare kale and roast potatoes (with optional sausages) for herself, me and two of my mates whose respective women left them a few months back.

There's also a Christmas pudding, but I don't eat shit like that.

Beer and wine for them, a bottle of Helbing for me (which I'll hopefully have to share, as I'm working as of 9:00 am on Christmas morning).

[Benjm]

Tunis Cake is the Christmas thing for me. I'll be making one this afternoon, because you can only buy them with ganache on the top not proper chocolate these days since Mary fucking Berry did a recipe and fucked it up.

If you make it yourself you can leave the marzipan fruit off it.

Actually, do you take orders, like MsD's backstreet pub pudding dealer?

[Benjm]

Standard Christmas lunch fare round these parts (both in Hungary and Romania) is töltött káposzta (HU) or sarmale (RO). This gets translated as "stuffed cabbage" (indeed that's the literal meaning of the Hungarian), though it's not really stuffed cabbage, rather pickled cabbage leaves wrapped around a filling and then cooked. The filling is basically rice and minced pork.

My mother-in-law used to make those, in a tomato sauce. Golabki is the Polish name, I think. Commercial versions often have a low enough meat content that the manufacturers might as well broaden the potential customer base and make them properly vegetarian.

[MsD]

I’m going to a friend who’s cooking duck :-( so I’m sourcing the protein element of my dinner myself. Maybe fish or a veggie dish; I might just take over some Linda McCartney sausages as it’s the veggies that are the stars for me. I’m not going to refuse non-veggie gravy.

I have duck friends.

I’m also taking the great famous Stoke Newington Monster Raving Loony Pudding and some champagne.

[Sean of the Shed]

Linda McCartney's is the best veggie food. It's a much more palatable texture than Quorn. I like her mozzarella burgers more than meat ones.

[JVL]

Tunis cake is a way better cake for Christmas than a stodgy traditional Christmas cake. And Mary Berry is lazy corner-cutting out of touch middle England Tory twat who should be packed off to the glue factory.

Mary Berry was She Who Shall Not Be Mentioned for many years in our house when I was growing up. She was the judge for a cookery competition that my Mum took part in sometime in the 80s, can't remember exactly when. Mum made it to the final but according to MB, Mum's cooking was only good enough for second place. I was only seven or eight at the time, and was apparently absolutely crushed by this. Mum wasn't that bothered, she won a hostess trolley. I was less sad not to be eating Armenian sodding Lamb again though, it had been cooked at regular intervals for weeks as Mum perfected the recipe and got through the qualifying events.

[WOM]

It was L's mother's turn to host up north this year. But early in November she basically bailed/begged off and left it to us again. 'It's just easier for everyone. ' ie, her. So were cooking and cleaning like crazy people and I'll have my inlaws underfoot for two days, plus L's dodgy brother and my loud, lazy sister. Food? Yes please...

[caja-dglh]

I believe I am cooking a dry-aged beef tenderloin. Which reminds me that I need to get new batteries for the meat thermometer. That thing can't be overdone.

[Artificial Hipster]

I'll be preparing the nut roast chez the in-laws this Christmas.

To answer the question in the OP, Carrow Road on a Boxing Day a few years ago had Vegetarian Christmas Dinner pies on the snack bar menu and will, I expect, remain forever the tastiest food I've eaten at a football ground.

[Janik]

The usual, pork Schnitzel and potato salad. Which is sort of Czech-ish. It should be carp, but we have long since rejected that as an option because no-one likes it. Likewise the fish soup as a starter has been replaced by a spiced autumn vegetable soup, mostly as bits of carp are not available from the main to make it with.
Like all good cooking, the potato salad needs more than 24 hours to be properly prepared. The boiled ingredients (potatoes, carrots, eggs) must be left to cool overnight in the fridge and also allow all the excess water to come out. And then they and the fresh items get diced small, everything is mixed together with mayonnaise and left to settle for a few hours more before it's ready to serve.

My Mum normally bakes some Vanocka (a sweet bread (i.e. a bread with a sweet taste, not an animal's glands) with raisins) and Vanilkove rohlicky (almond vanilla biscuits)

[adams house cat]

My ex wife will be bringing me a chocolate covered marzipan pig back from Norway after Christmas and I'm very tempted to try and find some Dominostein after being given some a couple of Christmases ago by a German friend.

What other seasonal specialities can be found around the world that sound tasty? The UK obviously has pudding, cake and mince pies.

That sounds so good as to be actively sinful. Gonna have to go to confession from just thinking about it.

Pork tenderloin cooked slowly over charcoal with apple smoke and a peach glaze. Oven roast potatoes and asparagus. Twelve pack of Newcastle Brown and a good single malt. Only be me there so plenty of leftovers for sandwiches.

[adams house cat]

MsD, I'm intrigued by Great Stoke Newington Monster Raving Loony Pudding. Do tell please.

[MsD]

https://www.facebook.com/n16christmaspuddings/?fref=ts

I buy them from Nigel down the local 'Spoons. He's a MRLP member and sometime candidate.

[adams house cat]

I like him already.

[Gangster Octopus]

I loathed stuffed cabbage. We used to have it back in the days when UK resident Poles were leftovers from WW2.