Hi everyone, welcome to pot luck food talks.
Today we're going to talk about Christmas.
The shottiest time of the year. Are you a Christmas guy? Do you like Christmas?
I'm not a super crazy Christmas person, but I mean, for sure I like Christmas Eve dinner.
I think it's something really special.
There are many things that only make sense to eat at that time of the year.
Yeah, for sure. There are certain things that I only eat once a year, I think, and that's usually around Christmas.
What's it for you guys? What does your family do usually?
Okay, my family. Well, traditionally in Venezuela there is this thing called ayacas,
which are like tamales and plain pained leaves with pork stew.
It's usually pork, but it could be something else, and it also has raisins and pickles and different things.
So it's quite a thing, and you only eat that for Christmas.
And we would have that for sure. That was the standard.
And then always like a big piece of meat.
It could be a pork leg or lamb or a turkey or a suckling pig, you know, like these kind of things. Goose, duck, you know.
That sounds really nice. The tamal sounds really nice with like braised pork and like the raisins and stuff.
Yeah. It sounds delicious. It's kind of like a sweet, savory sort of like mix, no?
Yeah, it's called ayaca. Ayaca.
Yeah, actually there is a lot of people that hate the raisins and the pickles inside of it, but I actually love it, man.
And it's something for me, it's really something that brings me to my childhood and something Venezuelans living abroad always crave for Christmas.
There's always in any city someone who cooks them because it's very laborious to do.
It takes two days to do the whole process.
So you usually make very large batches and you exchange it with other families.
That's pretty cool. I love that idea.
So like, but now when you are celebrating Christmas by yourself, what do you usually do?
It's usually like a big piece of some kind of meat in my case. I think that the people here in San Sebastian tend to eat fish for Christmas.
Like a whole piece of a nice fish. I know this because the fishmonger is just under my apartment.
And if you want to get some fish during Christmas days, it's impossible. It's all pre-ordered and sold out weeks before.
But I mean, usually the way it goes is, for instance, when I'm with my family, they drop me in any large supermarket or market or something and say, get whatever you want.
So I will always go to the meat section and look for something interesting, you know, like a goat or a sheep or something like that.
And I will just, you know, braise it classic style with some fruits and braise it in red wine. Maybe use what is known as Christmas spices, you know, like cinnamon star anise cardamom, those kind of things.
Ginger and something like that in that direction.
Yeah, that sounds really nice.
What about you?
My family, there's like two parts to Christmas, right? There's Christmas, like there's Christmas Eve, which is like the main one that we kind of celebrate on the 24th.
And then there's the 25th, which is Christmas Day. And so on Christmas Eve, we have the general rule that we have something very simple because we don't really want somebody to be in the kitchen all day, like while everybody else is like around the tree and stuff.
It's like a tradition in Germany that like on, I mean, in some parts anyway, some families that you have something super similar, like as simple as like sausages, like just some boiled sausages in a potato salad.
That's it, you know.
Also though, that comes from like very like very strict Christian customs in Germany, you know, where like in Germany, the Christian belief like went very into the sort of like, oh, everything very reproduced and only this and only that and only bread for dinner and what not.
But it's kind of nice. And then usually we do like, we'll probably do like a raclette, you know.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, we have that like little table grill with like where you know these ones where you have the little pans.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so we'll have like potatoes and pickles and ham and like little pickle pearl onions and stuff like that.
Like it's just like a big mix. And we get like nice raclette cheese and then everybody just sits around. It's like very easy to prepare.
And everybody sits around. It's very like super fun and interactive and dynamic.
Yeah. Exactly. And like a simple salad with it and that's it.
And then but then also there you have like a proper Christmas dinner, which usually is either duck or goose.
Yeah, I've had that and the times I've been in like in German family Christmas.
Like duck or goose with this blue cabbage cooked like an apple and also some clove, right. And then this knutle, which is like this bread dumplings next to it with a sauce, something like that.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the red cabbage, like which is just red cabbage. And it's like people get really like particular how to make it.
For example, my dad has like a recipe where he like marinades the cabbage for like two days before he even cooks it and stuff like that.
But yeah, it's like it's like red cabbage, red wine, grated apple, like bay leaf and like juniper and stuff like that.
You're talking about the marinade, right? The marinade of the red cabbage.
No, like when you cook it, you know, you basically cook it in. It's basically like a savory cabbage jam.
Like it's almost cooked down until it's like almost like a jam.
Yeah, it usually has like this exactly like apples and sweet components to it.
Yeah, it's like sweet and sour. It's sweet and sour. Yeah, and savory.
Exactly. Yeah, it's something for me. For me, that's as German as it gets in my perception.
Yeah, yeah, for me too. But it's like something that you only eat at Christmas, you know, like really.
I mean, and then the dumplings that you talked about, they're called Servettenknudel, which means napkin dumplings, right?
Because it's made from leftover bread. And then you make the mixture, you soak the bread in milk and you add some like sauteed onions and some eggs and stuff.
You make this mixture like a stuffing. And then traditionally you would take linen napkins and put the mix in and as like a big sausage and roll it up and make like a torsion and then put it in the napkin.
And then once it's done, take it out, take it out of the napkin and slice it.
Yeah, as you said, like bread, right? And you can you could even after the grill it to add it some some crust and butter, right?
Oh, yeah. So that's usually the thing that people do. They make like a little bit too much Servettenknudel.
And then you have it one day just like poached. And then the next day, all the leftover slices, you fry it in butter until it's really crispy.
It's like a super nice to have like a Christmas fry up where you just like have a big pan, you add like pieces of this like bread stuffing dumpling.
And then you just crack eggs and potatoes in it. Stuff and just make like a big like what in South Germany you would call it like a Geröschtl, you know, like just roast everything together, you know.
And it's like it's super, super nice.
Do you have any like memorable like a memorable elaboration you've done for for a Christmas night or or an anecdote or something?
I mean, I'm always like, like every Christmas is kind of the same.
Like my family, like carefully approaches me and says, I'm sure you don't want to cook a Christmas, right?
You cook like all year round. So you don't really want to cook, do you?
And I'm like, no, I can cook. That's OK. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, great. Here's the kitchen.
There's 15 people coming. And and and yeah, it's like pretty much always the same.
I always like go in. It's very nice.
Like when I either I spent a Christmas in Tenerife with my mom, which is very nice.
Or I'm like in like southwest Germany where there's like lots of medieval towns and lots of markets.
And it's like a very cozy mood.
So I go and like just just like go to markets and buy stuff. Right.
But when I go to Tenerife, it's a little bit different because in Tenerife, you don't.
My family is German, but it's very hard to get like certain products there.
So, for example, that this year, my mom, you know, like the first thing I wrote, hey, I've bought my tickets.
I'm coming this and this day. And she was like, oh, great.
I'm super happy that you're coming. And then like five minutes later, she sent me a message.
She was like, you think there's any way that you could fit a whole goose in your suitcase?
And I was like, I was like, how is that supposed to work?
And she's like, I don't know. But like this asking. Yeah, just asking.
And I was like, well, you know, like, you know, I'm always up for these sorts of shenanigans.
You know, like I can see what I can do. And she was like, why is it illegal?
And I was like, it's definitely illegal to transport meat on a plane from one country.
She was like, oh, then maybe then maybe you shouldn't do it.
And then 10 minutes later, she wrote and she was like, maybe you can just buy like the thighs and just get those and like backseal them.
But that's funny. Well, I have a memory of it was just before Colby 2020.
That Christmas or 2019, I was visiting my sister that lives in Philadelphia.
So they dropped me. It was also my brother, my sister-in-law.
Like it was like a nice group. So they dropped me in Whole Foods, like by whatever you need.
So and I think the interesting this that I did on that occasion was a roasted pumpkin salad.
So I found like a really nice pumpkin. I cut it into cubes and roasted it.
And I remember I had lots of stuff to that salad.
There was like this caramelized pecan nuts that you could buy already like the rapinyalas, you know, with this fine sugar coat around.
And my sister had in her basement a thousand year old Moroccan lemons, you know, like this, the salt cured lemons.
And these were like really nice that they had to be there like for many years.
So like those julienned, there were also like candied cherries.
I remember the dressing was something with yogurt and maple syrup.
You know, it was like all these Christmas flavors around a roasted pumpkin salad.
And I remember that one. Everybody was like, what is this? You know, it was super, super good.
But besides that, as I said, mostly is a nice piece of meat properly braised with a nice sauce.
And there's not much more to it, you know, like some potatoes, some butter, nice wine. And that's it.
Well, also something that I think is really special are what I call Christmas spices.
For example, the mixture for Lebkuchen in Germany or for pumpkin pie in America, you know, like it's usually cinnamon,
Jamaica pepper, you know, like this different sweet spices, which is not exactly correct to call them sweet, but you know what I mean?
And yeah, I think that's also something very Christmasy. Yeah, for sure.
Like I always look forward to like also being like cooking with these spices, you know, like putting a cinnamon stick in something that's amazing, you know.
And like I love I think autumn and winter is like especially autumn is my favorite time to cook. Yeah, I agree.
Oven braised stuff and you know, like I love the mushroom season. Yeah.
My grandma used to make something really crazy. My grandma is an amazing cook and she used to have this recipe that always everybody always
actually she has two recipes that people always ask her for. One is a Christmas salad.
It's just called Christmas salad because she makes it a Christmas. It's like a beetroot salad with like smoked mackerel and horseradish and stuff like that.
And loads of dill with like a cream fresh dressing. It's just like very nice Eastern German style, you know.
But she used to make this thing that she would call Indian stuffed duck. So like Indian as in India, not, you know, Native Americans, obviously.
And I don't think it's very Indian at all. Like the Indian parts of it are like the spices and the fact that into the stuffing that she puts in the duck,
she puts hard boiled eggs that get chopped up. Oh, nice. Which sounds really weird, you know, but actually like Parsi cooking and stuff like that.
You know, they use a lot of hard boiled eggs. I've seen that a lot actually. Yeah. Yeah.
And she would put also raisins in the mixture and like sultanas and I need to look at the recipe, but I think like orange zest also.
And it's like a very elaborate recipe and she stuffs this duck and then roasts the whole duck.
So the duck gets flavored with all these things and then you eat the stuffing and the duck like, you know, on the same plate separately.
And it's like a super crazy recipe that like when you read it, it's like like the first time I read it, I was like, this what is this?
You know, like what the hell is going on? But then you eat like she makes it and you're like, man, this is absolutely delicious.
Like that's super crazy, man. You just reminded me like the sister I have in Philadelphia.
She has like all the family treasures because my grandmother used to live in Philadelphia for a long time, my German grandmother.
So she has all these old books and pictures and these kind of things.
And like my grand, grand, grandmother, they were they lived in India because they were like Lutheran missionaries.
And there was this recipe book with Indian recipes from my grand, grand, grandmother, like chutneys and things.
Super interesting, man. All hard written. Yeah, man.
That meant those things that they really are treasures, you know, like they're really, really are treasures.
And if you have something like that, you know, like keep it and treasure it.
That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks.
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