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Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Well-Seasoned Greetings: Christmas Feasts from Poland, Mexico, and France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget




Well-Seasoned Greetings:  Christmas Feasts from Poland, Mexico, and France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


This column about Christmas that I wrote for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) shows that having many ways to celebrate Christmas makes the holiday merrier.  This article contains information about holiday celebrations from Poland, Mexico, and France that I have celebrated throughout my life:

Well-Seasoned Greetings:  Christmas Feasts Feed Both the Body and Soul by Ruth Paget (Monterey County Weekly – Circulation: 200,000)

Eating messy krushchiki and listening to mystic kolendy, Polish carols, in the home of my mother’s best friend whose ancestors were Polish always made me feel the magic of Christmas as a child.

Polish “angel wings” – a twisted, deep-fried cookie liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar along with the Polish carols were the heart of the festivities.

Sometimes before we ate, our hostess would break an oplatek into pieces and share the flour wafer with everyone as a sign of peace.

We ate spiral-cut ham for dinner with gourmet additions like veal pâté flavored with cognace.  This early glimpse into Slavic culture set me on the path to becoming a global gourmet.

Later in high school, my best friend and I would debate whether or not to actually bake the pecan dough for Russian (also Mexican) teacakes that we made.

My high school buddy and I also purposely added too many chocolate chips to cookies, so they would bake into ovals of delicious, warm goop.

I also exchanged cookies with a Mexican high school friend, whose mother made empanadas, pumpkin turnovers flavored with anise.   I liked the way she folded dough to make a beautiful, scalloped edge for this Christmas Eve treat.

The French, like the Mexicans, traditionally celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, as I discovered when I married into a French family.  On my first Christmas in France, we attended midnight mass and got ready for an “all nighter” at the dinner table.

Hors d’oeuvres appeared on after the other:

-smoked salmon

-rillettes (pork cooked and preserved in its own fat, resulting in a salty, creamy spread

-foie gras

Next, we had an entrée of monkfish tail in a dish called lotte à l’américain.  This recipe is of Basque origin, but is dubbed American, because sweet, red peppers and tomatoes are used to make it.

Both peppers and tomatoes originated in the Americas.  Other ingredients in the sauce included olive oil, garlic, onions, white wine, and Armagnac.  I thought this dish tasted wonderful.

I was ready to crawl under the table and go to sleep after this dish, but, then Uncle Jacques entered the dining room carrying a yard-long platter holding slices of salmon terrine with a spinach topping he had prepared.

He decorated this sliced, terrine dish with lemon slice sails and pastry shells made of puff pastry.  The whole presentation looked like a Mediterranean galley.

After the terrine, we ate slices of chèvre goat cheese on toasted baguette.

Dessert was a chocolate cake called a büche de Noël followed by espresso.

The dinner party broke up at 6 am, but we were expected back at noon for another meal.

We began our “light” meal with raw oysters, another salmon terrine, roast turkey with chestnuts, and homemade chocolates.

Between courses during both meals, we sang carols and listened to my brother-in-law play the piano and papie (French grandpa) play the violin.  We made toasts going around the table, askng for “nouvelles” – news to report.

My pleas for water garnered me a round of Gallic scoffing.

“Water if for fish and flowers,” I was told.

“I don’t want to spread tipsy tales,” I responded and coffee quickly appeared.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




Ruth Paget Selfie