Traditional Food

Archive for November, 2009

A christmas borscht recipe

Makes 8 servings.
In our times, Christmas is one of the last remaining times that a family gets to eat together for a couple of days or more. Traditional Xmas cuisine is just dandy, but before too long you really don’t want another meal based on Turkey.
That is when it is a good idea to cook a meal somewhat exotic, and this Christmas Borscht Recipe is perfect in that role!

Ingredient list
32 oz diced canned beets

3 cup water

1 celery stalk

1 carrot, chopped into quarters

1 bay leaf

1 garlic clove, peeled

1/4 teaspoon peppercorns

1/4 tsp salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon sugar

A small amount of dairy sour cream or dill for use as a garnish

Recipe instructions
Drain beets, reserve the liquid and put beetroot aside.
In a good sized pan mix the liquid from the beetroot, water, celery, carrot, bay leaf, garlic, peppercorns and salt.
Bring to a rolling boil.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove solid ingredients with a slotted spoon.
Stir in reserved diced beetroot, lemon juice and sugar.
Carry on simmering for 10 minutes or until heated through.
Serve topped with sour cream (or dill sprigs as a garnish)
If you are looking for other tasty festive recipes, you can find a good collection at Christmas Recipes EU (http://www.recipes.eu.com/recipes25subcat0)
We hope you have a great Xmas meal and enjoy the festive season.

• 4″ x 9″ Notepad
• 12 Matching 4″ x 6″ Recipe Cards
• Christmas Design

Product Description
Stationery gift set contains a 4″ x 9″ magnetic backed notepad and 12 recipe cards tied with ribbon. Designed by artist Kate McRostie. Christmas Joy Collection…. More >>

Joy to the World Notepad & Recipe Cards Christmas Gift Set

Product Description
Coming from a very small town in Northern Ontario, Canada, and coming from a very hard-working and poor family, I learned many wonderful things and most were in the kitchen beside both my parents. Some years later my wife and I were offered a great opportunity to operate and manage a remote fly in hunting and fishing camp on the English River in Northern Ontario, Canada, where we still managed enough time to meet and talk to other people who worked and lived on the … More >>

Art’s Old Canadian Recipes

What is traditional Christmas cooking? Well, that depends on you and your family. Tradition is something you make up as you go along. A traditional Christmas is what is traditional in your home. It may be a recipe handed down from your great grandmother or it may be something you thought of in a desperate hurry last Christmas Eve. Anything can become a tradition. What makes something traditional depends on how we feel about it.

That said, once something becomes traditional then you change it at your peril. If your children expect to come home to stir the Christmas pudding and put in the family favors then you had better not change it. For more details www.cooking-chinese-style.com .They may be away at college or carving out a big career for themselves in the city but they will still expect Christmas to be the Christmas they remember. Christmas cooking is a big part, maybe the biggest part, of the way we remember Christmas.

Every part of Christmas is accompanied by food of one sort or another. The tastes and smells of that food fixes the memory of Christmas in our minds. That smell of cinnamon or hot sugar. If we catch a hint of it anywhere at anytime we are transported instantly back in time to a Christmas kitchen of our childhood. That is the power of traditional Christmas cooking.

I remember how when my mother-in-law was alive and would come to us for Christmas dinner, I had to cook a big traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Turkey seemed a very dry meat to me so I looked through one of my cookery books and found a recipe that involved glazing the turkey with apricot jam for the last 15 minutes of cooking. As a “proper” cook I was appalled, but it seemed to work, so every year I poured a pot of apricot jam over my turkey and, I have to confess, it was delicious.

When my mother-in-law died I saw the opportunity to change our family’s traditional Christmas cooking routine. At last my culinary skills would find true expression in a Christmas dinner that would be original and exciting. No more apricot jam for me. I would amaze family and friends with my creations. For more details www.atkins-diets-recipes.com But no matter what I tried in subsequent years nothing was quite as good as the old turkey recipe with its apricot jam. It had become part of our family’s traditional Christmas cooking. So I gave in and everyone was much happier, even me.

However good a cook you are and whatever new recipes you may attempt in the rest of the year Christmas is a time to come back to traditional Christmas cooking whatever that might be for you and your family. There is a profound wisdom in that which cooks too easily forget. When we cook we are engaging in one of the great acts of social ritual. We are not just cooking for ourselves we are cooking for other people. Our Christmas dinner table expresses not just our skill but our human relationships. Traditional Christmas cooking encapsulates all those relationships, gathered over the years, with people still living and people long since dead that go into making us what we are. At Christmas ghosts sit down at out tables. Traditional Christmas cooking makes sure they are happy ones.