Best Food Recipes 2023 Step by Step with Pictures
As you know, there is a Catholic Christmas and an Orthodox Christmas, and at the same time it is difficult to find even two Catholic or Orthodox countries that would have absolutely identical Christmas dishes and Christmas menu. The Christmas table should not only saturate the family, but also symbolize abundance, the beginning of a new life. Traditional Christmas dishes in different countries are very diverse, in connection with the end of the fast, a variety of products are allowed. For example, from the end of November to January 7, the Orthodox Christmas fast lasts, the menu of the Christmas fast is a great way not only to be cleansed spiritually, but also physically. Eating during the Christmas fast excludes fatty animal food, fish can be eaten several times a week. But after the fast, the recipes for Christmas dishes are more diverse, there is meat, fish, and dairy products.
For the countries of Western Europe, Christmas baking recipes are especially characteristic of sweet dishes. At this time, houses and bazaars are really flooded with Christmas pastries. The recipe for Christmas baking is Christmas cookies, as well as Christmas gingerbread. Christmas cupcake and Christmas candy recipes are also very popular. There is even a special English Christmas cake in England. The recipe for Christmas cookies is simple, the main thing is a beautiful design. To please your loved ones and, especially, children, we offer you a recipe for Christmas gingerbread. You will need flour, sugar, soda, eggs, butter, cocoa, honey, spices. After mixing the ingredients and kneading the dough, it should be put in the refrigerator overnight so that it is infused and soaked with spices, in this case you will get especially fragrant Christmas gingerbread. The recipe for Christmas gingerbread will also require you to have a certain artistic taste, because it will be necessary to mold human figures, animals, or some geometric shapes from the dough. After that, the cookies are baked in the oven and decorated with icing. About the same way Christmas cookies are prepared. The recipe for a Christmas cake is very popular in England. It is prepared with dried fruits and nuts, soaked with some alcohol. For Orthodox Christians, Christmas sweets are primarily Christmas carols and Christmas pastries, for example, Christmas cake. The recipe that creates a holiday for children is lollipops in the form of cockerels. The ideal option for Christmas baking will be Christmas tea. It is made from black tea, ginger, cinnamon and orange peel.
Also in many European countries, a mandatory Christmas dish is a Christmas goose, a Christmas duck or a Christmas turkey. Christmas goose is prepared in Germany, Denmark, Greece etc. You will definitely not regret if a Christmas goose appears on your table. The Christmas goose recipe usually uses apples and prunes. Christmas turkey is a recipe that is typical for England and the USA. Meat dishes are often served with a Christmas salad, the recipe of which may differ in different countries.
When else to cook interesting pastries, if not for the New Year’s table? Dried cranberries are great for making desserts and baking. I suggest baking fragrant homemade waffles. And you can also cook the dough with a powerful food processor. Cranberries can be added whole, and milk or dark chocolate should be pre-chopped with a knife. It turns out very tasty pastries for a family holiday tea party.
A very tender, very satisfying, moderately sweet dessert, in fact – a cheesecake without baking. Cooking is not very difficult, the main thing is not to get confused. I was preparing for my birthday, my daughter did not try it at the table, she took half of the cake with her. Late at night I get a message: “Amazing cake! I hate everything myself.
Baskets made of shortbread dough (pate sucree) are delicate, fragile and fragrant… and the meringue baskets made of French meringue, as well as lemon curd and cottage cheese cream are very tasty! The decoration is “caviar” made of freshly squeezed orange juice, chocolate chips and “olive tree” made of orange peel in chocolate. A wonderful New Year’s dessert will delight both children and adults not only with its taste, but also with its appearance, and will also raise the festive mood! You can prepare the main ingredients for dessert in advance and collect them on the day of the holiday.
This is a very delicious pie! Shortbread dough, explosive sourness of berry filling and delicate sweetness of meringue is the perfect combination! And it seems to me that it is perfect for a New Year’s or Christmas table: the combination of red and white colors turns out to be very festive, bright and elegant. Well, I think you can easily imagine the taste of this cake.
The Ant Hill cake is one of those cakes that we have known and loved since childhood. Sweet, delicious and easy to prepare. In the classic version, the sand crumbs are mixed with a cream of butter and boiled condensed milk. But, high-quality boiled condensed milk is very difficult to find now, and you don’t always want to cook yourself, and sometimes it’s dangerous. Therefore, I suggest that you prepare a simple and relaxed (due to the minimum amount of butter) cream.
Big luck: we finally got lampreys in the fish shop again! Back in the Soviet era, our family bought them in smoked form, however, only once a year, and then we dressed them with homemade mustard sauce and arranged a gluttonous feast.
Now I’ve learned how to make lampreys myself. Only before describing the recipe, I want to say at least a few words about what they are.
Lampreys were formerly considered fish: so they are designated in a number of dictionaries, starting with V. Dahl . That is why V. Pokhlebkin in his culinary encyclopedia calls them so. But zoologists refer lampreys to marine animals of the group of lower vertebrates of the class of round-mouthed. They are found in the temperate waters of the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
It is curious that the word “lamprey” came to the Russian language, having made a kind of journey through Europe, which began in Germany. There it originally sounded like Neunauge, that is, “nine-eyed” – for the presence of seven eye-like gill openings, along with the eye itself and the unpaired organ of smell.
These inhabitants of the waters are passable (live in the sea, and spawn in fresh water) and residential lake or river (stream). The first reach a meter long, the second-much smaller. The apotheosis of the life of lampreys is spawning: after laying eggs, they die. The hatched sandworm larvae reach sexual maturity in 2-3 years.
The snake-like appearance of lampreys may confuse some people, but the delicacy of the eel is the same in appearance. Due to the deterioration of the ecological situation, a number of species from the forty existing ones are listed in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, lampreys are still subject to fishing.
Despite the fact that lampreys have no bones, no scales, no entrails, except for the small short intestine, preparing them for cooking is a troublesome task. And all because their skin is enveloped in a large amount of mucus, which is also poisonous. Tips for removing this unpleasant substance include different procedures: soaking in several waters of salt water, rubbing with salt. Just wash it out is unlikely to work, I, in any case, does not work out.
I got used to acting in a complex way: first-washing, then rubbing with salt and soaking in cold water for 15-20 minutes, again washing, again-rubbing with salt, placing in a plastic bag and keeping in the refrigerator for about an hour. And after that, of course, another wash in running water.
You can open the abdomen and get a mini-intestine, you can squeeze out the blood for kosher by making an incision in the anal area. These actions are at the discretion of the cook.
Lampreys are fried, baked, smoked and marinated. I will not tell you about how to smoke, because I have never personally tried it. But I do not advise cooking, because if any particles of mucus remain, the toxic substances will pass into the bodies of the nine-eyes. True, I read that Portuguese chefs manage to cook boiled lampreys, but they do not give away the secret. However, to be honest, I am not very interested in it.When frying lampreys, they are breaded or not breaded, they are kept in a hot frying pan for about 4 minutes on each side. At the same time, fat is melted, which makes up a little more than a third of the entire mass and-attention! – it is a very perishable product. This time is quite enough to protect the future dish from poisons. I prefer to lightly pan, sprinkle with lemon and bake in the oven for half an hour. The most patient workers say that before hot processing, they marinate prepared carcasses in red wine for a whole day – I have never tried it, so I mention it “in purely theoretical terms”.
Also see my recipe below!