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Planning Christmas dinner is something I look forward to every year. I spend days going over my lists and brooding over which vegetables and recipes I want to include. Christmas dinner is about longstanding family traditions combined with the new traditions you’re creating on your own.
Most of my Christmas recipes come from my grandmother and mother. My grandmother Marie lived in a medium-sized town in Denmark called Odense, in a very traditional household where she planned and cooked the Christmas dinner. She controlled the kitchen, but family members would be allowed to participate, stirring the rice porridge, peeling the potatoes, pitting the cherries. There was no question, however, that she was in charge.
Dancing around the tree
Most of my preparations take place on the 23rd of December, and the main Christmas celebrations are on the evening of the 24th. We start by eating dinner at 6 p.m., and after that we dance around the Christmas tree singing Christmas carols. Anybody who has seen the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's movie "Fanny and Alexander" will know how seriously we take the dancing.
When I was a child, the family Christmas dinner included duck, pork roast, very long sausages called medister made with a minced pork mixture and spices, cooked red cabbage, caramel potatoes (recipe below) help you digest all that food, so you feel better while enjoying it.
A neighborhood barbecue
It is I who run the kitchen now, and I do not let a lot of people be part of my Christmas dinner preparations. I prepare the ducks, stuff them with apples, prunes and onions, fresh thyme, coarse salt and black pepper. My husband then barbecues the ducks on the barbecues lined up on our street. A tradition has formed over the last years whereby a group of neighbors get together and barbecue most of the birds on our street. With barbecues, small bonfires and Amarone red wine, the Christmas party starts in the early afternoon, and if it snows it's a perfect setting.
I really enjoy the step-by-step ritual of cooking this dinner for my family. As it starts to get dark outside, I always open a really nice bottle of wine and have a glass while listening to Christmas music. Every year I have a good cry over the stock or the porridge, because life is so wonderful and complicated. I always feel profoundly connected to the world while cooking at this time of year. I believe it has to do with the history of women on all different continents cooking meals for celebrations and sharing with their family and friends. By cooking my grandmother's recipe I feel connected to her and to my family tradition. I will hand that recipe, and, I hope that sense of belonging, down to my children so they can carry on the legacy with the families they make.
My Grandmother's Caramel Potatoes
Serves 6
Ingredients
2 pounds small firm potatoes
1 cup caster sugar
⅔ stick of butter
Directions
- Boil the potatoes in a large pot of salted water until tender and drain once they are cool enough to handle. Peel and leave to cool. (This can be done the day before.)
- Thirty minutes before serving Christmas dinner, melt the sugar in a large sauté pan. When it is golden brown, add the butter and let the mixture simmer until it becomes a caramel, stirring as little as possible.
- Add the potatoes and gently turn them in the caramel until it starts to stick to them -- this will take time, so be patient. Serve warm.
Red Cabbage Salad
Serve 6
Ingredients
½ red cabbage (about 6 cups when thinly sliced)
2 oranges
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper
75 g almonds with skin
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Directions
- Roast the almonds in a dry frying pan on medium heat until they start turning golden brown. Add the honey and mix well until the almonds start to caramelize, then add the soy sauce and mix well. Place the almonds on a piece of non-stick parchment paper, to cool down.
- Cut the red cabbage in very thin slices so it's almost shredded-looking. Rinse in cold water and then drain in a colander. Cut the oranges in filet and cut all the white pip away.
- Chop the almonds, mix the cabbage with almonds and oranges and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and serve in a salad bowl.
Trine Hahnemann is a Copenhagen-based chef and caterer and the author of six cookbooks, including "The Scandinavian Cookbook." She has catered for artists such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Tina Turner and the Rolling Stones. Her company, Hahnemann's Køkken, which runs in-house canteens, counts the Danish House of Parliament among its clients. Trine writes a monthly column in Denmark's leading women's magazine Alt for Damerne.
Photos: Red cabbage salad, left, and caramel potatoes, right. Credit: Lars Ranek
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Interesting reading as i Myself, live in Odense
and the meal look familiar to mee, with exception of the red cabbage sald which normally in most families are a hot one. The caramel potatoes i simply love.
Merry Christmas from Odense
Flemming