Task 2: What food defines your holidays for you? Is it just not the same without a turkey, or goose, or ham, or vegetarian equivalent? Is it the side dishes or desserts that make the meal for you? Recipes (and photographs) welcome.
Throughout the month of December, it wouldn’t be Advent in my home if I didn’t have a large plate sitting on my living room table, filled with the traditional holiday goodies — chocolates, gingerbread, Stollen (Christmas loaf), marzipan, almonds (coated and otherwise), truffles, tangerines, etc. — and occasionally, too, a traditional British plum pudding.
On Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, my mom’s and my traditional holiday dinner is sausages and potato salad. The next day, we usually have some more elaborate dish for lunch or dinner — duck, game or roast with gravy, vegetables and potatoes.
Dresden Christmas Loaf (Stollen) — my mom’s and my aunt’s recipe:
| 2 lbs. | flour |
| 85 g (≅ 3 oz) | yeast |
| 250 ml (≅ 8,5 fl.oz.) | lukewarm milk |
| 400 g (≅ 14 oz) | lard (or half lard, half butter, at least 170 g (6 oz) each) |
| 150 g (≅ 5.3 oz) | sugar |
| 75 g (≅ 2.65 oz) | almond flakes or chips |
| 600 g (≅ 21 oz) | sultanas |
| 8 tablespoons | rum |
| 125 g (≅ 4.5 oz) | candied lemon peel |
| salt | |
| 1/4 lb. (4 oz.) | molten butter |
| 2 tablespoons | vanilla sugar |
Soak sultanas in rum. Pass flour through a sieve into a bowl. Form a little dip in the middle of the flour and crumble yeast into the dip. Mix some flour, a pinch of sugar and some lukewarm milk and dust flour over it; mix well.
Place bowl into oven and permit yeast to rise at very low heat until it has acquired double height (approx. 10 min. at 50°C (122F) and 10 more minutes after having turned off the heat again).
Add the rest of the lukewarm milk, lard (and butter), sugar and salt. Mix dough very well, kneading it with your hands in the end. When the dough is very soft, carfully add sultanas, rum and candied lemon peel.
Shape the dough into a loaf, place into a warm spot (e.g., the oven if still warm) and let rise again.
After a while, carefully stretch the dough a little and press a rolling pin (or a small bottle) lengthwise into the dough. Fold the upper part of one side of the dough lenfthwise over the other, so as to form the characteristical shape representing Christ as a baby, wrapped in linen.
Spread butter (or lard) and flour on a baking tray, place the loaf onto the tray and leave alone for 15 minutes. Preheat oven, splash some water inside and bake loaf at 175°C (345F) for 45 – 60 minutes.
When ready, coat the loaf alternatingly with molten butter and vanilla sugar.
(Note: This is a complicated recipe, and every step has to be observed meticulously. I’ll confess right here that, like many — perhaps most — Germans, I’ve never tried my hand at it and have always resorted to buying Stollen … or enjoying my aunt’s, who, although approaching her 90s, made it every single year until last year, enough for the entire family. The closest I’ve come to ever trying to bake Stollen according to this recipe myself was helping my mom on the occasions when she made it, following this same recipe.)
Nuremberg Ginger Bread:
| 3 | eggs |
| 200 g (≅ 7 oz) | sugar |
| 1 pinch | ground cloves |
| 1 pinch | cardamom |
| 8 g (≅ 0.3 oz) | cinnamon |
| 1 pinch | salt |
| 50 g (≅ 3 oz) | candied lemon peel |
| 150 g (≅ 5.3 oz) | sweet almond chips |
| 5 g (≅ 0.2) | grated bitter almonds |
| 250 g (≅ 9 oz) | flour |
| 1 packet | wafers (approx. 6 cm (2.4″) in diameter) |
| 1 packet | icing sugar |
Mix eggs and sugar and beat until very frothy. Add spices, candied lemon peel, almond chips and, ultimately, flour, passing it through a sieve.
Place servings of dough on wafers with a teaspoon previously dipped in water. Slightly grease a baking tray, place gingerbread cookies on tray and bake at 160 – 180°C (320 – 355F) for at most 15 – 20 minutes. (The gingerbread should dry out rather than bake, so as not to become too hard and lose taste.)
Dissolve icing sugar in water and thinly coat gingerbread cookies with it.
Alternatively, molten chocolate can also be used as coating.
Lastly, Christmas markets are an indelible part of the Advent season for me, too; and that, of course, includes the plethora of food stands there — Kartoffelpuffer (latkes), gingerbread, candies and other sweets, crêpes, pancakes, poffertjes (Dutch mini pancakes), strudel, roasts, meat on a spit, sausages, etc.!
