Fêtes . Dinners of Holiday. Many IDs, change of style.

A few ideas for holiday menus. Japan has a month to celebrate the end of the year with Bonenkai (funerals of the old year) parties. In other places, Yule, Noël, Xmas and New Year in many places. Add, yours…
I like trying different dishes and meal styles.

Take a hot cup of thé de Noël and enjoy :

Rétro Christmas, candlelight and rustic.

Simple appetizers.
Jambon en croute aux marrons (chestnut ham pie)
Provence’s style : 13 desserts of Christmas night
Nougat glacé (iced nougat)

Kani Nabe (crab hot pot)
Winter Japanese home parties are often nabe (hot-pots)
Japanese hot pot with Winter crab
Other nabe (hot pots) :
Nikomi Udon
Duck and veggie nabe
sukiyaki

Noël blanc
Everything white, and French flavors…
Full Menu White French Christmas
Boudin blanc (white pudding sausage was little people’s Xmas treat, DIY)
Blanc-Manger (Middle-Age style, not a dessert)
Canard aux airelles (duck with cranberry sauce)
Gateau Mont-Blanc (coconut Antilles’ whiteness)

A Japanese Christmas menu
chicken and sesame cooking class
marmalade and sesame wings
chicken slices with wine sesame sauce
tofu with wine sesame sauce
decorative potato sarada. (pote sarada)
sesame fruit cake

Mexican Navidad, Tamales
pickles and chicken tamales
yellow grits tamales
tamale pie

Islands
Christmas ham, from the Antilles (French Caribbean islands).
Petit jambon antillais (pineapple baked ham)
féroce d’avocat (cod fish spicy guacamole)

Classic French
potage Choisy
Le poulet de Gaston – Dijon chicken (mustard sauce)
bûche aux marrons glacés
Douceurs de beurre et marrons…

Osechi Ryori, a feast of good luck dishes for Japanese New Year, with the recipes. Click here.

Alsace influence. French and light.
Full Menu
Blinis with smoked salmon
Choucroute de la mer (seafood Sauerkraut)
Bûche forêt noire Blackforest log Yule cake
Bredele (season cookies)

Petit Jésus en brioche…
About this one, posts showing up soon :
Colorful first dish
Saucisson en brioche au safran (salami saffron pie)
Red wine red cabbage in rice cooker. The same in cocotte.
Chestnutty no-bake croquettes
Flocon de neige (streusel flocken-sahne). Berry Flockensahne.
Black sugar Nonnettes Kaki nonnettes. Mandarin nonnettes.

Galette des rois aux 8 trésors – 8 treasures in kings’ pie (via GiO)

French Kings day is today. But many people will celebrate next Sunday.
Do you remember this galette :

My galette contains 8 good surprises. The little monkey is la fève, the token…

Ideas for a Sweet Xmas – Gâteaux de Noël

(Osaka cake)

You probably think I’m big fan of Christmas. Actually, I couldn’t care less, it’s only the bottom of the year, the time with the shortest days. What I really like is there are so many Christmas food, particularly sweets, from so many places.
It’s fun to try to make them.

Snow-flake

Kurisumasu keeki 2012

charlotte kurisumasu keeki

rose cranberry panettone

Easy Yule logs :

bûche forêt noire

bûche aux marrons glacés

The tradition of Provence with the 13 desserts :

13 retro desserts

honey walnut iced nougat

These cakes are not only for this occasion, but many like to invite them :

snow flake cake

Marquises au chocolat

Gâteau Mont-Blanc antillais (coconut layered cake)

With the coffee, you need many mignardises :

Schwowebredele (the traditional Xmas cookie of Alsace, make them in many shapes and flavor)

black sugar nonnettes (yeast)
Mandarin orange nonnettes (baking powder)

Hot wine revisited :

jelly spiced wine pears

lait de poule (French eggnog)

This is what we have in Japan :

kurisumasu ke-ki (how to bake a Japanese Xmas cake)

Ichigo daifuku mochi (Winter wagashi)

kuri kinton (marron sweet)

Over the world :

Bibingka (Philippines)

Povitica (Slovenia)

home-made mandarin Stollen (Germany)

Chionoules or snowballs (Greece)

*************************************

I have not made these two, I’ve just received them. The white is of course a German Stollen.

Berawecka (Alsacian “pear bread”, fruit cake). I’m very serious. It’s very healthy. It’s mostly made of fruit like those “health fruit bars” I see on many health blogs.

I had to check the quality. You want to know ? Of course, that’s totally decadent and not healthy at all. Mmmmm… Well, I’ll try to keep some for Christmas.

Runny, on the run : bûche aux marrons glacés

Training chrissy cakes are not always perfect in shape. They still get eaten.

Runny like an old camembert… Really, there was not enough time to let the cream cool and thicken.

Christmas’s amber : marrons glacés. What is great is those candied chestnuts are very difficult to make in only one piece. Even the pros fail many.

So they have to discount the broken bits. And they are as delicious. It’s perfect for cakes.

It’s a vanilla custard cream, with small “gems”, rolled inside a slightly chocolaty biscuit de Savoie cake, wet with brandy.

The snow too is full of land mine marrons. These 2 should be careful.

Galette des rois aux 8 trésors – 8 treasures in kings’ pie

For the jour des rois, the day of the Kings, the French custom is to share a galette pie with family, or any group of friends, coworkers, student. A token is hidden inside. The person finding it will the King for a year. King of what ? Er… you have 12 months to find. There are several recipes of galettes des rois, but the pie filled with almond cream/custard is a popular classic. In the recent years, many variations have appeared.
I followed (roughly) the recipe from the blog la cocina de Carolina with a sweet potato basis.
Here you see a coconut one that I found tempting, chez les deux gourmands. That was hard to make a choice, but I had most ingredients for the 1st one in my closet.

My galette contains 8 good surprises. The little monkey is la fève, the token. Fève means fava bean (broad bean) because the original simple version was simply a dry fava bean. Now there are beautiful decorated fèves.

>>>

The base is sweet potato. About a pound. I boiled big junks in the microwave, then mashed the flesh into a purée to which I added a good chunk of unsalted butter, an egg yolk, very little sugar.