Archive for CUISINES OF THE WORLD
Magical Meals for Christmas Eve in Hungary
The Christmas Eve meals in Hungary have a special sequence and many courses (from 7 till 13). Traditionally each course had its own magical meaning. The dinner started with the prayer from the head of the household. He was the first to drink a glass of wine or palinka. After that everyone ate the garlic to protect themselves from sickness. Then the head of the house divided the red apple among everyone at the table, because the apple was the symbol of unity of the family. The last course during the dinner was sauerkraut. Many nations of the world consider that sauerkraut brings happiness. Even in ancient Greece and Rome it was a significant healing remedy.
Besides food there were other magical attributes. It was considered that a beautifully embroidered Christmas table-cloth had special influence on people, cattle and seedlings. They covered sick people with this table-cloth to cure them.
On Christmas Eve people did not eat nor feed their animals until evening. It was prohibited to work on Christmas. Because of that they tried to finish all their affairs till the lights were turned on. Even preparing food was prohibited, it was allowed only to reheat it.
Christmas dinner in Sweden
Christmas dinner in Sweden has really ancient traditions. Mostly the Christmas meals are prepared from pork. That tradition came from times, when salted pork was the main ration for Swedes during the whole year and Christmas was the only holiday when people ate the fresh meat. These days this aspect is no longer done. But many people still cannot imagine Christmas dinner without bacon, jellied minced meat and pork sausage.
There is a standard for traditional Christmas dinner in Sweden, but people try to add different traits to it. The dinner starts with a smorgasbord: a few types of marinade herring, sausages, jellied meat, roasted meat rolled in bread-crumbs and eggs, garnish.
There are other traditional meals – malt bread (vortbrod) and a meal from codling soaked in water and alkaline solution (lutfisk) to make it taste better. Swedes usually eat fish with sauce and butter, salt and pepper.
The desert is a cream of rice with hot milk and cinnamon. Traditionally if someone finds an almond in the cream of rice that person has to say a short eulogy. There are standard poetry for such occasions, but people may use their own poems.
Author: Ellen
Four of the most famous Hungarian meals
All Hungarian meals are heavily flavored with paprika. Famous Hungarian meal would be called goulash and paprika is one of the main ingredients for three other Hungarian meals: perkelt, tokan’, paprikash. You are able to find them all in most Hungarian restaurants. The meals are not called after traditional folk cuisine; it is the result of an agreement between restaurants’ owners about the same type of titles for courses with plenty of paprika and fried onion. It is possible that these meals had other names in different regions of Hungary for the same meals.
Goulash is a meat soup cooked with onion, paprika, potato and dumplings.
Perkelt is a ragout with plenty of onion and heavy sauce.
Tokan’ is similar to perkelt. It is meat carved thin and oblong with pieces of mushrooms, sour cream, green peas and other greens.
Paprikash is the name for all meals with sour cream and paprika. It is usually prepared from game, veal, lamb or fish. Beef, mutton, pork, goose and duck are not appropriate for paprikash. It is more for perkelt or tokan’. Goulash is usually prepared with beef and chicken.
Author:Ellen