In the UK, the 6th January perhaps is a day like any other, the only significance being that for those of us who are superstitious, the Christmas decorations must be tidied away, otherwise bad luck will follow. In Switzerland, they will be celebrating Dreikoenigstag. Alice loved last year, as she was king twice over, so that meant being able to tell everyone what to do and having 2 plastic kings hidden in her bread and wearing 2 different crowns. Alice has a good memory and reminded me it was the 3 Kings Day in Switzerland today. Of course, today would not be able to go by without the making of a Dreikoenigskuchen. Easily bought in Switzerland in bakeries and supermarkets, but the expense led me to start making my own in the last 2 years of our 8 year stint there. I started my dough off this morning before taking the girls on the school run, and completed the rise and bake when I got back. I was also thinking of Kim who I know will be going to Kueblers in Aesch to get an exclusive Fasnacht figurine bread, very special. Normally, though a bread circle consisting of 8 or 9 buns baked together are eaten on this day. I like to add lots of sultanas and some ground almonds or marzipan to my dough, I am missing the high gluten flour they use called Zopfmehl and their mini blocks of fresh yeast which makes for very soft bread.
My recipe for Dreikoenigsbrot or 3 Kings bread can be found here:
With Christmas in the bag, we are now feeling suitably relaxed as the hectic preparations, buying and wrapping has ceased. … Surely none of us would be thinking about how long we would have to wait for Christmas 2012….. or may be not….
A question asked by my youngest last night as she lay in bed thinking of good excuses as to why she shouldn’t be asleep;
‘Dad, how many days is it until next Christmas?’
My husband cunningly turned it into a maths question, and she almost worked it out, had she not realised it was actually a leap year this year…
I would not perhaps necessarily be thinking of when Easter will happen either, but it seems the minute Christmas was complete, Tesco and Morrisons both got their Easter displays out the second the wrapping paper was emptied from the shelves. I found that a little depressing. There is no breathing space now between major celebrations as there was before, even hot cross buns are available all year round. In Switzerland they could not do this, as they had Valentines Day and Fasnacht Lenten Carnival scheduled in before Easter, so Easter eggs came into the shops nearer Easter time, the Swiss seem able to wait til March. We have Easter eggs on the shelves in the first week of January, that just seems wrong to me.
We decided to have a quiet family Christmas, and squeeze in seeing the family either side. Although my mum always insisted on breaking the Christmas Day dinner Turkey rule, I still like to cook turkey on Christmas day. I am not sure whether it’s because I am a stickler for tradition, or whether it’s because as a child we were given anything but Turkey at Christmas time, and perhaps now subconsciously, years later, I am now making up for that. I do agree with my mum that Turkey is essentially quite a boring meat, so why an earth do so many people want to eat this on such a great day of family celebration? We ate everything from goose, to pot roasted pheasant and ribs of beef and they were, I must admit, way more tasty than a Turkey dinner.
Perhaps I stick with traditional because it is also easier. I always like to have the tangy cranberry port and orange sauce along with pigs in blankets, and devils on horseback, which my girls love to eat; prunes wrapped in bacon. I adore parsnips, and in Switzerland and in France, these neglected root vegetables were relegated to pig food status, mainly as this was the only option available to many during WWII. Now parsnips are not universally adored. The low demand meant that my parsnips cost me about 5GBP for 2-3 rather large and woody specimens!
Even though I am not a big fan of Brussel sprouts, those lovely little green spheres of goodness still get an invite to be part of my dinner. Alice my youngest loves them, but not surprising considering she likes everything cabbage. My eldest, Laura takes more convincing, although she did add an extra sprout to her obligatory minimum of 2 this year, purely voluntarily I might add. I think it’s important never to give up retrying flavours with children. I always tell my two if they don’t like it, they have to try it at least 20 times before they can say they don’t like something (I back this up by saying that they have researched this, and of course they never count how many times they have actually tried something, so it’s a clever rouse….). Yesterday was testament to this, as the cranberry sauce that both of them declared that they did not like on Christmas day was sweetened with a little sugar and had slow cooked red onion and balsamic vinegar added, and that went down very nicely. In fact, seconds were asked for! This was loosely based on an idea from Jamie Oliver, see this recipe:
I possibly like the post-Christmas relax more than the day itself. I suppose like my mum, I now realise how much work goes into the day, and it’s hard to sit down when there are so many things to prepare, and this is not something that I associate with Boxing Day, leftover day. I do admit to speeding things up with my 2 willing helper girls this year. Both armed with kitchen knives they helped me prepare the vegetables whilst listening to the choir from Kings College, Cambridge. I will make a note of this and hopefully it will become a Christmas family tradition, rather than me cooking in the kitchen all on my own. My husband definitely loves the Christmas dinner the best, however I still like the left overs in the days that ensue.
With an emphasis on reduction of food waste these days, I relish the chance to make the amazing amount of food generated by Christmas last for as long as possible by making turkey and or ham into something tasty to eat. On the day, the carcass gets put straight into the slow cooker, and the remaining meat divided into small bags and frozen so there is less risk of OD from turkey. We ate a Kelly Bronze free range bird, this year, so yes the meat was more expensive that the run of the mill supermarket bird, but it enthuses me more to make good use of the meat. So my Turkey plan as follows:
Christmas Day: Roast Turkey 5.25kg bird cooked and partly eaten
Boxing Day: Cream of Turkey soup and rolls made from slow cooker stock
27th December: Meal for 8 from leftovers with my sister-in-law, so make Delia’s leek and turkey flan: http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/flan/turkey-flan-with-leeks-and-cheese.html
Using the frozen meat:
but being frugal, did not buy the soup but made the Corn chowder for the base, as I had all the vegetables, (see last post on this thread: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/recipes/705297-Does-anyone-have-the-Covent-Garden-soup-recipe-books/AllOnOnePage )
Then added some grated cheese to the top, leftover from the cheeseboard.
Turkey Pie: Vikki just for you, here is a chicken pie that I like, you do not necessarily need shortcrust for the base, I just make a single crust pie with a puff pastry lid (if you can get Betti Bossi’s Butter Puff pastry all the better for my Swiss readers…) http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/22949/country+chicken+pie
I also bung in the leftover stuffing into this pie too.
Turkey curry is also planned with some Naan I got for less than half price as no one wanted Naans for Christmas day dinner it seems.
Then one more bag of Turkey to think about what I will do with, by then everyone may sick of turkey by then! That will also be 7 meals out of my Turkey which is not bad going…..!The Christmas cake was simply decorated in random snowflakes by the girls this year, mainly because all of my cake equipment is sitting in removal boxes. Hopefully by my next post our move to our new house will be complete and for the second time within 6 months I will be unpacking removal boxes!
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