Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

It's Christmas and the Christmas Food Count down is over. Here in Australia at  my place, the family have just left after a day of excitement and fun .... and Christmas food. It is very quiet and we are relaxing with a cuppa and a repeat TV program. Lunch seemed such a long time ago, but we are still feeling the effects of a non- traditional, mixed cultural Christmas meal. My grandsons requested their favourite Chinese snacks - pork buns, prawn gow gees and dim sims. The adults also indulged in smoked salmon and cream cheese swirls, chicken, pork spare ribs,  ham  and prawns with a Chinese salad and potato, egg and bacon salad. This was followed some hours later with traditional plum pudding cooked in calico, and mangoes and ice cream.  Add in the nibbles like candy canes, fruit cake, and chocolates..... No surprise that everyone has gone home with "take away"  leftovers. Our Christmas lunch  Last week, at the Simmons family Christmas gatherin...

from http://dodocanspell.blogspot.com.au/ Fast coming to an end of the Christmas Countdown... It is Christmas Eve and we do like fruit cake!  The Christmas Cake, traditionally a fruit cake, will be cut tonight so that a piece or two can be left as snack for Santa.  My mother's Christmas cake   I am very lucky  - my mother makes my Christmas cake.  My mother is close to 90 years old -but her cake this year is fantastic. It is now a tradition of the Simmons family Christmas gathering that we have this moist rich cake. We sometimes also have stollen ,a German fruit cake which has more of a bread texture. I love it - the mixture of fruit, marzipan and spices! I  am also partial to Panettone , an Italian version of Christmas fruit cake, also more like a bread...so many versions of Christmas cake, but  the earliest recipe  from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Mi...

from http://www.godecookery.com/cookies/mocohist.html  In our family,gingerbread especially in the form of figures, is popular but we didn't know we were following a royal tradition. I had always associated gingerbread men with children, but the tradition of dunking gingerbread men in port wine doesn't quite match the image of the treacle cookies decorated with sweets and icing today. The first gingerbread men are said to have been created for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth I. They were moulded into the image of her favourite suitors and courtiers, decorated with gold leaf then devoured at royal feasts.  Read more:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-18365/The-gingerbread-man-ages.html#ixzz3MikwIxb0     from taste.com.au  Just like the gingerbread men, the houses have a certain magical quality which appeals to children and the young at  heart. Our grandchildren love a gingerbread house - often made today or tomorrow, Christm...

I had always thought that 'turducken' was a very modern dish  - a deboned chicken inside a deboned duck, inside a deboned turkey.  The birds are stuffed inside the gastric cavities and spaces are filled with poultry stuffing. There appear to be a few different earlier versions of this dish . I n his 1807 Almanach des Gourmands, gastronomist Grimod de La Reynière presents his rôti sans pareil ("roast without equal")—a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan bunting and a garden warbler—although he states that, since similar roasts were produced by ancient Romans, the rôti sans pareil was not entirely novel. The final bird is very small but large enough to just hold an olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds. Gooducken is a goose stuffe...

"Christmas Pie" by William Henry Hunt ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mince_pie My friends know all my weaknesses....  at one of the Christmas parties recently, a friend gave me twelve mince pies because she knows how much I love them. In Australia, mince  more often refers to meat and I wondered why these sweet pies were called "mince". What did we do before Wikipedia? ...A   mince pie   is a small     fruit-based mincemeat   sweet pie   traditionally served during the Christmas season . Its ingredients are traceable to the 13th century, when returning European    crusaders   brought with them Middle Eastern recipes containing meats, fruits and spices. The early mince pie was known by several names, including  mutton  pie, shrid pie and Christmas pie. Typically its ingredients were a mixture of minced meat,  suet , a range of fruits, and spices such as cinnamon,  cloves  and  nutmeg . Se...

Hardly a traditional Christmas food, but somehow rocky road is one of those indulgent sweet treats I associate with Christmas.  It is definitely one recipe always included in a list of edible Christmas gifts. Rocky Road apparently got its name when William Dreyer cut up marshmallows and nuts and swirled them into chocolate ice cream in 1929, resembling his partner's chocolate bar invention. The company then gave it its name, something to smile about during the Great Depression. Rocky Road  = Hard Times. If the alleged story is true, I think William Dreyer was travelling on a "rocky road" as it is said he used his wife's dressmaking scissors to cut up the ingredients for his rocky road treat.   I like rocky road just cut into bite sized pieces ( please use the kitchen scissors!), but at Christmas, rocky road in the shape of trees, wreaths, little houses and stars have become very popular. Christmas Rocky Road variations make this...

Everyone knows that Santa Claus lives in the north of Finland, so it would be remiss not to include a Finnish Christmas treat during the Christmas Countdown. I discovered these  rich and delicious pin wheel shaped, jam filled  pastries fairly late in life - I think  it was  Christmas 2000, a few months before I first went to Finland. They not only taste good, they look beautiful - the golden pastry star pinwheels with a rich, dark coloured prune jam filling.   Here is  some   information from  " arousing appetites " blog.  What is Joulutortut? While the name for the Finnish joulutortut now translates into English as “Christmas tart”, many of the traditions the Finnish have pre-date Christianity’s influence and come from a rather older Viking heritage. In the pre-Christian times, the Vikings in Nordic countries observed hjul, or “sun wheel,” a celebration of the winter solstice that brought back the sunlight to the darkened regi...

 from http://www.postscriptcomic.com For the last few days I have been sleeping in a bedroom decorated with prints of the Eiffel Tower, so  in the Christmas Countdown, I just had to include the three French hens - hence the delightful vintage print. There was a time, at least in my memory, when roast chicken was a dish for special occasions and the only poultry served for Christmas dinner. I still love roast chicken with roast vegetables, with stuffing and gravy and am happy with it for Christmas even though my husband makes the best stuffed turkey! I think that in more recent times, roast chicken has become less festive and more a family dinner favourite.  What is your favourite poultry for Christmas? roast turkey from taste.com.au roast goose from taste.com.au  These days, the humble "chook" has been overshadowed by Christmas turkey or even duck or goose. However, in Japan, chicken remains the top Christmas choice, but alas,  the Japa...

from www.cruisingdownunder.com.au It can't really be only 10 days to Christmas. although today I witnessed queues of children and their parents waiting to chat and be photographed with Santa in a shopping centre. The scene seemed a little incongruous. There was a traditionally dressed Santa,  woolly red suit and  heavy boots and fur trimmed hat sitting in a beach hut, in a tropical resort setting with palm trees decorated with Christmas baubles. I thought that this summed up perfectly how Christmas is celebrated in Australia - some tradition with adaptions  and changes for the climate.  Probably the most popular change to accommodate the summer heat has been the inclusion of seafood for Christmas dinner.  from www.abeachcottage.com.au  Why seafood for Christmas? I think the original reason was it was too hot  to light the oven in the kitchen to cook a roast meat and vegetables dinner  ( Christmas temperatures can be up to 40 degrees C) ...