Christmas dinner in Belgium

Christmas dinner in Belgium is sacred. We surround ourselves with family, our extended family, with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. And the food is sacred too. A famous menu that spans more than four hours. I will try to tell you as best I can my experience so that you can imagine a Christmas in Belgium (in Ardennes to be more precise).

It was with great impatience that I was anticipating Christmas since I had been in Spain for more than three months and had not yet seen the whole family. The big difference with Spain is for one, having a real Christmas tree instead of the plastic one. Decorated with taste, care, fashion and different each year. Below were presents. In my family, children offer their gifts to parents and grandparents to small children. But in other families we make friends peanut or we offer gifts to everyone (sometimes, we have a big budget all of a sudden).

Next, the meal takes place in two stages: first, drinks in the living room and then the rest of the meal in the dining room.

The aperitif is strong. We prepared it the day before all day long. On the menu, first the sparkling wine. We opted for Clairette de die. Someone wanted to add a touch of originality and we froze cuberdons for an hour and then added them to the sparkling wine. Sometimes we also drink Asti. Personally, I was not a fan of this technique with the cuberdon but hey. It's whimsical.

Then little by little we take the aperitif. Toast first, with toast pie, cheese with herbs, crab salad, tomato ham, black and white pudding... What a delight! And the famous salmon mousse on toast prepared the day before. This year we had changed the menu a bit and instead of having the usual cheese fondue, we had prepared them in the form of small dumplings. So we ate them as aperitizers. A delight also. To make them we prepared a white sauce with grated cheese and ham then we made balls that are covered with flour, eggs and breadcrumbs. We also ate two quiches cut in small rectangles and distributed little by little to everyone.

Then, after a good hour of aperitizers during which we offered each other gifts, we went to the other room for dinner. As a starter, we begin with foie gras. It's accompanied by brioche and currant bread. A brioche bun with pieces of sugar and raisins.

Before, we had a habit of taking a sorbet after the foie gras entrée but this year, we had skipped the sorbet so as not to have too much to eat. Then we ate the fish (sole) with wine and vegetables. It's easy to prepare it, we took the white stalk from leeks, a little bit of onion and small pieces of carrots. They were sautéed in a pan with margarine and then placed above the fish which were steamed. After, we added a little white wine and then fresh cream to make the sauce. A delight too!

Finally, we arrived at the big room. It was doe stew with homemade croquettes, pears and cranberries. The doe had been marinating for two days and had already been cooked the first time the day before. The croquettes were in the pantry.

Once we were finished in the big room, we went for the local cheese dish with bread. Some skipped this step to avoid being too full. Finally, we finished with the Christmas yule cake with buttercream, and with homemade ice cream from a local ice cream shop, which were strawberry and vanilla flavoured.

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