What's your traditional 'special' festive food?

He's just jealous of Mr. G's cooking ability.

also - flan? I never liked flan...my mom used to make it ALL the time when I was younger. I eventually stopped liking it at all.

 

I make it the same way, I just use a little mustard powder too. Sometimes I will use a little sour cream with the mayonnaise, but not often. Sometimes I will replace the chives with spring onions.

First problem is you don't get buchers here, at least not local to me. Gammon is a dry (whiltshire) cure leg of ham which you just can't get here in the USA, unless you special order online it seems. Next year I will do that. The ham you buy here is injected with brine then fast cooked in a giant factory process. Disgusting!

 

Thats what we do.

 

my granny stuffs a goose, as every year

 

BRANDY SNAPS!! That's what I meant! The lil rolly things! heh.

Oh, I forgot about the boiled sweets! We usually have an assortment around, the main ones being aniseed balls and humbugs. We always got them in old fashioned glass jars with stoppers.

Kev's flan sounds very nice!

Thanks for the explanation, Taucias! I was having great difficulty explaining gammon to my friend. Interesting to know about the brine. Personally I wouldn't call gammon dry. In my mind, you get dry ham off-the-bone in the butcher's, which you usually have cold. Then you get the thin sliced ham which is very slippery. And then there's gammon, which I would have said was quite wet too. That's what I imagined was "wet" ham. It has the fat on it and you cook it. Nice ;-)

This is the sort of thing I think of for ham off-the-bone:

http://www.formanandfield.com/dry-cured-honey-roast-ham-p-2449.html

Note that they say in the recipe - for gammon soak overnight.

OED's answer:

ham

• noun 1 meat from the upper part of a pig’s leg salted and dried or smoked. 2 (hams) the back of the thigh or the thighs and buttocks.

— ORIGIN from a Germanic word meaning ‘be crooked’.


gammon

• noun 1 ham which has been cured like bacon. 2 the bottom piece of a side of bacon, including a hind leg.

— ORIGIN Old French gambon, from gambe ‘leg’.

Hehe it's interesting when something comes up like this that you can't explain to a foreigner. Try explaining chavs to an American ;-)

 

Yeah you are right, the difference though is they brine soak the entire side of the pig then cut out the gammon joint and smoke it/dry it. It is not technically 'dry cure', I was wrong there. Ham is cut out first then soaked or injected with brine and usually cooked afterwards.

 

awww! that's so sweet! i'll let him know. he pulled of another good christmas eve dinner again this year. tacos and chicken enchiladas. so, so good. no tamales this year, they kinda take a bit of work to make. everyone sounds like they grub on some bomb food this time of year! :drool:

 

Beer, champagne, and more beer.

Merry Christmas! I'm gonna go throw up now.

 

LOL!

I found these when I got to my Uncle's:


Mixed nuts and crystallized ginger, yum!

 

TACOS Y BURRITOS~!

 

That looks awesome h:

 

It was nice, yes.

Other traditional stuff I don't think I mentioned includes Twiglets (a Marmite-based snack)... did I mention chocolate coins? And ginger wine? Yummy!

 

I have pumpking rolls for Halloween and Christmas Everyyear, There absolutely amazing.

 

I'm not really a fan of pumpkin, but they look pretty good! :thumbsup:

 

Christmas Cake (I made it, it was sitting so the icing hardened)



Boxing Day buffet. There was a lot of food left over... My inlaws all now want to celebrate Boxing Day every year. Result!



Those Pumpkin Rolls look fantastic. Do you make them? What is the recipe?