Christmas is also synonymous with sharing a tablecloth and there are almost as many typical dishes at this time as there are homes. Here is a selection of the recipes contributed by the community of EL PERIÓDICO readers. If you don’t know what to delight diners these days of celebration, here are five alternatives.
Braised veal
Ingredients for 4 people:
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6 leeks
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6 carrots
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2 onions
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A can of tomato with ratatouille
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Chicken soup
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Flour
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4 pieces of ossobuco.
Elaboration
Salt and pepper the pieces of meat and flour them. Then we seal them in a pan with oil. If the flour has burned, clean the pot and add oil again. Once hot, add the onion, leeks and carrot cut into small pieces and fry for 10 minutes. Then we add the tomato with ratatouille, sauté a little and pour the chicken broth. After 10 minutes we add the meat and, over a low heat, let it cook for an hour, stirring the meat from time to time. After this time, we remove the meat, put the sauce in a container and grind it. Once crushed, we put it back in the pan together with the pieces of meat. We let it cook for another hour over a very low heat. We let it rest for 12 hours from the moment it turns off and you can start eating.
M. José Llaquet Ors / Barcelona
Cod with thistles
Ingredients for 4 people:
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4 cod fillets cut into squares
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One tablespoon of flour
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Half a teaspoon of cinnamon
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One fresh thistle, two bags of frozen thistle, or two cans of canned thistle
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Two or three cloves of garlic
Elaboration
Peel the threads from the thistle stalks if it is fresh. Boil the fresh (or frozen) thistle and set aside the cooking water. Drain, flour and fry.
Flour the cod and fry it. In the same oil, fry the minced garlic cloves. Throw in a tablespoon of flour and half a teaspoon of cinnamon and make a ‘roux’. Pour in the cooking water and cook for 5-10 minutes until the sauce binds. If you use canned thistle, use the water in the pot. Put the cod and thistles in a saucepan. Pour the sauce, correct the salt and cook for 5-10 minutes.
Anna Estival / Premià de Mar
Teriyaki salmon with vegetables
Ingredients for 6 people:
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10 salmon fillets without skin
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750 cl de salsa teriyaki
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A green pepper
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A red pepper
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A zucchini
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A leek
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An onion
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Toasted sesame
Elaboration
We marinate the clean salmon loins in the teriyaki sauce for approximately 30 minutes. We cut the vegetables in julienne. We fry the hardest ones over medium heat and after 10-15 minutes we add the soft vegetables. Once done, we wet them with teriyaki sauce and stir well.
In another pan, we sauté the salmon to seal it and add it to the vegetables that we have previously passed through the pan. Add more sauce and cook for a few minutes, so that the salmon is done but remains juicy.
To serve, a good option is to place the salmon on the vegetables and sprinkle it with a little toasted sesame seeds.
Luis Ramón Treviño / Moià
Stuffed squid
Ingredients for 6 people:
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12 medium squid
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2 hard-boiled eggs
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250 grams finely chopped meat (beef and pork mixture) or boiled rice
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Roasted pepper strips
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Tomato and onion
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Garlic, parsley, toasted hazelnut and toast or Maria cookie to make a bite.
Elaboration
Squid are cleaned. The fins and legs are cut into small pieces and fried in a frying pan with a little olive oil. The minced meat is sautéed. Then, in a bowl, mix the legs and fins, the minced meat or boiled rice, the grated hard-boiled eggs and the chopped roasted pepper strips until obtaining a more or less homogeneous dough. The squid are filled with this dough, which we will have turned over. In this way it will not be necessary to close them with a toothpick, since they will close on their own when cooked.
In a saucepan we make a tomato and onion sauce. Halfway through cooking we can add half a glass (about 125 ml) of white wine. Once done, add the squid, a little water (if we have it, better fish ‘stock’) and the picada. We let it simmer for about 45 minutes. We taste and, if necessary, rectify the salt.
Judith Pons / Barcelona
Express Christmas log without oven
Ingredients for four people:
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5 chocolate muffins
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400 gr of Philadelphia type cream cheese
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100 gr of butter at room temperature
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Half a glass of milk
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4 tablespoons of sugar (better if it is icing sugar)
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50 g of chocolate chips or chocolate bars to melt
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Assembled cream to decorate
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Cocoa powder to decorate
Elaboration
We crumble the muffins in a large bowl. Add the milk, a tablespoon of cream cheese and the melted chocolate and mix well with a fork until we get a compact mass. Place a sheet of aluminum or oven foil on a flat surface and place the dough. Flatten with a roller or a smooth glass bottle until it is between half and a centimeter thick. We cut the edges so that we have a rectangle. In the same bowl, now empty, we pour the rest of the cream cheese, the softened butter and the icing sugar. You can also add a little cream. We mix until we have a homogeneous cream.
We spread it on the previous dough evenly. Once it has been spread, we lift the aluminum foil with the pasted dough on one of the short sides of the rectangle and carefully peel it off and roll it up on itself. Once all rolled up, we leave it in the freezer for 30 minutes.
After this time, we cut what is left over from the ends of the resulting cylinder (or base trunk) so that it is straight. From this base cylinder or trunk we cut a piece on the bias and glue it towards the middle of the trunk to simulate a branch (it will resemble a lowercase ‘y’)
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It only remains to decorate. We melt the chocolate and cover the upper part of the trunk. Before it solidifies, we can draw ripples with the fork to make it look like the bark of a tree or decorate the trunk with some flowers of whipped cream and cocoa powder. It should be in the fridge for at least a couple of hours before being consumed.
Diana Olivé / Barcelona
Reference-www.elperiodico.com