You may not be a gourmet, but you must observe the custom!
New Year and Christmas are special holidays. Tell me, what other holidays do you prepare for so diligently? None at all! But here everyone runs around and fusses: you need to buy and put up a Christmas tree, decorate the apartment, choose a good gift, congratulate relatives and friends, and prepare a festive table, and also not forget to eat well, observe pleasant traditions and have fun... as they do abroad.
According to folk beliefs, various miracles happen on New Year's Eve. For example, in Italy, at midnight on New Year's Eve, the water in one of the local rivers stops for a moment and turns golden. By tradition, Italians eat grapes dried in clusters, whose grapes resemble gold coins. They say that whoever eats more of them will earn more.
In many countries, including Spain, Cuba, and Portugal, the grapevine is considered a symbol of abundance, health, and the family hearth. Therefore, by custom, on New Year's Eve, with each chime of the clock, they eat one grape (fresh or dried) and make a wish: twelve chimes - twelve cherished wishes for each month of the new year.
In Bulgaria, hosts and guests gather for the New Year at the festive table, and in all houses the lights go out for three minutes. This time is called the minutes of New Year's kisses, the secret of which will be kept by the darkness.
In China, before preparing New Year's food, they mentally cleanse their home. This is done as follows: you need to open all the vents for a few minutes and imagine that everything obsolete, unnecessary, and sad leaves the house through them. Then close them, light candles, turn on calm, quiet music, sit in an armchair, and relax. Imagine that all the negativity remaining in the house flows to the candle flame, burns in it, and around you the space is cleansed, which constantly increases, envelops you, your loved ones, the room, the house and, of course, the place where the cleansed New Year's meal will be prepared.
On the British Isles, the custom of letting in the New Year is widespread - a symbolic boundary of transition from the old life to a new one. It goes as follows: when the clock begins to strike midnight, they open the back door of the house to let out the old year, and with the last stroke of the clock they fling open the front door, letting in the New Year. The obligatory Sunday mass traditionally ends with an indispensable family dinner.
Latin Americans sacredly honor family traditions, especially those related to the preparation of festive New Year's dishes. Recipes discovered by some great-great-aunt are carefully written down in a huge thick book with a heavy dark-red binding, and every growing housewife in the family contributes to the traditional southern cuisine.
We all have one problem - we always want to eat!
The New Year's table of a Polish family usually consists of 12 culinary creations, none of which are meat. But various fish appetizers, mushroom soup, barley porridge with prunes, dumplings with butter are obligatory, and for dessert - a favorite chocolate cake.
The French also love sweets. Long ago in France, on Christmas Eve, the host solemnly brought a large log - Yule log - into the house, sprinkled it with olive oil, wine heated with spices, and placed it in the fireplace. They believed that the splinters of this log would protect the house from fires and misfortune for a whole year. At the end of the 19th century, this tradition inspired a Parisian pastry chef to create a festive cake in the shape of a log. This is how the Christmas sponge roll adorned with chocolate cream, mushrooms, and leaves made of cream and meringue came to be.
Italians love lentil soup and hard-boiled eggs. And confectionery is usually made with the addition of grape juice, honey, and all kinds of nuts to the dough.
Spaniards adore almonds and marzipan paste, which is impossible not to notice in Christmas cuisine. Here they prepare turrón - sweets made from whipped egg whites, ground nuts, sugar, and honey. First, everything is mixed, heated, then cooled on rice paper and served cut into small pieces.
In the Netherlands, there is a special New Year's drink - slum. It is made from hot milk, into which tea, sugar, lemon zest, saffron, cloves, and nutmeg are added. In Flanders, rice, roast meat, and pudding are served for dinner. The types of New Year's cookies, bread, and waffles are varied. Molds for New Year's cakes are decorated with intricate engraving and inscriptions.
In Belgium, for Christmas they bake shortcrust cookies - speculaas, which are not only eaten with pleasure but also used to decorate the Christmas tree. The first Christmas impressions of Belgian children are the aroma of a fresh fir tree and the unique smell of speculaas.
The Japanese, however, prefer more 'intellectual' food to sweets. Residents of the Land of the Rising Sun love seafood rich in iodine, which makes the brain work actively. Therefore, on New Year's, Japanese women will certainly treat their relatives and close friends to dishes made from seaweed, fish of various tastes and colors, as well as peas, beans, and roasted chestnuts.
The French cannot imagine celebrating the New Year without traditional roast turkey. And when speaking of their family heritage, they necessarily mention the observance of ancestral traditions, certain kinship rituals that are passed down from generation to generation.
For Americans, whose very socio-economic structure forces children to leave the family very early and take care of their daily bread on their own, it is not easy to preserve the spirit and traditions of the family. But they know how to celebrate holidays remarkably amicably. Take Thanksgiving, for example, when approximately the same set of dishes appears on the table - turkey, cranberry jelly, corn on the cob, and pumpkin pie - and there is not a soul to be seen on the streets.
But Hungarians will not eat poultry on this evening under any sauce, sacredly believing in the omen: happiness, like a bird, will flap its wings and fly away.
For the same reason, there is no poultry on the Austrian Christmas table either - the holiday is celebrated with carp stewed in a sauce of beer and gingerbread crumbs. For dessert, cheese crepes are served, baked in an egg-milk custard and topped with caramel-apricot sauce.
In Greece, a “Vasilopita” cake is served at Christmas. Two pieces are set aside for Christ and Saint Basil, then the cake is divided among family members by seniority.
The English always serve a rich fruit pudding at the holiday. When the hostess prepares a batter from beef suet, bread crumbs, raisins, eggs, cognac, candied fruits, milk, and sherry, each family member must symbolically stir it at least once - for good luck in the new year. The pudding is boiled in a water bath, wrapped in cloth. Traditionally, it is made long before Christmas and hung in a cool place to “ripen” for several weeks. Before serving, the pudding is reheated in the same water bath, then placed on a dish, and several symbolic trinkets - a silver coin, a button - are hidden in it for luck. The dish is doused with cognac, set alight, and brought to the table.
In Prague, on the other hand, other drinks are preferred. In the run-up to Christmas, mulled wine, rum punch, grog, and roasted nuts are sold on the city streets. Czechs also love rich festive cookies.
This is how foreigners spend the night of feasting. We also have our own New Year traditions - the same Olivier salad, splashes of sparkling champagne, invariably reminding us that fate is ironic and steam is light.