On Christmas day, my family doesn’t do a traditional sit-down turkey bird with dressing and all the typical holiday trimmings. No repeat Thanksgiving feast here, you guys. No thanks! (Caveat: I would love to have stuffing more than ONCE a year if we could make that possible, please?) Instead, we have small plates, appetizers, hors d’oeuvre, and finger foods… you get the picture. Everybody brings one or two dishes and the result becomes way more than enough to fill everybody up. And as I haven’t done a Food Porn Friday in a while, feast your eyes upon my Christmas Day of Food (drinks not pictured)…
After my granddad died on Christmas Eve several years ago, my family decided to change up our Christmas traditions and do something different. We moved the party to my Aunt Len’s house in Beaufort, North Carolina and had every family bring a dish of bite-size foods to share, rather than having the usual Christmas dinner. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about the evolution of this tradition, mom.
At first we had themes: Italian, French, Asian (yes, there was sushi), and even Scandinavian small plates. But after running out of the easy-to-cook food nationalities (don’t even attempt to describe to these folks all of the endless types of Asian food that exist), we switched to the make-whatever-you-want (after you check in with Aunt Len, of course) theme that we hold to today. And of course a few people are always nice enough to accommodate pescetarian Uncle Bucky.
Behold, the feast:
Simple salmon, cream cheese, cucumber app on a toothpick, courtesy of my mother (with a little manual labor provided by yours truly). Secret ingredient: horseradish. Recipe here.
Margarita-esque flatbread pizza, topped with some spilled balsamic vinegar, thanks Aunt Jean.
Imitation Chili’s Southwest Egg Rolls in wontons by Aunt Len. Close-enough recipe here. Oh yeah, these are dipped in an avocado ranch.
Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and sprinkled with brown sugar. Without asking her, I’m gonna guess my mom got this recipe from Paula Deen.
Always a crowd-pleaser, roasted pork tenderloin by grandma, served with yeast rolls and mustard.
A large chunk of legit, flaky smoked salmon. None of that vacuum-sealed stuff here, folks.
I’m pretty sure these are mini quiches… I mean I did eat a couple, but there were just SO MANY THINGS.
Pastry-wrapped asparagus, obvi. There were also some asparagus stalks wrapped in prosciutto, bu they weren’t nearly as photogenic… nor were there many left by the time I got around to them.
And then there’s the corn fritters…
And obviously a too-big-to-be-pictured-completely selection of desserts.
But, there was a winner among these appetizers. A giant among men. An outstanding dish, made by Aunt Len.
Collard Leaf Dolmades with Pork and Sweet Potato Yogurt. Yeah, you read that right. The recipe is from Vivian Howard, the previously mentioned star of A Chef’s Life on PBS.
Holy cow, these things were amazing. If you wanna get really Guy Fieri with it (and I think someone did on Christmas day), these can also be referred to as flavor bombs.
Filled with sweet, gingery sausage, these bad boys were incredible. They are truly genius.
We culminated the weekend with an awesome homemade fish stew by Dad (and the obligatory white bread to sop up the juices). Sorry, the secret recipe can’t be divulged to the Internet community.* There would be chaos.
I probably had six bowls of this stew over the course of two days. It’s that good. There’s a reason that Dad had a speaking part in the fish stew episode of the aforementioned A Chef’s Life series (both my parents were featured on that episode and they’re still awaiting their fame and fortune that should be rolling in any time now). When it comes to fish stew, he knows what he’s doing.
Resist the urge to stir it, or you’ll have a muddle!
*After obtaining his permission, maybe one day I’ll post the recipe along with some photos and some sure-to-be-hilarious quotes.
Were your holidays this delicious?
Great capture of our fabulous eats. And thanks for giving me top ratings with Vivian Howard’s recipe. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. But a hearty applaud goes out to your dad for his fish stew. I think I was keeping up with you in number of bowls. Just like the stuffin’, why don’t we have it more often!!!! Next year…more on the desserts – they were sinful. Aunt Len
Thanks Aunt Len! Wish we gathered with all this food more often (though we’re never at a shortage)! And I think you might be right about this being the best food we’ve had in a couple years.
Rachel recently posted…The 6 Course Tasting Menu at Pitiona – A Fancy Dinner at One of Latin America’s Top 50 Restaurants
Good thing I had lunch before I read this post! All of these dishes look fabulous, I only wish you collected from your family and included the recipes. The pastry wrapped asparagus looks especially appetizing. Yum.
Jolanta aka Casual Traveler recently posted…A few thoughts on Nicolas Regnier’s “Self-Portrait with an Easel”
Thanks Jolanta! I’ll have to remember to grab recipes from them next time we all bring food around! I tried to include all of the recipes that I was sure of!
Rachel recently posted…The 6 Course Tasting Menu at Pitiona – A Fancy Dinner at One of Latin America’s Top 50 Restaurants