Saturday December 25, 2010
Saturday Swirl:
Christmas Evening Toast - Pairings for your Christmas Feast!!
Christmas 2010
What is a traditional Christmas dinner? This is a loaded question! It depends completely on your personal history.
Christmas dinner for me consists of 2 separate meals. My name is Alexandra (Alex) Elman and I was born to a Brazilian mother and an American father. My father is Jewish so a “traditional Christmas dinner” is a moot discussion. My mother’s family is an all together different story….
My mother was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to an English father and an Italian/Portuguese mother, who were both British Colonists in British Guyana in the West Indies. My traditional Christmas dinner has a deliciously intricate history.
We start with “breakfast”. This would be at about 1PM in the afternoon after presents are opened. Everyone is given a “wishing pie”, this is a little pastry filled with minced meat, shaped into a star shape and sprinkled with green and red sugar. We have “carne vina d’aije”. This is a traditional Portuguese dish which consists of chunks of pork, veal and steak marinated in vinegar, anise and garlic for a number of days. The meats are then fried, and then bread is fried in the marinade, YUM! This is served with tiny pickled onions and slices of Edam cheese as well as homemade orange and pineapple marmalade. After this scrumptious feast, we all roll around and wait until dinner. I always go to the beach and swim as much as possible so I can have some space for the next chapter in my familial nostalgia.
Dinner is a traditional English Christmas dinner. We have roast turkey, baked ham with cloves, tiny roasted potatos, sautéed string beans, stuffing, some salad, cookies and various types of cakes. Our Christmas always closes with flambé plum pudding being passed over all of the heads of the invited guests who are to make their wishes for the new year à la St. Lucia! We are all convinced that my grandmother mishmashed all of her favorite things about Christmas together. Regardless, this is my traditional Christmas dinner!
Please remember that this all takes place in the Southern Hemisphere, it is about 100 degrees at midnight on December 25th! We all feast, drink, laugh and sweat together!
Now, you might ask, why is this blog called The Saturday Evening Toast? Well, I have worked in the wide world of wine for all of my adult life and was brought up tasting wines from all over the world. I am a wine importer and have a group of private label wines. Alex Elman Wine Treasures are a family of wines that I bring so all Americans can taste the best examples of the particular type of grape from the soil it grows in. Now that you know, a little, about me, I wanted to talk about Christmas dinner wines!
What wine to drink with your:
Roast beef
Pork roast
Turkey
Well, let’s begin from the top. If you are serving a roast beef I would go with a juicy rich red wine. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Malbec are favorites for meats.
A pork roast sings with Pinot Noir, a dry Rose and even a bottle of aged Sauvignon Blanc.
Turkey , Goose or Duck…always Christmas favorites. These wonderfully rich fowls match swimmingly with a delicious dry Riesling, a crisp Chablis (Chardonnay, unoaked please!) and my personal favorite, *Torrontes.
Champagne or any sparkling wine will bring extra giggles to any meal, holidays or not.
Whenever possible, try and choose organically made wines, they will taste better, you will feel better, and the earth will be able to give better fruit for the next harvest!
Torrontes is originally a blending grape from the North West of Spain, Galicia. It was brought to Argentina by European settlers and the grape has done extremely well in the high, dry climate. This is a wine that has notes of tropical fruits, citrus and a hint of floral aromas with a base of good minerality to ground the wine.
Cheers to all and to all a very good night!