This year we want to congratulate you on Christmas by sharing a rich, simple and healthy menu : rich, because it is Christmas and you have to work on it a bit, simple, because cooks also deserve to enjoy the banquet and not be aware of spherification in the kitchen, and healthy because being a healthy menu is perfectly compatible with being a menu that is spectacular.
Here we leave you the menu and the video in which we explain the step by step:https://www.youtube.com/embed/jCbNSDOfl_Y?feature=oembed
Table of Contents
Appetizers for Christmas dinner
Blinis with salmon
To make about 10 blinis: beat an egg, a natural yogurt, 1/2 sachet of yeast, 50g of flour and a little salt. In a greased skillet, add half a scoop of the mixture. Cook the pancakes, round and round.
Once cool, place the smoked salmon and a little tartar sauce on top. The tartar sauce is prepared by chopping some capers, pickled gherkins, a little onion, mustard, parsley and lemon juice.
Canape of hummus and eggplant
First we cut the aubergine into slices and let them rest with a little salt so that they lose their bitter taste.
While we grill the eggplant, we prepare the hummus by crushing a cup of cooked chickpeas, 1 teaspoon of tahini, lemon juice and half a clove of garlic.
Now you just have to take a biscote or toast, spread the hummus, put the slices of aubergine and top it with a few drops of an emulsion that you can make by crushing olive oil and fresh basil.
Spinach and mushroom muffins
These muffins can be a good way to incorporate vegetables into your Christmas feasts but in an attractive way.
Put the oven to preheat to 180º. Meanwhile, for about 5 muffins: sauté 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, about 400g of mushrooms and 300g of spinach.
On the other hand, in a bowl beat 3 eggs, 50g of evaporated milk and salt and pepper.
Add the vegetables, well drained, to the bowl and distribute the mixture into muffin or muffin molds greased with a drop of oil.
Bake about 25 min at 180º and you will have your muffins ready.
Stuffed endives
It is about endives stuffed with chopped lettuce with prawns in a guacamole sauce.
To make the guacamole sauce, crush a clove of garlic, red onion, tomato and the avocado seasoned with salt, oil, lemon juice and cumin until a homogeneous sauce is left.
You have to cut and chop the prawns and lettuce to mix it with the guacamole sauce.
Then you just need to wash the endive leaves well and fill them with the sauce.
Mozzarella skewers
These are cherry tomato, mozzarella, basil and black olive skewers.
First the cherry tomatoes are washed. Then, we will assemble the skewer by puncturing the ingredients in the following order: a tomato, a mozzarella ball, a basil leaf and half a black olive. Season with oil and salt and that’s it.
Anchovy and grape skewers
They are made with anchovies marinated one day in vinegar and lemon and the spices that you like the most. The skewer is assembled by wrapping the clean grapes with the anchovies and nailing them one by one. In this case, it is better to opt for seedless grapes.
First course: escarole salad with pickled quail
They are prepared pickled, 4 clean and washed quails: season, fry with ½ glass of oil and 3 whole garlic cloves. Cook in a saucepan with onion, carrot, the garlic from the pan, bay leaf, thyme and peppercorns. We put the quail on top and cover with the oil from the pan, 1/3 of a glass of sherry vinegar and ½ glass of water. Cook for about 25 minutes.
We make strips of the quail and to prepare the salad, the strips are mixed with the endive, pomegranate, some dates, plums and raisins, dried peach and pine nuts.
Season with salt, virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar.
Second course: salmon with citrus sauce and sweet potato chips
We will buy a salmon loin per person and season them in an oven-safe dish.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC, with heat up and down.
On the other hand, in a saucepan, add a little orange juice and natural grapefruit, a little soy sauce, honey and grated ginger. We boil until the sauce thickens a little. We remove and add a little olive oil.
We bake the salmon for 15 minutes and when serving we pour the sauce on top.
We accompany it with sweet potato chips: we wash the sweet potato, cut it with a mandolin and wash it again. We dry it and spread it on the oven tray. Remove when crisp.
Dessert: Macedonian
It is prepared with green and red apple, banana, kiwi, strawberries and pineapple, all cut into very small cubes and with natural orange juice and a little lemon or lime.
Drink
We suggest you fill your glasses for these parties with sparkling water, ice and red berries. It is a way of being able to share “healthy drinks” with our people and it is also a way to reduce alcohol consumption since we have probably already served with cava or another alcoholic beverage.
Infusion of cardamom, fennel and cinnamon
Including an infusion after the Christmas banquet will hydrate you and depending on the spices, it can be digestive. better. In this case we propose a fennel, cardamom and cinnamon one: cardamom and fennel are added to achieve a digestive function and then the cinnamon is added to flavor the infusion. Other options to flavor it are: a lemon slice or grate a little ginger in the infusion.
And in the after-dinner table?
At the after-dinner table, eat whatever you want, but always in moderation. We invite you to select well which sweet is the one you like the most, take a few pieces and savor them. Maybe you just want to take care of your diet, maybe you are losing weight … for whatever reason, if you want to have some sweets, select your favorites and eat them savoring them, enjoying them and without regrets. Christmas day falls within those days-moments of sporadic consumption.If every Monday, or every Saturday, or every afternoon of the year we have the habit of incorporating an unhealthy food into our diet, that IS NOT sporadic consumption. This periodicity in its consumption (“every Monday”, “every afternoon”) reveals the HABIT. On Christmas Day do not doubt that it is sporadic consumption so, with some measure, we invite you to savor and enjoy the after-dinner sweets that you like the most.
