Christmas Eve menu

Since this was our first Christmas in our own home, we wanted to make it special, mixing Italian and Swedish traditions. Of course, not everything went according to plan, or not all the recipes became top notch, but we put a lot of efforts and energy in this.

For Christmas Eve we did follow the Italian (or maybe Catholic) tradition to not eat meat and we pushed the Santa Claus visit to Christmas. Of course, we didn't watch any Donald Duck during the afternoon since noone would "appreciate" this Swedish tradition.

Unfortunately, the time was very tight and I didn't manage to follow up on the recipes as I usually do and I didn't even manage to photograph the table or the dishes prepared or being eaten.
I will then try to remember what we ate...

Starters

• Russian salad (not homemade)
• Brantevikssill (herring as in Brantevik) (not homemade)
• Inlagd sill (herring with red onions and other spices) (homemade)

Main Dishes (all homemade)

• Snabbgravad Halstrad Lax (quickly cured grilled salmon)
• Cod with tomatoes and potatoes
• Janssons frestelse (Jansson's tempation) 

Dessert

• Marinated orange salad

Recipe for the Cured Salmon

Ingredients for a buffet for 6 people:

• 300gr salmon
• 1 1/2 tea spoon sugar
• 1 tea spoon salt

Mix the salt and the sugar and roll it around the salmon. Let it get cured at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Warm up a frying pan and grill the salmon for around 30 seconds on both sides. 

Let it cool down.

Cut it and serve it, if you like it, with a cured salmon sauce (we skipped it and in our taste was not definitely necessary).

Recipe for the Marinated Orange Salad

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 6 oranges
• 2 figs cut in cloves
• a clean pomegranate

For the marinade:

• 2 dl of light syrup
• 1dl of orange juice
• 2 tea spoon of crushed cardamom seeds
• 1 star anise

For serving:

• 2 dl of whipped cream for serving (if necessary)

The ingredients

Boil all the ingredients for the marinade in a pot and let it cool down in a big bowl (remove the star anise).

Marinade left to cool down

Peel the oranges and take a clove at the time, removing the membranes. 

Put all the fruit in the marinade and mix it carefully.

Let it cool a bit in the fridge to get a better taste!

Ready!