Chef’s table: Christmas

If you haven’t heard of Netflix’s series Chef’s Table yet, you’re either living under the rock OR aren’t at all a foodie and interested in the chef’s lives and unique restaurants around the world. Chef’s Table is one of my favourite Netflix series and I can binge watch couple of episodes at once. The problem is that I usually get very hungry and get a big need to travel to those places which are mentioned in the series. 😀 

I’m a foodie and a home chef who loves to cook every day and explore the new dishes and tastes. On most days I love to challenge myself and create some completely new, out of my head recipes but sometimes I’m just happy to go with my safe, bulletproof recipes which I’ve been cooking for years.

Chef’s Table a la Natali, Christmas edition was something I didn’t want to play around with too much. Just couple of twists on my favourite dishes was the limit to my experimenting. Since Finnish people start with the celebrations on the Christmas Eve already, I always get to experience their traditional Christmas food on that day and the next day, Christmas Day is always reserved for my own cooking and a mash up of Croatian and Russian dishes.

I wanted to share with you the food photos and some recipes of how my Christmas table looked like on both of those days ( note that I have cooked only on the 2nd day/ did the ham in the Finnish dishes ).

FINNISH CHRISTMAS FOOD

Crown of the Finnish Christmas food table is definitely a Christmas ham. Each family has their own way of doing it but there is not a chance that you won’t find this dish on the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Finnish homes. I wanted to make a small contribution to the table so I made my own ham after this recipe by Nigella. I’m proud to say that it was a hit! 😀

Other dishes which could be found on the table were different pickled vegetables, cheese board, Christmas bread, cold smoked salmon fillets, boiled potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed carrots and rice, Karelian stew and cold cuts platter.

As a traditional dessert, rice porridge with the cold fruit compote had been served. My friend gifted me with a delicious gingerbread cake so we had that as our 2nd dessert! 🙂

CHRISTMAS DAY FOOD / MY COOKING

Since nobody can finish a whole ham in one day, same ham was present on the Christmas Day table too. Alongside that, we had Russian pickled cucumbers (I like to serve them with a dollop of smetana and drizzle of honey), cooked and smoked jumbo prawns with aioli, smoked white fish salad Olivier, cold cuts of moose salami and oven roasted lamb sausages in herb and butter sauce.

As for the main course I have decided to serve tagliatelle fresh pasta with crayfish, mussels and jumbo prawns in my own tomato-herb sauce.

For the dessert I’ve baked traditional Croatian Christmas berry cake with whipped cream.

All I can say is that the “food baby belly” is a real thing! 😀 😀 😀

Happy holidays everybody!