The Christmas table in Lebanon ... Turkey and the trunk of a home tree

Hala Al-Khatib - Beirut

The Lebanese Christmas table changed after American and European meals entered it and imposed major dishes.

White Joyce is a witness to this change, and she is now preparing Christmas dishes not just for the family but as per the recommendation. She attends these dishes at home, in addition to many other dishes.

Joyce tells Al-Jazeera Net that preparing the turkey feast (turkey) is an American habit that was attended on Thanksgiving and not at Christmas, but in Lebanon the Eid stuffed chicken around it and zucchini (squash) and grape leaves with rice and meat were the basis.

Christmas dinner rituals
As for the birthday cake (or bush de noel), it is also a European cake. It is a cake prepared in the form of a tree trunk that is stuffed with cream and decorated with chocolate.

Joyce notes that boiled candy (soft rice, water, sugar, spices and nuts), made for guests to celebrate the birth of the birth, was also served on Christmas.

And it turns out that at Christmas, she prefers to meet the family around one table because of the symbolism of the family unit, where starters are placed first on the table, and then the main dish is presented in the middle of dinner time.

Joyce considers that the starters of Christmas dinners vary according to the basic idea, whether he is Arab or Western. It offers ideas for starters and two ways to cook Eid Turkey, one on the traditional American way and the other on the Lebanese way.

Then she offers the women how to prepare "El Bushe de Noel" in an easy way that she learned from French books and developed it practically.

Joyce started her cooking experience first with the help of her mother and she loved the cooking that the mother and friends liked, and some began recommending her to cook for them. She considers herself a home chef as she only cooks from the materials she uses in her home for her family, and does not use less quality consumables.

Lebanese table
Joyce lists the most important appetizers of the Lebanese table for Christmas dinner, which are: tabbouleh and fattoush, chickpeas with tahini, spiced eggplant, fried kibbeh, fish tagine, grape leaves with oil, and pastries (spinach, pizza, chips, sambousak, meat with dough and pies), and also includes varieties Others include hot dogs, sausages and chicken stalk with garlic and lemon, and some families add raw meat, such as raw kibbeh, spices and kasbah.

According to Joyce, these appetizers are suitable for the traditional Lebanese manner, which is stuffed with rice, meat, hearts and chestnuts.

Then seasonal fruits are placed, and at the end a bouche de noel is served, and it can be changed or added to any sweet Lebanese type such as othmaliya or boiled.

Western table
As for appetizers in the western trip, Joyce shows that it can include a plate of different types of cheeses, and a variety of dishes (charcuterie..mortadella and cheese ...), salmon bowl, pies stuffed with chicken and vegetables, or prawns, and salty tart with asparagus or mushrooms and onions .

Shells and shellfish can also be added with tomato sauce, lemon, garlic, parsley, fried calamari, prawns with cocktail sauce and avocado, or mushrooms stuffed with oven or broccoli, and a fruit salad like mango and another with crab or prawns ..

The turkey is cooked in a foreign way, and a berry mashed potato can be added.

Prepare for the American holiday
Joyce made American turkey in an easy way, first add flavor to butter, either with garlic, herbs or ginger and insert it under the skin of turkey in all places, then salt, dazzle and painted with honey, butter and herbs for turkey from the outside, and inside it is placed rosemary, bay leaf, thyme leaf, lemon chopped and small onion.

Around the turkey, vegetables are distributed from zucchini (squash), broccoli, carrots, small potatoes, mushrooms and small onions, after putting salt and spices and mixing them with butter, they are all placed in a roasting bag in the oven, and turkey can be placed alone in the oven and the vegetables are either boiled steamed or sauteed (slightly fried with butter).

Habash on the Lebanese way
Joyce says that this method is suitable for chicken, turkey or turkey, after cleaning it is stuffed with stuffing rice and half-cooked meat with nuts, chestnuts, salt and spice according to taste, painted from the outside with honey and butter and put the barbecue bag in the oven until it is soft. And each kilogram needs at least an hour in the oven. If he weighed four kilograms, he would need four hours.

When serving, cooked rice and meat with chicken broth are placed around turkey with nuts, and it can be served with or without sauce (sauce).

As for the "sauce", it is a cup of melted butter, and a cup of flour is added to it and stir over the fire with the butter until it becomes like a dough, and the chicken broth is added gradually over it and whisk, then add salt, spices, nutmeg, and a few of the sauce and "Rashtheer" And a spoonful of liquid soy for more flavor, and mushrooms can be added to your liking.

El Bushe de Noel
Joyce offers a very practical way to a Christmas cake known as Buche de noel, which is the method that you adopt and sell from them for dozens of days on the holiday after beautifully decorated.

Dough ingredients: four eggs, a cup of fine sugar, a cup of flour, one teaspoon of vanilla, one teaspoon of baking powder, and a lemon zest.

Beat the eggs with vanilla and lemon zest, add sugar, flour and baking powder, and lay on a butter paper and put in the oven for about twenty minutes until they are done, then wrapped directly with a wet towel in the form of "roll".

And cream is butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and cocoa. The cream is spread over the dough and then wrapped in a sandwich to resemble the tree trunk. Later, it is trimmed in a branch-like shape.

Chocolate is melted in a way (Ban Mary), meaning a pot of water over which there is a pot of chocolate. Chocolate can be placed in molds to form in different shapes after placing it in the refrigerator, and the bush is decorated with chocolate and pieces that represent the holiday atmosphere, such as small trees and Santa Claus.