Celebrate the holiday season with a taste of Greece! In this post, I’m sharing a festive Greek Christmas menu filled with delicious traditional dishes that will bring warmth, flavor, and a touch of Mediterranean magic to your holiday table. Kala Christougena! (Merry Christmas!)
Christmas is just around the corner! Let all the fun begin with planning the Christmas Menu for 2018. It would be a Greek Mediterranean Christmas Menu!
Christmas preparations have already begun with Christmas cookies. Like every year, the house and neighborhood will be surrounded by the smell of spices cinnamon, clove, rosewater, honey, and of course butter. It is a tradition in Greece to make at least two kinds of cookies: kourabiedes (butter cookies) and melomakarona (honey cookies). For my vegan friends, I propose these amazing traditional vegan Christmas cookies.
Keep them in huge platters and make them part of our Christmas decoration like in every traditional Greek home and offer them as a homemade Christmas gift. Treat the people you love with sweet Christmas wishes.
Greek Christmas butter cookies
In Greek, they are called Kourabiedes: These snowy white, insanely delicious cookies are quick and easy to bake up and their taste will stick with you forever.
My children love to dust iced sugar on them (along with the table and kitchen floor) and my favorite moment is eating them hot when they come out of the oven. Pure pleasure!
Greek Christmas honey cookies
Honey Cookies aka Melomakarona : A healthier version of butter cookies. Dairy and egg-free cookies. Only honey, walnuts, and olive oil (the sugar can be replaced by the natural sweetener if desired) for those goodies. Don’t underestimate them. They will amaze you with their flavor complexity. These cookies are bathed in honey syrup resulting in soft, delightfully melting-in-your-mouth cookies. Impossible to eat only one. It happens to me every Christmas (basically all December long).
Now that the preparations are done and our platters are full of "cookies mountains", let's get the ball rolling, pull up our socks, and roll up our sleeves.
Christmas Menu for 2018
I love the preparations and I am a sucker for testing new recipes for Christmas every year. Yes, it is the best excuse for extra cooking for foodies, food lovers, or just passionate cooks. I cannot even describe the satisfaction of a successful new recipe and those eyes opened wide with the first bite. Gosh, I live for that moment. I really do.
In search of new ingredient combinations and flavors, every Christmas dinner is unique. Why serve the usual Christmas dishes like turkey with gravy and not surprise everyone (yourself included) with something new? Something out of the ordinary but still delicious, healthy, festive, and ... totally Mediterranean.
Go on and taste all the goodies without guilt or any kind of judgment and share those priceless moments with your family and friends. Sharing delicious food is the key to the Mediterranean way of eating.
So make it memorable and recall the 2018 Christmas dinner for all the love around you and the delicious food, of course. If you let my recipes be part of your memory, it will be such a great honor!
Mediterranean Onion Soup
This soup is the perfect starter for your Christmas dinner. Caramelized white onions, shallots, leeks bathed on white wine, beef or vegetable stock, and crusty bread under a luscious layer of cheese. Truffle oil adds a bit of festive luxury that will be largely welcome. Not drooling yet? Your guests most certainly will.
Grab the recipe here
Cabbage Pear Salad
Cabbage, pear, raisins, prosciutto, and pomegranate. It is packed with fresh, distinctive flavors that enhance anything you serve with it. This cabbage salad is absolutely phenomenal.
Grab the recipe here
Prunes Lemon & Honey Stuffed Pork Loin
The pork is intensely flavored with succulent stuffing that is the perfect complement to a garlicky thyme rub and a bed of tender potatoes. Homemade pan gravy keeps the meat even moister and adds another layer of flavor.
Grab the recipe here.
May your table be rich, the food tasteful and all the joy surround you and the people you love.
Cheers,
Sylia
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