If any posting can illustrate the theme of this website, this would be the one. Our Christmas dinner was delicious, rather quick to make, nutritious and gentle on the wallet, too.

For me, as for many people, the Christmas dinner is something special. I certainly want to keep it that way. So, here is what I prepared.

To start, I made a dish of smoked salmon.

Smoked Pacific salmon with mini buckwheat galettes and yogurt dill dressing

I chose a smoked Sockeye salmon. I like its delicate texture (in my opinion much nicer than Atlantic salmon) and its regular and diffuse fattiness (also much nicer than Atlantic salmon that tends to be a bit of white and red stripes, which I don’t like so much). I served the fish with mini buckwheat pancakes, a variation from Brittany’s “galette de blé noir”, or “galette de sarasin”, together with a sauce made of yogurt, lemon juice, shallots, dill and vodka. It was a great combination, simply delicious. To accompany this dish, I served a medium dry white wine from my own vineyard, called Bacchus. It’s a bit similar to a Sauvignon Blanc.

To follow, I prepared a “Magret de Canard” (duck fillet) with a sauce made of cherries, shallots, Port wine, honey and Balsamic vinegar.  The cherries came from the batch I canned this summer (see my previous post). The duck and this sauce are a wonderful combination.

Duck magret in shallot, honey, Port wine, balsamic vinegar and cherry sauce, with a side of Sarladaise potatoes and Brussels sprouts

On the side I served Pommes de Terre Sarladaises, which is a specialty from the Perigord region. They are potatoes sauteed in duck fat. Next to that, I served Brussels sprouts, also sauteed in duck fat. Absolutely delicious. The wine I chose was a Pinot Noir from my vineyard, too. It’s a full-bodied, smooth, velvety wine that paired quite well with the duck.

As a dessert, I had a special request from my wife. She wanted a chocolate babka, which is a kind of brioche with a swirly chocolate filling. I had never made any before. It turned out really well. The swirling could have been a bit more swirly and the streusel a bit more evenly distributed, but the taste was just perfect.

Chocolate babka

Although the babka requires some preparation, it leaves plenty of free time between the steps and, unless you keep staring at the oven for the hour the babka takes to bake, you will have free time for other activities. The fish dish and the duck dish took about 40-45 minutes to make. The total cost of this meal per person came to around US$5.00, not counting the wine, which I make anyway. A restaurant would charge at least 10 times this amount, and quite a bit more just because it was Christmas, and even more because I named the dishes in French.

Bacchus on the left, Pinot Noir on the right

So there you have it: a superb gourmet dinner for a very affordable price that anyone can make.

Copyright 2019 – Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.