At this time of the year, kids are looking forward to one thing – family! Also presents, but in third place, it’s most probably all of the delicious food they’re going to eat! The holidays are in large part spent laughing in the kitchen and then around the table. Let your students have a fun preview of what’s to come by talking about some traditional dishes their family makes during the holidays! Perhaps they can even bring some in for the class to enjoy. Afterwards, have some fun hands-on learning by cooking a holiday dish all together. This works best if there’s a home-economics space at the school, if not, try to use a no-bake recipe. Here are some of our suggestions for some great holiday side-dishes from around the world!
The French are big on Christmas, complete with lots of seafood, fowl, and plenty of desserts; thirteen to be exact, representing the 12 apostles and Jesus. In the classroom, why not introduce your students to the French classic hors d’oeuvre, escargots de Bourgogne. It might be hard to sell the students on eating snails, but hopefully anything drenched in garlic, herbs, and butter will win them over!
The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah also takes place during this time of the year. In order to celebrate the Festival of Light, many fried foods are eaten, representing the one night’s supply of lamp oil lasting eight nights. One of these deep-fried foods is latkes! These are essentially deep friend potato pancakes, which pair up nicely with apple sauce, delish!
Spain is another county that loves Christmas! Christmas Eve in particular if they’re fond of food, which is when families gather to have their traditional meal. Like in France, there is plenty of seafood around this time of the year. There is also a lot of other meat though, and it is tradition to serve serrano ham, which comes from a free-range black Iberian pig who has had a diet filled with acorns. Included with this are other meats like chorizo, and high-end manchego cheese.
Traditionally, this Christmas food is cooked the first weekend of December. Hundreds of tamales are made at the same time, so the entire family helps out and it can take up to three days! They are cooked in banana leaves and consist of corn dough, potatoes, pork, rice and vegetables. If there’s no time to cook, never fear – they are found all throughout Costa Rican restaurants during the month of December!
Kwanzaa is a holiday for African Americans to get in touch with their roots, inspired by the many first harvest festivals throughout Africa. Its name means first harvest fruits and comes from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza. Jollof rice is one traditional African dish cooked at this time and is made from long-grain rice and a tomato base sauce of blended tomatoes, onions, sweet bell peppers, chilli peppers, scotch bonnet peppers, and seasoning. Yum!
There you have it! Mouth-watering dishes inspired by the holidays and cultures around us – and we haven’t even gotten to the main dishes, drinks, and of course, desserts! We hope your students can enjoy learning how to prepare some of these, as well as getting to share their own cultural dishes with the class. From all of us here at Prométour, happy holidays! May they be safe, happy, and bountiful! Like and share this blog for more, and don’t forget to comment below some of your favourite holiday recipes!