[Sca-cooks] Christmas Eve Dinner

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

i wrote:
>  My former consort (he has quit the SCA and taken up playing pool and
>  drinking fine cocktails made with obscure ingredients) and i are going to
>  a local German restaurant for dinner tonight. They have *roast goose*,
>  which i'll be ordering, and plenty of other German dishes. The restaurant
>  reviews are kind of up and down, but it's hard to find roast goose... and
>  i have never had goose, as far as i can recall, so tonight's the night :)

margaret replied:
>This sounds much like the traditional Hungarian Christmas dinner my brother
>made for us last year: roast goose, spetzel, a wonderful squash and sour
>cream dish, red cabbage..yummy!

I enjoyed the dinner very much. It was my first goose. It tasted very 
meaty. I am convinced that some of my friends here on this list could 
have cooked it better :) but i am quite content. My dish included 
braised Brussels sprouts, which i have always enjoyed, and red 
cabbage cooked with apples, which were delicious, and something 
called a pretzel knodl, a giant tender dumpling.

Jeff had Jaegerschnitzel. It was lovely and buried in fresh mushrooms 
and home made spaetzl. i thought it a tad too salty, but very tasty. 
It was served with a side dish of varied home pickled vegetables 
(beet, cucumber, carrot, and something else), which reminded me of 
some i have made for feasts. He was stationed in Bavaria when he was 
in the US Army in the mid 80s, and he said it reminded him of food he 
had there, and that made him happy.

For starters we shared an order of the restaurants famous 
Reibekuchen, fried potato pancakes with house made apple musse. Hey, 
Hanukkah is over, but my love of potato pancakes lasts year round :) 
I don't know what they were fried in, but were fabulously crispy on 
the outside and tender on the inside.

Jeff had a delicious German beer in a HUGE mug. I don't normally like 
beer much, but i kept stealing gulps... uh... i mean, sips of his. I 
don't remember what it was and i took him to the airport this AM to 
visit his mom in SoCal, so i cant ask him. It was dense and fairly 
dark amber, slightly sweet and not too hoppy. It may have been a 
hefeweisen.

I had a glass of sparkling white wine mixed with elderflower syrup, 
which was refreshing and light, and contrasted well with the dense 
dinner.

Besides the holiday tree and colored lights inside, there was a horn 
trio (coronets? flugelhorns? They didn't look like ordinary trumpets) 
outside, each musician in a long warm overcoat and top hat, playing 
holiday tunes ancient and modern. It was quite festive.
-- 
Someone sometimes called Urtatim