Recipes for Christmas: what is eaten in Latin American countries and where does this tradition come from? | Society | Magazine

Four gastronomic historians of the region take a tour of the most popular banquets in this celebration.

What do we eat at parties?

Christmas is that time of year that smells different because foods tend to be different at this time.

Romeritos in Mexico, toned calf in Argentina, Ham bread in Venezuela, they are some of the examples of the typical dishes of the end of the year festivities.

At the beginning of December we asked our readers: what do you eat (and drink) at Christmas holidays in your country?

The responses were varied and delicious. There were also many coincidences, as we suspected: the pork and the tamales They abound on the menus.

But Why do we eat what we eat at Christmas? Where does this tradition come from?

We asked four gastronomic historians of the region.

Mexico and its diversity

Romeritos, pozole, turkey, pork, tamales, cod… and that we do not forget thetequila punch and the Apple salad.

The readers of BBC Mundo made a long list of the Christmas letter from Mexico. The evidence shows that it is very assorted and varies according to the sector of the country we are talking about.

However, two meals are repeated in almost the entire territory: turkey and pig, especially the leg marinated and stuffed.

In the central area of ​​Mexico is where the Christmas menu seems to be more extensive.

There are the romeritos,that belong to the group of quelites, which translated into Spanish would be edible herb and should not be confused with the rosemary seasoning. The dish is a casserole that contains romeritos, mole and shrimp powder.

“Apparently the romeritos have been eaten since pre-Hispanic times”, affirms Yolanda García González, doctor in History and specialist in the diet of the 16th and 17th centuries in Mexico.

In the center of the country, cod a la Biscayne is also eaten, although with a Mexican intervention.

“Is cod a la vizcaína mexicanized. The vizcaíno is only tomato puree and perhaps a bell pepper. And here, we add potatoes, olives, capers, almonds, also depending on the region where we prepare it, ”García González tells BBC Mundo.

And why cod?

“That food enters through the gulf, through Veracruz, which is where the shipment of cod arrives and is distributed throughout the territory. In the bars and cantinas of Mexico City it is typical to find cod cakes at this time. It’s a holiday meal ”, he details.

The historian explains that the Christmas menu in Mexico is deeply linked with the arrival of Spanish customs, and above all with what religion dictated about what you could eat or not.

“Products such as pork legs, cow quarters are found in the expense books of 16th century convents, particularly for the December festivities,” says García González, who is the director of Cocina, a website that addresses the origin of the Mexican cuisine from history, art and science.

The Central American and Caribbean menu

“Tamales and pork baked goods are not lacking in Honduras ”, wrote a reader on Instagram. “Turkey bread in El Salvador ”, published another. “In Costa Rica, pork chop and tamales”Said a third.

With nuances in each one, the ingredients of the Christmas menu in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico tend to coincide.

“The dishes are repeated because the ingredients are the same. What changes is the way of making them and the names according to the indigenous cultures, their language and those who populated after the conquest, as is the case in Africa, “explains Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra, Puerto Rican historian and author of several books and essays. on the history of food in the Caribbean.

Among those common ingredients are banana, rice and pork.

Ortiz Cuadra confirms the fact that pork predominates in the Christmas menu of Latin American countries thanks to the Spanish. And precisely to the first one who arrived: Christopher Columbus.

“The first pigs were brought by Christopher Columbus in 1493, on his second voyage. It brings them from the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. Strategically bring in eight pregnant sows. That was a tactic of the conquering Europeans to reproduce the animals once they got here ”, details Ortiz Cuadra, who is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

For the Spanish of that time, the pig was very significant because in their vision its consumption stimulated the blood and had a great nutritional value.

But it was also a religious symbol: whoever ate pork was a Christian and was different from Muslims and Jews who were heavily persecuted at that time.

The animal begins to reproduce in the Caribbean very easily.

“The pig moves throughout the Caribbean and they are established and very fixed Christmas dishes”, Ortiz Cuadra tells BBC Mundo.

Although the pig began to dominate the menu, an animal was not slaughtered every day. Eating a whole pig was for special dates, like Christmas.

The historian says that it is probable that from this time the saying “They have him as a piglet for Christmas”, which means that they are raising and fattening the pig to slaughter it.

Another ingredient that cannot be missing from the Caribbean Christmas menu is the rice.

“I call them compound rices because they have several ingredients that vary according to the country,” says Ortiz Cuadra.

“At Christmas dinner in Puerto Rico there will always be rice with sunbeds and pork, ”he says.

Curiously, the pigeon peas are a legume native to India that reached Africa through the Portuguese trade in the 16th century and later moved to America by slaves.

And rice appears in the Caribbean by the Spanish, and in turn reaches the Iberian Peninsula through the Arabs.

According to BBC Mundo readers, this dish is also eaten during Christmas in Panama.

Hallacas, sheet cakes and tamales

A typical Christmas dish that our Venezuelan followers highlighted are las hallacas.

It is a cornmeal dough seasoned with chicken broth and colored with achiote. It can be filled with beef, pork or chicken. All this wrapped in a banana leaf.

According to Professor Ortiz Cuadra, this dish is also found in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but with another name and variations in the ingredients.

In the Dominican case they are called sheet cakes and, in Puerto Rican, simply cakes.

And also on the Christmas menu of many countries in the region are the tamales.

“The tamales wrapped in corn husks are originally from Mesoamerica. But the indigenous people of the Caribbean also used ground corn to wrap and boil it, as in Puerto Rico they are called guanimes”, Details Ortiz Cuadra.

And some countries even have tamales with their own name like the nacatamalesfrom Nicaragua, which can be meat, vegetables and rice wrapped in banana leaves.

Another dish that cannot be missed on the Venezuelan table is the Ham bread.

As its name says, it is a bread with ham, smoked bacon, raisins and green olives. According to the Venezuelan gastronomic journalist Miro Popié, the recipe was invented in 1905 in a bakery in Caracas and its acceptance was immediate.

Colombian delicacies

Our readers from Colombia plagued us with sweet messages in the comments of this call about typical Christmas foods.

“Buñuelos, buñuelos, buñuelos and more buñuelos”wrote one reader.

Other Colombians listed the custard, the flakes or puff pastry (a fried dough sprinkled with sugar or lemon) and rice pudding. Ah! “And a lot of brandy,” wrote one user.

“The typical dishes of Colombia are mestizo products”, says Cecilia Restrepo, researcher at the Colombian Academy of gastronomy.

And the Colombian buñuelos are a clear example of this since it is a corn dough – an ingredient originating in America – with the cheese that was brought by the Spanish and then sugar syrup is added.

According to the specialist in food history, in most cases, the origin of the dishes are not counted in the historical documents.

“But there is many Spanish foods that have Arabic influence and that they arrived here, like the buñuelos or the almojábanas ”, which is a sweet roll, he adds.

Restrepo also mentions another very important Christmas sweet that is consumed in Popayán, in the Valle del Cauca, which is called el desamargado and it is prepared with lemon peels and syrup.

And on the salty side, on the Colombian Christmas table there are tamales -with different ingredients depending on the region-, ajiaco -a stew made with meat, potatoes, chili peppers, onions and legumes- and empanadas.

Bittersweet dishes

Some readers from Peru told us that at Christmas they usually eat turkey, pork, tamales and the panettone or panettone, that famous sweet bread stuffed with raisins and candied fruits, although there are versions with chocolate.

The latter is also very common in Ecuador. There they also told us about the pristiños, “A dough that is fried and a panela honey is added to it.”

In Paraguay, pork is repeated as the star menu of Christmas, accompanied by Paraguayan soup or a chipá and with a very cold cider. And in Bolivia you eat picaña, suckling pig, turkey and fritters with a cup of chocolate.

In the Southern Cone, Christmas menus are made up of roast meats and sweet and sour dishes.

“Asado for any type of celebration is what is eaten the most in Chile,” wrote a BBC Mundo reader on Instagram. Another told us about the “monkey’s tail”, an alcoholic beverage made with milk, pisco, or brandy.

In Argentina and Uruguay the toned calf, beef covered with a fish sauce.

“Vitel toné is as we say in the Río de La Plata, but it is veal with tuna sauce in Italian. Veal it’s cow and Tonnato is ‘tuna’. And obviously it comes from Italian immigration ”, details the Uruguayan anthropologist specialized in food Gustavo Laborde.

“It is the only dish in which the Creoles of the south allow themselves to mix beef and sin. On no other occasion would we accept to eat that mixture ”, he analyzes.

In the menus of the southern countries also appears the suckling pig accompanied by Russian salad, which contains potato, carrot and green peas, all mixed with mayonnaise. There is also a tradition of eating roast lamb.

But Laborde says that bittersweet combinations stand out at the end of the year parties, such as the carré of pork accompanied by an apple puree, or a starter of raw ham with melon.

“Ham with melon is a dish of medieval origin and it was a medical prescription. The dietetics of the time were dominated by the theory of humors and they understood that the fruit decomposed rapidly in the body, so to balance it, you had to add something dry and cold, which was ham ”, describes Laborde.

But all the specialists agree on one thing: there is a lot of food on the Christmas menu.

“Abundance is prosperity. It is spent to eat rich and that the whole year can be received ”, assures the Mexican historian Yolanda García González.

“The festivals are particular from the anthropological point of view because elements of the past emerge. Both champagne and sugar, which were luxury products in ancient times, are still associated with these celebrations ”, analyzes the anthropologist Laborde.

“Perhaps there are not so many sophisticated preparations but they are abundant,” he adds.

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