Spanish recipes for Christmas

Looking for something other than turkey this Christmas? Get inspired right here!

If you are fed up with eating – or particularly cooking – turkey and all the trimmings on Christmas Day and then feeling obliged to eat turkey sandwiches, turkey curry and turkey soup until you are left with a meatless carcass well into the New Year, you may want to deviate from your accustomed Christmas and New Year cuisine this year and experiment with another nation’s culinary festive delights.

Spain, with its diverse and unique regions, boasts a huge variety of distinct Christmas specialities and with this amount of diversity provided in Spanish cooking during the festive season, choosing to prepare some Christmas recipes from the heart of sunny Spain is likely to satisfy the multitude of tastes demanded by modern families. To assist you in your quest to stray from turkey and stuffing this year and replace it with a more ‘adventurous’ Christmas menu, Vintage Travel have compiled a delicious typical Spanish Christmas menu.

‘La Nochebuena’ – Christmas Eve – is a real family affair in Spain, with families flocking together to enjoy a hearty Spanish meal. Typically ‘La Nochebuena’ meal is started with a salmon and cod appetizer.

Carpaccio of salmon and cod with citrus fruits

Simply squeeze the juice from one lemon, orange and lime into a food processor and mix the parsley, dill, raspberries, chives, olive oil and sugar. Pour the marinade over thinly sliced pieces of cod and salmon and cook for 2 hours. Serve with toasted bread or brioche.

This traditional Christmas Eve Spanish meal is usually followed by a main course of roast shoulder of saffron lamb.

Roast Shoulder of Saffron Lamb

Mix half a chill, Worcestershire sauce, orange zest and juice, brown sugar, saffron water, garlic and thyme together and pour over the shoulders of lamb. Cover with aluminium foil and cook for approximately three hours. Add shallots after 2 ½ hours. After three hours pour the surplus juice from the tray and mix with 200ml of water to form gravy. Let the mixture simmer on a moderate heat so it reduces by half. Serve the lamb with gravy and vegetables, including roast squash to give a rich and vibrant contrast in colour.

Whenever you are in Spain, regardless of the time of year, Crèma Catalana is usually always on the deserts menu and ‘La Nochebuena’ meal is certainly no exception, but at this time of year incorporates some delicious prunes.

Prune Crema Catalana

Simmer a log of sugar, 150 ml of red wine and 50g of dried prunes for 15 – 20 minutes until the prunes are soft. Divide the mixture into two soufflé dishes. Mix 5g of sugar over boiling double cream, remove the boil and whisk in two egg yolks. Stir for three minutes on a gentle heat. Pour the cream over the prunes, leave to cool and then refrigerate for 30 minutes. Sprinkle some sugar over the soufflé dishes and caramelise the sugar with a blowtorch.