Olive Oil is the Essence of Traditional Greek Dishes on Christmas Eve

It is the time of the year again when fam­i­lies gather to cel­e­brate Christmas, and plans get under­way in each house­hold for a feast befit­ting the occa­sion.

In Greece, the French word réveil­lon (which trans­lates to ​‘wak­ing’) refers to the cel­e­bra­tions and fes­tive din­ners that take place on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Christmas Eve réveil­lons across the coun­try always include a lav­ish meal fol­low­ing the culi­nary tra­di­tion of each place, with extra vir­gin olive oil under­pin­ning the dishes served.

According to Greek cus­tom, pies, sweets, meat, bread and pas­tries – all typ­i­cal prepa­ra­tions for the occa­sion – invoke God for abun­dance and suf­fi­ciency through­out the rest of the year.

Additionally, many Greeks may fast for sev­eral days before Christmas for reli­gious rea­sons, eat­ing no meat dur­ing that period. The Christmas meals mark their return to the reg­u­lar eat­ing rou­tine and pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity for a stim­u­lat­ing din­ing expe­ri­ence.

“Everyone in Greece has tasted tra­di­tional meals on Christmas Day or the day before as they were pre­pared for the fam­ily tables in rural areas of the coun­try,” Dina Nikolaou, an award-win­ner Greek chef and owner of the Evi Evane restau­rant in Paris, told Olive Oil Times.

“From grand­moth­ers to daugh­ters and grand­chil­dren, these recipes were passed down until they reached urban areas and became cus­tom­ary,” she added. ​“They were straight­for­ward prepa­ra­tions with a few but high-qual­ity ingre­di­ents, even­tu­ally becom­ing the back­bone of the Greek cui­sine.”

“The basic ingre­di­ent was, of course, olive oil,” Nikolaou con­tin­ued. ​“Olive oil, along with wheat, were the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of every kitchen and the bases of vir­tu­ally every dish.”

For Christmas Eve din­ner the tra­di­tional Greek way, Nikolaou sug­gested refrain­ing from prepar­ing mul­ti­ple dishes.

Instead, she pro­posed a fes­tive three-course meal: a tra­di­tional Greek tra­chana soup with a veg­etable pie as the appe­tizer, roasted pork with orange as the main dish and the tra­di­tional Greek baklava made with olive oil instead of but­ter as a dessert.

“A tra­di­tional Greek soup made with tra­chana [a type of cous­cous] can serve as a great appe­tizer for the Christmas Eve din­ner,” Nikolaou said.

To pre­pare the soup, the chef first uses a pan to sauté finely chopped onion in olive oil. She then adds the tra­chana and a liter of veg­etable stock or water and brings the mix­ture to a boil. After, Nikolaou lets it sim­mer for about 20 min­utes until reduced.

The next step includes sautéing the veg­eta­bles (chopped pep­pers and mush­rooms, cour­gette and the finely-chopped green part of a leek) in olive oil before adding salt and bal­samic vine­gar.

Finally, the boiled tra­chana is served in bowls with sautéed veg­gies and some pep­per. An essen­tial last step is to driz­zle a gen­er­ous amount of extra vir­gin olive oil on the soup for extra fla­vor.

The tra­chana soup is accom­pa­nied per­fectly by a tra­di­tional veg­etable pie made with spinach, chard and spring onions, all wrapped in hand­made dough made with flour and extra vir­gin olive oil.

“This recipe comes from Zagorohoria, a group of moun­tain­ous vil­lages scat­tered around the city of Ioannina,” Nikolaou said. ​“They are famous for their pies and the sim­plic­ity of the fla­vors.”

Nikolaou received train­ing in French gas­tron­omy in her early years as a pro­fes­sional but has become an afi­cionado of the Greek culi­nary cul­ture.

Her restau­rant in the French cap­i­tal is widely acknowl­edged by Parisiens as a top des­ti­na­tion to savor Greek and Mediterranean dishes. In 2017, it was awarded for best for­eign cui­sine in Paris by the Pudlo restau­rant guides.

For the main course of the Christmas Eve menu, a two-kilo­gram pork shoul­der is placed on the kitchen bench­top. Marinate the meat for three to four hours in a mix of olive oil, orange juice and zest, crushed gar­lic, sweet wine and some herbs.

Meanwhile, put a kilo­gram of diced pota­toes or sweet pota­toes, a sliced, unpeeled orange and some sun­dried toma­toes in a bowl with olive oil and figs — sea­son with salt and pep­per and mix.

Place the mar­i­nated meat in a large bak­ing tray. Add the mari­nade to the bowl with the pota­toes, mix again and then pour every­thing into the tray. Sprinkle bread­crumbs on the pota­toes and bake every­thing in the oven at 180 ºC for about two hours. Let the meat rest for 10 min­utes before cut­ting into it.

“For a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day din­ner, noth­ing is more fes­tive than pork with orange,” Nikolaou said.

A Christmas Eve din­ner is incom­plete with­out a proper dessert. Chef Nikolaou’s tra­di­tional baklava, a per­fect make-ahead dessert for Christmas Eve, is all about child­hood mem­o­ries and rec­ol­lec­tions of the past.

“My grandma used to heat the olive oil and then pour it over the baklava before putting it into the oven for bak­ing,” she recalled. ​“The char­ac­ter­is­tic siz­zling of the pas­try sheets is the best Christmas melody.”

Baklava is made with lay­ers of crispy pas­try phyllo dough filled with crushed nuts, sugar, clove and cin­na­mon and sprayed with heated olive oil before bak­ing.

When the phyllo has turned golden and crisp, sug­ary syrup and honey are poured over the dessert to com­plete the prepa­ra­tion.

Both the olive oil from the pre­vi­ous har­vest – pro­vided it is appro­pri­ately stored – or the season’s freshly pro­duced olive oil can be used for prepar­ing the Christmas Eve menu.

Extra vir­gin olive oil with a twist can also be added for fla­vor dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

Experts advise mix­ing three-quar­ters of a cup of extra vir­gin olive oil with a cup of blanched herbs such as basil, oregano or rose­mary. Then, sub­merge the blanched herbs in the oil (mak­ing sure they are com­pletely cov­ered) and let the mix­ture sit for a few days for the aro­mas to meld.

The infused olive oil can then be used to pre­pare Christmas Eve and Christmas Day meals to sur­prise the din­ers.

“Olive oil, and essen­tially extra vir­gin olive oil, is not just an edi­ble fat used in cook­ing and bak­ing,” Nikolaou said. ​“It is an invalu­able sta­ple food boast­ing a vari­ety of ben­e­fi­cial ingre­di­ents and healthy monoun­sat­u­rated fats.”

“The Greek writer Athenaeus in his famous work Deipnosophists of the 3^rd cen­tury A.D., [a col­lec­tion of ban­quet con­ver­sa­tions on food, lit­er­a­ture and arts over din­ner] describes recipes for a sesame cake baked with olive oil, pies of wild veg­gies and olive oil and meat from hunt­ing pre­served in olive oil,” she added.

“We Greeks pos­sess all the accu­mu­lated culi­nary wis­dom from cen­turies ago,” Nikolaou con­cluded. ​“By exploit­ing the ingre­di­ents to the fullest with­out wast­ing any­thing, but also with­out sac­ri­fic­ing fla­vor, we can pre­pare a boun­ti­ful Greek tra­di­tional din­ner to per­fectly suit the Christmas Eve occa­sion.”

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• Kathimerini