Traditional Italian Christmas Dinner Recipes

For a traditional Italian Christmas dinner, we've all heard of three-cheese lasagna or four- or even five-cheese lasagna, but how about two-sauce lasagna? That's right: bolognese sauce, and bechamel sauce.

Bolognese sauce for our Italian Christmas dinner starts inside a saucepan heated with olive oil. Two chopped onions are cooked with 2 pounds of combined ground beef and Italian sausage. We add 2 cloves of chopped garlic and 2 small chopped carrots to the mix for about 3 minutes. Then we add a 28-ounce can of chopped plum tomatoes with all the liquid, a sprig of chopped thyme, some chopped bay leaves, 2 teaspoons of dried oregano, and salt and pepper to taste. If we simmer for about an hour, we wind up with a nice meaty-red Bolognese sauce from the cooked-down tomato sauce.

Our creamy bechamel sauce is truly simple, which is good news while we busily prepare our Italian Christmas dinner. We melt 1/3 cup of butter and fold in 1/3 cup of flower, and then we gradually add 4 cups of cold milk at medium heat. We pay close attention to our stirring for 5 to 10 minutes, until our sauce thickens. Then it's as simple as adding 2 tablespoons each of Pecorino and Parmesan cheeses (or 4 tablespoons of Parmesan), salt and pepper to taste, and there's our bechamal sauce.

For our lasagna noodles, we either make them fresh with a pasta maker, or boil a box from the store for just 2 minutes to get them started. The baking will complete the process of cooking the noodles.

Our greased baking dish first is layered on the bottom with the Bolognese sauce, them some noodles, then alternating the bechamel and Bolognese sauces with a 50-50 mix of 12 ounces of mozzarella cheese and 12 ounces of ricotta cheese. By the time we're done, four or five noodle layers would be just right, with Bolognese sauce reserved to go on top with a final sprinkling of cheese. Bake 45 to 50 minutes at 350 degrees, and make sure we let it cool.

Marinated Italian Salad

Guests will know it's a traditional Italian Christmas dinner when they taste our marinated vegetable salad. We can steam our cauliflower flowerettes (2 pounds, maybe a little more), but we need to boil our 1 pound of carrot sticks for a few minutes, or they will taste raw. As soon as our veggies our tender-crisp, then it's time for a quick bath in cold water, and we can set them aside.

Our marinade includes 1/2 cup of vegetable oil (extra-virgin olive oil preferred), 1/4 cup of red wine, 1/3 cup of chopped parsley, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 3/4 teaspoon of salt,1/2 teaspoon of dry mustard, and 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper.

We can refrigerate the cauliflower flowerettes and the carrots in the marinade for as few as 2 hours, or for as long as overnight. Just before serving, we add a cup of green olives to make our Italian Christmas salad complete.

Sardinian Lemon Meringues

After such a heavy dinner, we could go for a light dessert of Sardinian lemon meringues.

We preheat our oven only to 250 degrees, while we beat 7 egg whites with just 1/4 cup of salt, until slightly stiff. Then we gradually add 2 cups of sugar and continue beating, until we achieve our meringue consistency. To close, we fold in the finely grated peel of 1 lemon, and 2 cups of toasted and chopped almond slivers.

We spoon this mixture by dollops onto a greased baking sheet, and bake for about 50 minutes for a nice, light dessert.

SOURCES

http://www.recipezaar.com/menu/9930

http://www.foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails.aspx?dishid=3562

http://italiancuisine.suite101.com/article.cfm/italian_christmas_dinner

http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/marinated-vegetable-olive-salad-3855

http://www.mangiabenepasta.com/cookies.html