Traditional Latvian Christmas Dinner Recipes

For a traditional Latvian Christmas dinner, the pie isn't always for dessert. A Latvian meat pie makes a delicious main dish, and we don't have to prepare a vegetable because the cabbage is right in there. There's starch in the crust, too, so we really don't need potatoes. Our creative touch is to prepare Latvian ginger biscuits, which can accompany liver pate during dinner and then Latvian honey mix for dessert.

Latvian Meat Pie

To prepare our filling, we chop up a medium head of cabbage and a medium onion. We saute the onion in a skillet coated with oil, and then add the chopped cabbage and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

At the same time, in a separate skillet, we're browning a pound of scrambled ground beef, or shredding beef from a prepared chuck roast. On a third burner, we're hard-boiling four eggs.

When we mix everything together, we add the spices of our choice and our fillings are ready. We fill our crust, either homemade or store-bought, in a 9-inch pie pan. This has been simple, but let's not forget to cut a few slits on top of the crust.

Our baking time in a 350-degree oven is about 25 minutes, but we need to keep an eye on it after 20 minutes. It smells good, but we must be patient and allow our Latvian meat pie to cool for at least 15 minutes.

Latvian Christmas Pate

For the sake of variety, we will enhance our traditional Latvian Christmas dinner with some sumptuous pate.

We can go with 1 1/2 pounds of pig liver alone, or we can mix in some chicken livers instead. We simmer our liver for about 1 hour with 2 or 3 bay leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. When we're finished, we either should have 1/2 cup of water remaining in the pot, or we need to add water.

After we allow our cooked liver to cool for a half-hour, we puree it and re-puree it until it's very fine in texture.

Now it's time to put that saucepan back to use. We enhance the pureed liver with 1 teaspoon of rosemary, and we gradually whisk about 4 tablespoons of butter into the mix, as we seek the desired thickness for our pate. By the time we're done, our pate should be light in color.

Latvian Ginger Biscuits

Here's what we include in the dough for our Latvian ginger biscuits: 2 cups of flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, 8 teaspoons of ground ginger, 3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a pinch of salt, a cup of unsalted butter, slightly less than 1 cup of fine sugar, 9 tablespoons of syrup, 3 beaten eggs.

We roll the dough into golf balls, and chill them in our fridge for at least 45 minutes. Our baking time in a 350-degree oven is 10-12 minutes.

Our ginger biscuits can be spread with pate as part of the meal. They also can be enjoyed for dessert, topped with our Latvian honey mix.

Latvian Honey Mix

Grate 2/3 cup of rye bread. Mix with 1/2 cup of honey and 1/3 cup of boiled cranberries. Mix with 3/4 cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar, and we have our Latvian honey mix. This will taste great on top of Latvian ginger biscuits, especially with some whipped cream.

SOURCES

http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Meat_and_Cabbage_Pie

http://www.latvianstuff.com/Pate.html

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/512404

http://www.eat-online.net/english/cookbook/latvia/biguzis.htm