#60 - Everything French food at Christmas

A lip-smacking, mouth-watering, tummy-rumbling, finger-lickin’, well-seasoned seasonal episode about the food that the French traditionally eat at Christmas! Fun facts, traditions and scrumptious treats. 

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Podcast 60 - Everything French food at Christmas 

Janine: Bonjour and welcome The Good Life France podcast. I’m your host Janine Marsh, I’m a British writer and I’m the editor of The Good Life France Magazine and website. My home is in the far north of France, Pas-de-Calais and I live in an old farmhouse which I’ve been renovating for nearly 21 years, and it’s almost finished, not quite, but me and my husband Mark are doing everything ourselves from building the staircase to making cupboards for the kitchen - everything! When I’m not writing, renovating or looking after my many animals - 4 boisterous dogs, 7 needy cats, 22 greedy chickens, 5 quacking ducks, 2 honking geese, and a partridge in a pear tree – no not really I’m kidding, no partridge! Anyway when I’m not doing that stuff, I travel year-round exploring French destinations, history, culture, art and gastronomy, I love to share my discoveries with you alongside my podcast partner Olivier.

Oli: Bonjour mes amis, hello from Lyon where I am based, the sunny Lyon, at least usually – we’ve had some rain lately, and quite a bit of fog as well in this part of France! When I am not chatting to you here on the podcast, I’m a radio presenter on 3 radio stations, a local one in Lyon, a nationwide one + an internet radio station aimed at French expats around the world. If you think I sound a little bit British…

Janine: Oli I don’t think anyone thinks you sound British though you are a perfect English speaker! 

Oli: Excuse me…, my French friends think I sound British, like the royal family! SO, like I said… my British accent was acquired after 20 years of living in the UK before I came back to France to live in Lyon! 
 
 So that’s us. So tell us Janine, what are we going to be chatting about today?! 

Janine: Well Christmas is coming, and we have actually already done an episode about the Christmas traditions of France but I thought, what about a lip-smacking, mouth-watering, tummy-rumbling, finger-lickin’, well-seasoned seasonal episode about the food that the French traditionally eat at Christmas! 

Oli: What like a gourmet journey of France at Christmas? All the delicious, succulent, luscious, yummy, and scrumptious foods we French love to indulge in to celebrate the season? 

Janine: lol. Yep – exactly that. And some really fun facts and foodie traditions because this is a truly fascinating topic. We’re going to talk festive feasts and fun in France…

Oli: I think we’re all here for that! Let’s go, let’s tuck into this delicious episode! 

Ok, here we go! Let’s go on a tasty journey to France to uncover the rich traditions of French Christmas cuisine. It’s all about the joy, the company, and of course, the incredible food.

Janine: Absolutely! In France, Christmas is an affair of lavish feasts and exquisite dishes. Meals are not just eaten; they're celebrated. We’re going to get warm and fuzzy, and hungry for the festive season! 

Oli: So, lets talk a bit about the French Christmas meal, which is known as "Le Réveillon” which comes from the word reveil, which means wake up. And there’s a reason for that. In France we have our main Christmas meal not on Christmas Day like many other countries, we have it on Christmas Eve. And that meal will last well into the next morning! Traditionally in the olden days, people would wake up to go to midnight mass at Christmas, calling it le reveillon, and they would have a snack to keep them going. Overtime le reveillon became a big Christmas meal.

Janine: Actually, there are two meals called the le réveillon in France. If you haven’t overindulged enough on Christmas Eve, you can do it all again on New Year’s Eve just to make sure! This is another time for family and friends to get together over another long meal, seeing in the New Year with the best of French food and wine and then often going on to a party that won’t start until after midnight but will go on until the sun comes up on New Year’s Day. 

Oli: So, what do we do for le réveillon you ask? Well we start with an aperitif, a pre-dinner drink served with nibbles or an amuse-bouche, literally something that amuses your mouth.

Janine: I love that expression – it’s really appropriate too as it’s something small, sometimes a spoonful of something exquisite, or a tiny cup of soup, maybe a dolls house size pastry. One of my most memorable amuse bouches was at the Paul Bocuse restaurant La Collonges-la-Rouge - Paul Bocuse was one of the greatest chefs of France. Anyway the restaurant is in Lyon, where you live Oli – and the amuse bouche was a mushroom carved to look like a rose with wafer-thin petals in a tiny pastry case with a cream mousse. It was a work of art. I almost felt bad eating it but I managed. It was delicious! 

Oli: That sounds delicious, I might try and carve a mushroom and see how I do! So, with the Christmas meal – often the food has a story or is about tradition. And there’s a lot of preparation that goes into the meal. For weeks before we start planning and talking about what we’re going to do. 

Janine: I love that. When I lived in the UK I would dash round the supermarket aisles on Christmas eve after work, hoping that there would be a turkey left on the shelves, bunging everything into the trolley. I did once buy a turkey in advance and put it in the freezer and then I forgot to defrost it for the big day! Here 6 weeks in advance me and Mark, my husband, start talking about where we will get the turkey from – a place called Licques which is about an hour’s drive away but famous for their poultry. We’ll get cheese from a shop called Caseus in Montreuil-sur-Mer where there are so many to choose from it’s like Christmas Day every time I go in there!. We’ll pop to the seaside resort of Le Touquet Paris-Plage, called that because we’re not far from Paris and a lot of Parisisans come here for weekends by the sea, and that’s where we’ll get our smoked salmon. We’ll head to our favourite wine shop which is in a lovely historic market town called Hesdin, where Florent the wine man at Chai Pinot will tell us what we will like to drink – he knows us well enough for that. You know it’s a lot of fun to plan the Christmas feast and with this much effort, I definitely think it tastes better! People here really do care about food, and the quality of what they buy. 

Oli: That’s so true. Right, let’s get started with the entrée. Oysters. We French are mad for oysters. Served on a big bed of ice, with lemon or mignonette sauce which is made with red wine vinegar, chopped shallots and black pepper… mmmm

Janine: Hmm see that’s where I’m not very French at all, I’m allergic to oysters and even if I wasn’t I’m not a fan! I wish I did like them, I’m off to La Rochelle next week, famous for its oysters but I’ll have to say non merci to them! They’re a bit like Marmite, you know that yeast spread that you either love or hate! 

Oli: In the old days oysters and seafood were the food of the poor people, peasant food, and a few dozen oysters was cheap, now of course it’s a luxury food with a price to match. Also it was traditional in the middle ages not to eat meat before feast days and seafood wasn’t considered as meat so oysters were a popular choice then. 

Janine: Here’s a fun fact, the average French household buys a whopping 9 pounds, 4 kilos, of oysters each year, and half of those are eaten over the Christmas and New Year meals! Also there’s lobster, smoked salmon, sea snails, sea urchins, shrimp, langoustines and scallops - all sorts of sea food are served for Christmas. And it’s generally quite easy to prepare this course because many poisonneries, fish shops, will make up a beautiful platter for you to collect so nothing much to do and you can spend more time on the rest of the dishes. I love to see people collecting their fish platters on Christmas Eve when I’m doing last minute shopping in my local town, and I sit at the café next to the fish shop, and I’ll be sipping my hot chocolate and watching happy people come and go! 

Oli: Ok – now we’re on to the main meal, often it’s turkey or maybe capon (chapon), a fattened rooster, or a very good chicken stuffed with chesnut filling. This is accompanied by elaborate side dishes like potato gratin or green beans sautéed with garlic and butter or something with truffles in, we love truffles at Christmas, and they grow in several region of France. Then between courses, there might be little breaks that allow everyone to digest and prepare for the next delicious dish. Maybe a bowl of lettuce to freshen the palette or a Norman trou! 

Janine: What you may be wondering, is Oli talking about a Norman trou? It literally means a Norman hole, like a hole in the ground. But to the French it means a glass of Calvados, like apple brandy. Or it can apple sorbet drenched in Calvados. Because it’s said that the brandy helps make room for more courses and helps with digestion! Hmmm. 

Oli: It’s true. It’s a proven fact. I have tried it myself and it worked! Besides we French have had the Norman trou for more than 200 years, if it didn’t work, we wouldn’t do it would we?! I mean, it’s not really just about having a little drop of brandy during the meal! It’s a stomach settler to make way for the next course. 

Janine: Ah the next course. Fromage. It is unthinkable for a French person to consider a meal without cheese at Christmas even though there it’s not a particularly Christmassy dish. At this time of the year some of the favourite fromages include Camembert from Normandy, blue cheese from the Auvergne, goats’ cheese from Poitou, Comté from Franche-Comté and a pungent Maroilles from Nord-Pas-de-Calais. And my new favourite, rich creamy Brillat Savarin – naughty but oh so nice! 

Oli: You can go overboard with a bit of cheese carving and decorating – little sprigs of holly or herbs, edible flowers, jams and chutneys, serve with baguette or savoury biscuits and say cheese for those Christmas photographs – or as the French say “ouistiti”, which means marmoset in English, you know one of those cute monkeys! And remember in France - always, always, cheese before dessert!

Janine: And that leads us nicely to my favourite bit of the meal – pudding or rather to be French, dessert! So, in the UK – it was always Christmas pudding, a rich, moist pudding of dried fruit boiled for hours and then we set fire to it with brandy, then we eat with custard or cream. But in France it’s the buche de Noel, the yule log that takes centre stage. It is an ionic French Christmas cake. 

Oli: Yes, it’s almost the law to have one of these cakes at Christmas. Made from sponge cake and buttercream, it’s designed to resemble a log burning in the hearth. It’s a tradition that goes back to the middle ages though in those days the bûche (the log), was a real one and burned on the day of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. It was believed that the ashes from the log, which might be soaked in oil or wine, would bring luck. The burning log was said to purify the house and drive bad spirits away. 

Janine: In the 1800s, the log tradition was transformed from wood to cake, it became a ‘fake’ yule log, and a symbol of Christmas in France. No one knows exactly when this happened, but some historians say that the bûche de Noël cake was invented by a Paris hotel chef, others that it was created by Antonine Charadot, a pastry chef in Lyon (he invented buttercream). Or perhaps it was invented by Felix Bonnat, a Lyon-based chocolate master or maybe it was made by Pierre Lacam, cake ice cream maker to Prince Charles III of Monaco. No one is entirely sure.

Oli: In December boulangeries and patisseries all over France create bûches de Noël of every flavour. One of the most popular is the traditional chocolate bûche, made to look just like a wooden log. But bakers and cake makers let their imagination run wild, meringue mushrooms, marzipan holly, spun sugar cobwebs and tiny sugar log cutting axes often feature. Chefs go out of their way to find the best and most delicious ingredients from around France, such as Corsican chestnuts creamy chestnut crème brûlée, Bavarian mousse with blue vanilla from Réunion island and confit from Burgundy.

Janine: Want to know where to indulge in one of the most unusual buches de Noel? 

Oli: Oui. Absolutely, I love a good buche! 

Janine: Ok this one is special. First you have to go to Antibes in Provence where they take the bûche de Noël to a whole new level. Each year local bakers and chefs get together with volunteers to make the biggest bûche de Noël in the world – up to a humongous 50 feet that’s 15.3 metres - long. A whopping 800 eggs, 85kg of flour, 100kg jam, 20kg of sugar, 20 litres of rum and 40 litres of Chantilly cream go into the making of this enormous cake for a big street party in the old district the Safranier district – just for one day. It’s so big they have to cut it with a huge saw, and everyone there gets a piece with a glass of mulled wine or hot chocolate. It’s very Christmassy. 

Oli: I couldn’t eat a whole one! And there’s another dessert you can’t eat a whole one off. Or rather desserts. In Provence they have their own Christmas meal traditions. The meal on Christmas eve is known as le gros souper (the big supper) and it ends with a ritual number of 13 desserts – les treize desserts. Yes, really. 13 desserts – but not, 13 cakes, in case you’re thinking people in Provence must be very special indeed. 

Janine: I love this tradition! Les Treize Desserts de Noël goes back several centuries, and it’s said that the roots of this custom lie in religion and represent Jesus and his twelve apostles at the Last Supper. The ingredients of the 13 desserts varies from village to village, and even from home to home. But it always includes dishes of nuts, fruit and sweets plus an orange flavoured cake. The desserts are spread out on a table in dishes at the same time, and everyone is invited to take a little from each dish. And it’s a tradition to lay the desserts out on Christmas Eve and leave them there for three days.

Oli:  It pretty much always includes “les quatre mendiants”, the four beggars, which represent monastic communities: walnuts or hazelnuts symbolizing the order of St Augustin, almonds for the Carmelites, raisins for the Dominicans, and dry figs for the Franciscans.

Janine: There’s usually fresh fruit: such as apples, pears, oranges, melon, grapes and tangerines. Plus crystallised fruits like kiwi and pineapple. Traditionally, locally produced fruits are preserved after the autumn harvests in basements and attics. The best crystallised fruit comes from the town of Apt in Provence.

Oli: Pompe a l’huile, a sweet flatbread flavoured with orange, takes centre stage. Sweets and pastries: gingerbread, biscuits, candied fruit, cake, almond-paste pastries, spiced bread, waffles, brioche, yule log and kugelhopf. There is a great choice of sweets that can be included. Calissons d’aix are often included, a sweet almond biscuit that was first created, it’s said, in 1454 in Aix-en-Provence.

Janine: Finally there are always two kinds of nougat – dark nougat and white nougat which represent good and evil. The nougat noir au miel is made with honey and almonds and is a hard candy. The nougat blanc is soft and made with sugar, eggs, pistachios, honey, and almonds

Oli: Yum. I’m feeling a bit Christmassy already thinking about all this! I’m especially thinking about gingerbread – it’s the scent of Christmas when you go the Christmas markets. And it’s not gingerbread like in the UK, you know the biscuits, I’m talking about the pain d’epices, spiced cake but we call it gingerbread in English.

Janine: Yes I love that too. I’m going to the Christmas markets in Alsace this year, Strasbourg, Colmar, Riquewihr and Kaysersberg - if you want to come with me, join me on Instagram as I’ll be posting photos and sharing as I go – from Alsace, Paris, the Loire Valley and Provence – I’m at Instagram.com/thegoodlifefrance

Oli: And what about the regional specialities for Christmas food? When you’re in Alsace you must try the Bredele, it’s a Christmas biscuit flavoured with cinnamon, orange, aniseed, chocolate or walnuts… 

Janine: I’ll have two, one for me and one for you! 

Oli: Oh I’m jealous now – you must also eat the BeraVecka – a rich Christmas cake – dried fruit soaked in fruit brandy. 

Janine: Yep. I’ll have two slices of that including one for you – I’ll send you a photo of me eating it! 

Oli: You’re bad!

Janine: Yep. Very bad. Lol. In my region, Hauts de France, there are quite a few specialities including Le St Nicolas. A large biscuit in the shape of St Nicolas, iced in red and white. This appears in the baker’s shops from the end of November to celebrate the feast of Saint Nicolas on December the 6th. And we have craquelin, a figure of 8 croissant that you can only get in December. And at our local Christmas market there are always sugar baby Jesus sweets. 

Oli: In Lyon we have The papillotes – they are chocolates (or sometimes candied fruits) and they’re wrapped in the golden sparkling paper with fringed ends. Inside there is a little note with something meaningful written like “forgiveness, tolerance and wisdom are the language of the strong.” These sweets were created in Lyon at the end of the 1700s and now they are real Christmas tradition, and they usually decorate the Christmas table though not for long because they are really delicious! 

Janine: In fact, let’s talk a bit about the Christmas table in France.

Oli: yes - it’s really a big part of the celebration to have their Christmas dining table looking as lovely as you can. Often we spend quite a bit of time preparing the table. And many people put three candlesticks on the table, which represents the Trinity. 

Janine: I am always amazed at how many books there are in French book shops that are about how to decorate your table – not just for Christmas but Easter, birthdays, Sunday dinner, any time! And here’s a fun table fact! My neighbour old Madame Bernadette says that she ties knots in the ends of the tablecloth at Christmas so that the Devil can’t get under the table. But I’m not sure if she just says that to surprise me! 

Oli: I never heard of that one before! But you know there are so many traditions – who knows! And that brings us to the end of this gastronomic tour of a French Christmas and we hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing it. 

Janine: I reckon that was a feast of an episode. I’m hungry now! I want one of those papillotes you mentioned! Thanks for joining us everyone, Join us next time when we’re share another delicious episode about France and French culture. In the meantime… bon appetit! 

Oli: We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and we just want to say a huge thank you to all of you listening to our podcast and to everyone for sharing it too. We really love sharing the France we know and love with you, the authentic and real France with its wonderful history, culture, gastronomy, wine and more. It always amazes us that people are listening in about 150 countries around the world!

Janine: Yes thank you so much everyone, wherever you are, we really appreciate it. You can find me and a ton of information about France – where to visit, culture, history, recipes – everything France - at thegoodlifefrance.com where you can subscribe to the podcast, a weekly newsletter about France and my totally brilliant, completely free magazine which you can read at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com.

But for now, it’s au revoir from me.

Olivier: And goodbye from me.

Janine: Speak to you soon!