Happy Holidays! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Hanukkah! Joyous Festivus!

Last night was our annual Christmas Eve Feast with my side of the family. As I’ve journaled about before, we’ve had a tradition for years that involves one of the family members hosting everyone else at their house, and the host prepares Christmas Eve dinner – the content of the dinner is kept secret from everyone else until they arrive at the house. The dinner is a whole meal made of recipes from another country, or a specific ethnicity or region of the world: a culinary surprise for the whole family! (We’ve done too many to list here, but some examples of past menus are Morocco, Native American, German, Greek, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc…)

So this year, the dinner was at our house! We compiled recipes and made some wonderful food from the country of Senegal!

The kids put together little projects on posterboard that told all about this West-African country and it’s people (as well as all about the menu items we’d chosen).

I have to say – the food was SO GOOD! The whole dinner was a giant success, with many leftovers going home with folks! (We made SO MUCH food! We could’ve gotten away with fewer dishes, but we wanted to sample several things!)

The menu consisted of :

Appetizer

Avocat Aux Crevettes Senegalaises
(Avocado Stuffed with Shrimp)

Sow
(Pronounced “so”. In Senegal, this drink treat is made by letting fresh cow’s milk sit outside to sour, then mixing it with lots of sugar and ice. Our recipe is similar, but uses buttermilk, sour cream, vanilla and sugar!)

Main Dishes

Mafé
(Beef in tomato based peanut sauce, served over rice)

Yassa Au Poulet De La Casamance
(Barbecued Chickens with Lemon and Onions over Rice)

Tiébou Dienn
This dish, pronounced “cheb-oo jenn, ” is the national dish of Senegal. It can range from a simple bowl of rice and vegetables to more elaborate combinations of vegetables, spices and sauces.
(Our recipe called for a ton of veggies stewed with spices, then served on top of a bed of rice that was cooked in the juices of the vegetables. On top of that is placed a grilled whitefish that has been covered in a sauce/paste made of parsley, soy sauce, green and yellow onions, and some other spices. Man, was it good!)

Desserts

Peanut Ice Cream
(Senegal is the peanut capital of the world! This is homemade ice cream made with peanut butter and a bunch of other yummy stuff!)

Cinq Centimes
(“The 5-Cent Cookie”, this is a traditional cookie sold for five cents by street vendors in Dakar! – it’s basically sugar cookie dough baked, then peanut butter spread on top and chopped peanuts sprinkled on that!)

I love Christmas Eve! What a wonderful family time.