Fish soup for Christmas?

This sounds so strange for Brazilians, but in Hungary the fish soup is very traditional for Christmas dinner and for the day after as well!

Differently from Brazilians, the Hungarians eat pork and poultries all year long. This list of the regular Hungarian meal includes from the cheapest to the most expensive: chicken, turkey, goose and duck. All of them are delicious and prepared in million different ways.

But Christmas supper asks for something different. Most part of the Christian families try (when the economic conditions allows them) to celebrate tonight having a special meal, not the trivial, ordinary one. For the Hungarians, the called Halászlé or Fish Broth is the specialty at this time. Of course they have other dishes served together as well, but the fish soup is the most traditional starter.

The soup can be prepared in different styles, depends on the region and the particular preference of the family, but one thing is sure: the soup is red exactly like the picture here! Full of paprika as any other Hungarian traditional dish. Paprika or pepperoni or pepperoncio or pimentão, you can give thousand different names for this vegetable, but in Hungary, they are mandatory for a good recipe.  The most traditional is the green or the red paprika, for the soup. But you can add also paprika powder or paprika paste at the end, just to be sure that the flavor is strong enough. It doesn’t mean that it is spicy, it depends on the audience.

In Brazil, at least at the region where I came from, the tradition is to have pork meat or poultries for Christmas supper. We eat Cod fish and fish specially in Easter and Wholly Friday.

In general, Brazilians eat beef, rice and beans along the year and sometimes fish, but the novelty for Christmas is always to have a big turkey or delicious pork, with tropical fruits (as pineapple, apples, plum, cherries, etc) or ribs or other pork meat, sometimes smoked, a sort of ham.

The garnishes are rice, vegetables, special salads and farofa (that is a manioc or corn flour prepared with bacon, onions, olives, etc). Check these pictures of a Brazilian Christmas supper I got from http://www.globo.com:

Brazilian Christmas dishes clock-wise : turkey, pork, panetone and tender (sort of ham)

By the way, panetone is not a tradition here. Some people doesn´t even know what is it! For Brazilian this pastry is so important for Christmas time. I remember that when the markets started to offer Panetone was the real sign that it was Christmas time in Brazil!

This is just a generic comment. Maybe the richest families or people from other areas eat something different in Brazil or in Hungary, but I am talking about ordinary people and what I learned so far… but I can be wrong.

Sources:

http://ladym.blog.hu/2009/12/26/karacsonyi_kajak

www.globo.com