Curious about Australian and New Zealand holiday dinners.
What are some typical main dishes and side dishes in your house for Christmas and the holidays in New Zealand and Australia?
Cold ham, cold barbecued chook, prawns (many, many prawns) and salads. Followed by christmas pudding with recycled sixpences, custard and ice cream. Same every year.
I find the full roast dinner too much if it turns out to be hot. In Melbourne Christmas lunch can be anything from 15-40C (60-105F).
I’ll cook turkey this year. I’d like to try goose, but no-one else will try it. For many years my family cooked roast pork for Christmas dinner. Many people do the full deal - roast potato, roast other vegies, bacon rolls (ie bits of streaky bacon pinned into a roll and roasted), chipolata sausages etc, followed by plum pudding and fruit cake.
I’ll serve something fishy for first course - probably smoked salmon with toast, horseradish and capers. Prawns or oysters would be common too. I’ll probably cook the turkey outside on the barbie and serve it with salads. Certainly a potato salad made with red wine vinegar, bacon, anchovies, chives and sour cream. Also a green salad. Maybe one with fennel and blood oranges, maybe one with tomato, basil and bocconcini. See how I feel and what looks good.
For dessert, I’ll break up a small bought plum pudding and incorporate it into some home made icecream.
Breakfast is always at the in-laws.
Ham, bacon, boiled eggs, croissants, freshly squeezed orange juice, champagne, etc.
Lunch is at my parent’s house.
Seafood (particularly prawns) and various salads, or ham, cold chicken, other cold meat cuts, fried rice and salads.
Dinner is whatever leftovers we scammed from either family, back at our house, and a few drinks.
We usually have a big (cold) ham, prawns, sometimes a spit roasted lump of beef, and usually a BBQ, often marinated chicken drummets. Lots of salads (potato, pasta, green, colelaw, bok choi etc). Stuffed eggs. Asparagus spears. Fresh bread.
For desert, we have icecream plum pudding, and mince pies, and fruit salad. Usually served with lots of ice cream.
We usually sit down around 1pm and stop and do pressies around 3 or 4. If it’s not too hot (or cold) we’ll eat outside on the patio, but if it’s a warm one, we’ll go inside with the airconditioner. If we’re at my grandparent’s place, we’ll hit the beach around 4:30, otherwise, we’ll all just sit around stuffed.
Usually I’ll meet up with friends for dinner, we’ll all bring leftovers and we’ll pick over them and have a few drinks.
Can’t think of a Christmas lunch that hasn’t involved a BBQ. 
So, BBQ Sausages (wrapped in a slice of bread and served with Watties tomato sauce) and Steak, various other cold cuts (usually ham and chicken), various salads, garlic bread, plus the obligatory crisps, dip, nuts, and dried fruit. (Crystallized ginger has always been a seasonal favourite of mine).
The desert… fruit salad, and yes, lots of ice cream – it might even be Hokey Pokey.
Aside: We’re hosting the family get-together this year… a chance for the adults to laze around after eating too much and for small cousins (and second cousins) to work off excess energy in the backyard.
Cold Ham, Potato Salad, Prawns, Ice Cream, Watermelon, sundry other salad like foodstuffs and beer, lots and lots of beer.
Anything I say about how I have Christmas these days wouldn’t be relevent, ‘cause I’m one of those lonely folk who usually has the whole time by myself, and eats t’ suit. I plan to be in some sort of alcoholic haze for most of it this year, with sandwiches or something.
But, when I was growing up, and still had a family, Christmas was always a very big deal. English roots decreed stuff that Kiwis probably couldn’t be blowed with anywhere north of about Kaikoura – turkey with homemade stuffing, boiled veges, mashed potatoes (the first thing I was taught to make by my Grandma), roast potatoes, fruit pudding. I loved th’ mince tarts made with fruit mince an’ flaky pastry, fresh out of th’ oven. I miss those days, tho’ everything seemed to take hours to prepare, and the stomach always over-full well into the afternoon.
These days, friends of mine have BBQs at home, or even picnics out on Okahu Bay beside the Waitemata Harbour. The parks and reserves in Auckland are almost always well-used over the period. The heat of an Antipodean summer usually dictates what is partaken of with maybe a bottle of bubbly.
Beer.
Thanks to everyone for responses! They were fascinating. Given the summer season down under the food you serve is more akin (in some ways) to 4th of July feasts here.
Cold meat - ham, chicken, turkey; prawns (naturally), salads - green, pasta, potato etc. etc.
And Pavlova!! with cream and strawberries and kiwi friut and passionfruit
And beer of course
Get up early. Have barbie for breaky: bacon, tomato, sausages, potato, toast, fried egg, orange juice. Covered in BBQ saude and tomato sauce. Many cups of tea.
Open presents.
Eat lunch. (Cold meats and salad.)
Sleep, lounge around, examine presents.
Dinner: roast turkey, potato, carrot, cauliflower with cheese sauce, chipolatas, pumpkin, gravy, green beans, sweet potato.
Desert: Christmas pudding with 5 cent pieces stuck in it with brandy sauce, brandy butter and vanilla icecream.
It was about 42c last year, and nobody really felt like eating much, but we still managed the turkey, ham, prawns, bugs and salads. We’ll probably do the same sort of thing this year, but at least my parents finally have got airconditioning at their place, where we usually go.
We usually have a few drinks, too.
- Bubba.
beernprawns! beernprawnsbeernprawnsbeernprawns!
My family always goes the whole hog (despite the heat, which can be up to 40C). Turkey (with homemade stuffing), baked ham, roast veggies, my nanna’s fantastic mushy peas, various salads, lots of wine (and beer for the blokes, but I don’t drink the stuff). Dessert is Christmas pudding - also hot. Lots and lots and LOTS of food, and it’s seriously good (I look forward to the turkey from one year to the next).
Depending on the weather and the location of Christmas lunch, we might hit the beach after doing prezzies, or there might be a pool-cricket match. Otherwise, the men generally doze for an hour or so while the kids play with their new toys.
Oh, foxyboxer mentions bugs. If I could get decent bugs* (or yabbies), I’d serve them up for entree. My problem with seafood is that I like to organise ahead, but with seafood I find that if it’s been dead for more than a day I don’t want to eat it. How do you seafood-liking folks deal with this? (Get up early or getya hand off it is an acceptable response.)
As for beer, I gotta drive and see my side of the family. A glass or two of wine is it. Sparkling red is the traditional drop, although a glass of bubbly or pinot noir from Ice Wolf’s neck of the woods would also slip down a treat.
*[sub]Bugs are Morton Bay Bugs a kind of small shovel-nosed lobster. Small but really good. Our crayfish or southern rock “lobsters”, whilst good are rather different to the northern variety - there is no significant claw meat. Yabbies are a freshwater creature not unlike ecrevisse, marron or crawfish.[/sub]