Christmas
Eve Salad or Ensalada de Noche Buena, is a traditional holiday
dish in many areas of Mexico and in the Southwestern part of the United
States. It is a delightful concoction rapidly increasing in popularity.
In an effort to share something festive for the holiday season, I have
researched the history of this colorful and interesting dish, but its origin
proved more difficult to find than I expected. In an article on Christmas
Eve customs, the Spanish language Mexican magazine "Mexico Desconocido"
described the traditional holiday meal as always being accompanied by the
Christmas Eve Salad. Elsewhere, web pages from Mexico call the salad
of beets and fruits "la clasica" (the classic) for Christmas Eve ("Nochebuena"),
but no one reports where and when the salad was first created. Nevertheless,
it seems to be part of Mexican
Christmas traditions, although in some parts of Mexico it appears to
be virtually unknown.
In fact, the grande dame of Mexican cuisine, Diana Kennedy, simply dismisses the salad with the statement that she "could never quite take the eye-catching Christmas Eve Salad seriously." The reason it is "eye-catching" is perhaps because it is often served in a glass bowl -- a sort of salad version of an English trifle. Nevertheless, in her definitive volume on The Cuisines of Mexico, she lists ingredients...lettuce, beets, oranges, bananas, sweet limes, jicamas, peanuts and then includes two I've never included, sugar cane and small, hard sugar candies. However, you get the idea. The salad combines fruits and vegetables and, Diana Kennedy notwithstanding, usually includes a topping of peanuts and pomegranate seeds rather than sugar cane and hard candies.
Ah!, the pomegranate
seeds. Eat them whole, or just suck away the juice and leave the
pit? Whatever you do, they are Christmas-red colorful and perhaps
there is also a religious reason for their inclusion in most of the recipes
I've seen. Apparently, in religious symbolism, the pomegranate was
used to indicate the Resurrection, and in Florence,
Italy, you can see Botticelli's painting, 
"Madonna
of the Pomegranate" with the Christ child holding the red fruit.
To see what the whole picture looks like, you can click on the detail from
the painting or click
here-- use your Back button to return to this page.
And now, finally, for the salad recipe! My own favorite comes from the kitchen of Elena Zelayata, whose out-of-print cookbooks are well-thumbed on my kitchen shelf. When the Ward Ritchie Press published her Elena's Fiesta Recipes a half century ago, the jicama was not common in U.S. supermarkets, and she suggested omitting it, but you should have little trouble finding it today, and Elena says it helps to assimilate the flavors. As is usual with my personal preferences, the recipe is simple to prepare and easy to remember.
CHRISTMAS EVE SALAD
ENSALADA
DE NOCHE BUENA
(adapted)
Combine equal quantities
of the following, depending on how many are to be served.
Note: with small (8
ounce) cans of mandarin oranges, sliced beets, and
pineapple chunks,
this will serve 6
Beets, cooked and sliced
Pineapple chunks,
fresh or canned
Orange sections, peeled
Apples, cored
and sliced
Bananas, sliced
Jicama, peeled and
cubed
Place mixture of fruits
and vegetables on a bed of
shredded Lettuce
Sprinkle over the
top
unsalted Peanuts
seeds (with juice)
from one Pomegranate
If desired, serve
with a dressing of mayonnaise thinned with a little fruit juice and cream.
For more variations on the recipe, you might want to consult the following links:
If you understand Spanish, you might enjoy the following from Mexico:
Who
Cooked That Up? is copyrighted 1998 by J.J. Schnebel
Revised February 2002,
December 2006
all rights reserved
for your pleasure and enlightenment
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