I'm one of those Martha Stewart types who dives into holiday dinner planning feet-first. When I first started making Swedish Christmas dinner two years ago, I researched on the true holiday traditions so I could recreate the experience as closely as possible.
The first thing I discovered was that Swedes eat a very simple and humble dinner on Christmas Eve, the night of the true celebration - the presents are all opened on Christmas Eve, and that's when Father Christmas or the more authentic Jule nissen, or Christmas gnome (think an elf complete with little green overalls, but a bit bigger), comes with the gifts. On the menu: porridge, or rice pudding, and lutfisk. That's usually the extent of it - the big smorgasbörd (literally) comes after church on Christmas Day.
The recipe I follow is called variously "porridge," "rice pudding" and "gruel," is a lot like this one, but you don't need to follow any strict instructions here. You cook about a cup of rice in a cup of water, then once the rice is done and the water is absorbed, begin adding five cups of milk (I'd suggest whole milk), about a cup at a time, until all the milk is absorbed. You can add cinnamon and sugar if you like, but the traditional recipe includes no sweetener and definitely not an egg.
Serve after stirring in one blanched almond and (if you want) one golden raisin. The person who gets the almond, the tradition goes, gets a gift.
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