Alternative Christmas dinners

In No Order Whatsoever

1 Reindeer
There’s something oddly evil about eating Rudolph, but if you tell the kids it’s duck you might get away with it. Popular in Norway and sold every year as a festive sausage at The Clifton Sausage restaurant in Bristol, England, reindeer is gamey and tender when cooked medium rare.

2 Roast deer
You can hunt roebuck and fallow deer in Latvia with a bow and arrow, but you don’t need to go all Robin Hood to give your Christmas dinner a dash of eastern Europe. The Scottish way to cook deer is to add a dash of whisky, juniper berries and to roast slowly.

3 Wild boar
The forests of Poland are riddled with hairy, big-toothed, grunting pigs, the likes of which made Hannibal Lecter a bit jumpy in the grisly follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs. Wild boars are 100kg of prime eating — so just don’t get them angry.

4 Christmas porridge
OK, so it’s not a main course, but Swedes eat this stuff, known over there as julgröt, on Christmas Eve. Add a single almond, then whoever finds it will marry within the year. Big news if you’re Prince William – bigger still if you’re Sir Cliff Richard.

5 Poppy seed rolls
This is the stuff that no Hungarian dinner table is ever without on 25 December. They’re sweet and you can add all sorts of fillings. Leave one by the fireplace with a map of Budapest to utterly fox Santa.

6 Carp
If you’re invited to Christmas dinner by a long-lost pal from Prague, it’s odds-on you’ll be tucking into this. The freshwater fish is the festive staple across the Czech Republic and you’ll see them swimming in tubs outside grocers’ stores throughout December.

7 Dried cod
This doesn’t sound like much of a rival to a succulent turkey with all the trimmings, but maybe the proof is in the eating. In Portugal, Christmas is welcomed in with a special meal of salted dried cod and boiled potatoes. Get hold of some at www.fishfanatics.co.uk

8 Rabbit
Stewed Bugs is a Maltese staple. The meat is usually lightly browned with garlic and herbs, then added to either red wine or a rich tomato sauce. It’s not a traditional Christmas dish – the island-dwellers actually favour turkey – but the delicious, rustic flavour will certainly get your dinner guests talking. Perfect on a bleak mid-winter’s night!

9 Roast goose
Turkeys don’t fear the holiday season in Germany – it’s Teutonic geese that do all the quivering. Chef Gordon Ramsay says the goose is a festive delight, and the leather-faced swearmonkey serves it with orange-glazed carrots and roasted Charlotte potatoes.

10 Capon
The French-speaking Swiss are generally well-off, and Christmas is yet another chance to splurge – fine wines, chocolates, log fires, and a big fat capon, basically a really expensive castrated chicken.