12 Christmas dishes from around the world

A Filipino Christmas dessert made from sweet rice cooked in hollow bamboo tubes in a steamer. They use heirloom sticky rice called pirurutong, which is coloured with ube or purple yam, fashioned into cakes and sprinkled with sugar and grated coconut.

It just sounds weird because of Rudolph, but poronkäristys is sautéed reindeer eaten in Finland, often served with mash and lingonberry jam.

A traditional dish in Greenland, where frozen whale blubber and flesh is eaten raw, boiled or breaded and deep-fried then served with soy sauce.

Dried cod or ling that has been soaked in a lye solution for several days to rehydrate it. It’s rinsed with cold water to remove the lye, then boiled or baked. Norwegians often eat it with butter, salt and pepper and in Sweden they eat it in a white sauce. It’s smelly, gelatinous and most definitely an acquired taste.

An Italian rock candy that looks very similar to coal. It’s a riff off the Christmas tradition, that poorly behaved children will receive coal instead of a present. Traumatise your kids for your own amusement.

From the US, it’s a tofu roll made from a blend of wheat protein and tofu. It looks just like a turkey rolled roast, complete with stuffing!

The worm of the emperor moth is a deep-fried snack in southern Africa.

Pieces of hog’s head in aspic. The jellied loaf is part of the Swedish ‘julbord’ Christmas smorgasbord.

In Greenland, small penguin-like birds called little auks are preserved for months in the hollowed-out body of a seal. And yes, they eat it.

It’s a traditional Swedish gratin made of potatoes, onions, pickled sprats, breadcrumbs and cream. They use pickled sprats called ansjovis, which are not to be confused with anchovies. Perish the thought...

In Iceland, Atlantic puffin meat is smoked and cured. It’s a delicacy that’s a bit like pastrami, but not really...

Thanks to a clever marketing campaign in the 1970s, Japanese routinely line-up down the street to feast on KFC on Christmas Day.

Photography by: Alamy/Getty Images.