Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Turkey, goose and plum pudding are only a few of the yummy foods that will be piled on to dining tables around the world today.
Joanna Lobo finds out from expats making a living here what their favourite home-cooked Christmas dishes are and how to make them

Where Christmas is a mix of cuisines

In the United States, multi-ethnic families mean a multi-cultural Christmas meal

In James Reppuhn's home in the United States, the festive season is when the family gets together. His home would see cousins, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews traipse in, loaded with Christmas goodies and presents. Food played a secondary role.

"We would have had turkey just about a month earlier at Thanksgiving, so that wasn't the highlight," says this visiting executive chef at the JW Marriott hotel in Mumbai.
But there was always a lot of food. On the menu is stuffed turkey, which alternates yearly with goose or duck, mashed potatoes, bacon, green beans, mushrooms and cranberry sauce. "We would sit down mid-afternoon and have a true feast. There's beer and sometimes my uncles and I would bring out the scotch," he adds. Since his mother is Italian, there would be pasta too. And when his great grandmother was alive, she would make traditional Italian honey-glazed cookies. That was soon replaced by pumpkin pies and mince pies. "It's quite a mix of cuisines actually, something that can be found in most homes in the US," says James.

Given the large number of communities in the US, Christmas celebrations vary from home to home. For some it's a religious festival, whereas for others it is a festival 'for the kids'.

James hasn't been home for Christmas in 25 years. In fact, this is a busy time for him at work, and he usually just nibbles on turkey or sits down with fellow expats for a quiet dinner. But his mother diligently sends him pictures of the food, the Christmas tree and the presents back home to make him a part of the festivities there in a small way.

Going home for foie gras and wicked desserts

The Wards have a traditional French celebration, where the meal features 13 desserts in all

Every Christmas eve, the Ward family sits down to a lavish meal in their cosy home in Cannes, in the south of France. The table groans under the weight of the food on it: roast turkey stuffed with carrots and broccoli, served with gravy; a seafood platter with oysters, prawns, foie gras and jam, and smoked salmon; a 'wicked' dessert — usually a Buche de Noel (Yule log); and lots of drinks.

"Christmas is all about the kilos," said Charlotte Ward, operations manager at The Comedy Store in Mumbai, before going home for the holidays. "We eat everything very slowly, and drink lots of alcohol — it adds taste to an otherwise dry turkey."
Charlotte is half French and half English — her father Don Ward, founder of The Comedy Store in London, was responsible for changing the way Mumbai views comedy. But the family prefers to focus on their French heritage.

Christmas is a time when everyone in the family helps out. The youngest of three children, Charlotte is usually the one making the cookies, decorating the tree, and helping her mother with last-minute shopping. Charlotte's sister Natalie "is punished with preparing the vegetables", while her mother makes the main dishes. The men in the house collect wood for the fire.

After the meal, everyone gathers around the fireplace to exchange gifts and partake in an old French custom common to the Provence region. "The 13 desserts of Noel come from the 13 disciples at the Last Supper. The desserts are made using figs, apples, grapes, oranges, pears, etc —some dried and some served fresh," says Charlotte. These are served with nuts, butter biscuits and cookies, accompanied by tea, coffee or liqueur. While most Catholics in France follow a very traditional Christmas, a few succumb to time and work pressures. For them, the meal consists of just the turkey and the thirteen desserts are replaced with macaroons.

Before opening the presents, the Ward family has a round of speeches. "We take turns talking about the worst parts of the year and then raise a toast to the best moments. My father, the head of the family, gives a longer speech, thanking everyone and toasting to the future," she says.

Given the availability of turkey, fresh fish and different fruits, expats might find it easy enough to celebrate a traditional French Christmas in Mumbai. But for Ward, who can whip up a delicious Buche de Noel in two hours, Christmas is about spending time with family in France, and indulging in the one thing she misses in India: foie gras.

She misses her dad’s stollen and kipferl

German expat Nicole Illa says her dad always made the sweets at home and still does

Nicole Illa has lived away from her home in Germany for over nine years now, long enough to get used to being on her own. Yet, as Christmas draws near, she finds herself missing the stuffed goose and stollen that forms the traditional Christmas lunch back home.

Her favourite Christmas dish is the vanilla kipferl — crescent-shaped almond cookies. "As a child, I used to make them with my dad. Even today, he makes the sweets at home — he enjoys it so much," says Nicole, pastry chef at the Grand Hyatt, Goa. Other sweets she misses are gingerbread cookies, cinnamon stars and the very popular stollen, a loaf-shaped cake made from yeast, flour, vanilla and sugar, and stuffed with dried fruit which is soaked for a few days.

Christmas in Germany is all about indulgence, says Nicole. The Christmas lunch usually features a roasted goose. It is seasoned with salt and pepper and put into the oven in the morning so that it has a couple of hours to slow roast. This is accompanied by red cabbage cooked with onions, apple, some cloves, Brussels sprouts seasoned with butter, and roasted or boiled potatoes with parsley. The thick sauce served with the goose is made by reducing the marinaded juices of the meat. "The cooking styles and ingredients may seem healthy, but it is the amount that's eaten that can be quite unhealthy," she adds.

The goose apart, Nicole says it is possible to celebrate a traditional German Christmas anywhere in the world. This year, to give guests at her Goa hotel a "feel of the German Christmas", she has introduced stollen, cookies and kipferls on her pastry menu.

Roasted pigling with an apple in its mouth

Italians rear pigs so they can kill them a month before Christmas and enjoy a traditional pork-filled holiday season.

Italians love their pork. Most families rear pigs, and then kill them in the month preceding Christmas. From then on, almost every part of the pig is utilised in some way — to make Prosciutto, ham, bacon, pork chops and salami. In many Italian homes, Christmas is a pork feast, from roast pigling to pork sausage or Capone (stuffed pig's trotters) in the boiled mixed meat concoction called Bollito Misto. Giovanni Autunno's home in south Italy is no different.

The chef-cum-owner of Don Giovanni in Juhu may be spending his Christmases in Mumbai now, but his dinner remains as traditional as ever. The Christmas lunch starts with the antipasto which usually includes cheese, olives and other cured meat. This is followed by a good broth. "From central to south Italy, the broth is made with a whole turkey, usually killed around mid-November," says Giovanni, adding that the turkey is reared in corn fields where they feast on grasshoppers.

The Pasatelli in brodo is a broth made with brown pasta (rolled like Christmas kulkuls) that contains parmesan cheese and bread crumbs.

A peek into the Christmas menu at Don Giovanni reveals simple, tried-and-tested favourites from home. There are standard pasta dishes, the extremely light papardelle con funghi porcini (wild mushroom pasta which is best eaten hot), gnocchi di zuccha (pumpkin gnocchi with prawns and zucchini), and then the piece de resistance, ravioli de carne. The ravioli is stuffed with chicken, beef, Prosciutto (parma ham), cooked ham and mortadella (pork sausage made with finely ground pork meat, salt, white pepper, peppercorns, coriander, anise, pieces of pistachio and wine stuffed in a beef or pork casing).

The main course is either a roasted pigling "with an apple stuffed in its mouth",  a stuffed turkey or both.

One staple at the Christmas table is the Cassata Siciliana. "This traditional cake is usually presented to visiting families. It is a round cake with fruit juices, liqueur and ricotta cheese, and has Arab origins," says Giovanni. Dessert is the crispy almond biscotti, the southern Italian special Cartellate pugliesi al sugo di pomegranate (a fried pastry-like dish topped with pomegranate syrup) and the Panzerotti (pastry filled with lemon marmalade and topped with pomegranate sauce). "Drinks are obviously strong wines, like the sweet moscato, or rosé wines called rosato," he says.

The plum pudding is disappearing

The British now use sultanas instead of plums in their Christmas pudding

Traditionally the goose occupied the pride of place on the Christmas table in British homes, but the more commercially available turkey has displaced it these days. In Daniel Ayton’s home, though, goose meat still forms the most important part of their Christmas lunch. “I am quite lucky. My family is very traditional,” says the executive sous chef of the Taj Suites and Hotels in London.

Festivities begin a week ahead. As schools shut down for the holidays, there’s the hustle and bustle of last-minute gift shopping, picking up groceries, and the ceremonial cooking of the Christmas plum pudding. The Aytons start making their pudding a year in advance — steaming it and leaving it to mature in a cool, dry place. At Christmas time, this is re-heated, soaked in a brandy sauce and flambéed. “Our Christmas cake too is made almost six months in advance, with plenty of time for the fruits to soak in the alcohol and mature,” says Daniel.

The goose isn’t the only thing that has been affected by commercialisation, he says. “The traditional malt wine has given way to malt apple wine which has no alcohol,” he points out.

There have been other changes to the Christmas dinner over the years: The plum pudding, while reserving its name, no longer has plums, but sultanas, because they taste better. Traditionally, mince pies had pork and pork fat that kept the mixture moist. This has been replaced with vegetable fat or sweet-stuffed with spices and chopped nuts. Today, if you visit a British home during the season, you are likely to be served malt apple wine and sweet mince pies.