Most stick to the traditional favourites when it comes to cooking for members of their family and friends
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Dennis Green (second from left), a chef at Bishop’s Restaurant, takes cookies from the oven as wife, Sandra, and son Tyler (front) bring in cut-out gingerbread men and son Darcy rolls out dough for more Christmas cookies. Photograph by : Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun
On Dec. 25, in most restaurants, not a creature will stir, not even a mouse. It’s the one day chefs will be home, cooking not for strangers but for people they know. There’ll be none of that duck confit or foie gras or noisettes of anything because they will, it seems, cling to tradition — even if it’s not.
Angus An didn’t celebrate Christmas as a child but, as an adult, he’s a turkey and Brussels sprouts man all the way. (See today’s restaurant section for a review of his exciting new restaurant, Gastropod.)
Like a lot of ambitious young chefs, An travelled and cooked abroad before opening his restaurant. Last Christmas, he and his wife Kate were in Dublin with friends from London. Their Christmas past reveals something about a chef’s Christmas — their dinners come in size XL.
The Dublin dinner included turkey with bread stuffing as well as a lamb roast, roasted Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire pudding, mushroom risotto, parsnips with maple syrup (“A kind of heads up that I’m Canadian,” he says) and green salad, with rice pudding for dessert.
The meal lasted from 3 to 9 p.m. “To be honest, I felt like there should have been more food. It was a whole-day feast,” says An, whose restaurant is high-end and refined. “It was about comfort. The guys cooked and the girls looked.”
Growing up, his Taiwanese mother tried cooking turkey twice after moving to Canada but used the Chinese method of curing, which drew out the moisture.
“Man, that turkey was dry,” he recalls. After that, they did Christmas like many other Asians in Vancouver — in restaurants, over a communal hot pot meal, he says. But once he left home, he went hot turkey.
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The celebrated Rob Feenie, of Lumiere restaurant, hesitates before divulging what he’ll be having for dessert this Christmas. “Cracked glass!” he says, bursting out laughing.
That, of course, is three colours of Jell-O, bound by whipped cream over a graham wafer crust.
“I know this is awful to say, but I love it.” he says. “It was great when I was a kid. I still love it!”
But he does have time for truffles and foie gras on Christmas Eve. He and his family spend the evening with his friend Michel Jacob’s family. Jacob, owner/chef of Le Crocodile, usually cooks a sumptuous French meal starting with foie gras and brioche. This year, Feenie takes over that meal.
In previous years, he’s gone to Palm Springs for Christmas, but this year he’ll spend it with family over a traditional Christmas dinner of “Mum’s turkey, Mum’s stuffing, Mum’s mashed potatoes, Mum’s baked yams and Mum’s Brussels sprouts.” And, oh right, his mum’s cracked glass.
In Palm Springs, he cooked poultry, but not necessarily turkey. “Once, I took a pheasant through customs to Palm Springs. I’d poached it with black truffles and vacuum packed it, and reheated it once I got there.”
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Dennis Green, chef at the high-end Bishop’s restaurant, nails the essence of a North American Christmas dinner.
“Everybody likes the ritual. That’s what makes it Christmas,” he says. “We stick to the rules — turkey, gravy, traditional stuffing with herbs from the garden, brussels sprouts, carrots, parsnips, mashed potatoes. I’m happy to give in to tradition.”
He prefers a comfort dessert, like a hazelnut spice cake, which he serves with dried fruit and late-harvest riesling compote — a light and elegant alternative to Christmas pudding or fruit cake.
Having a happy bunch of people at Christmas, he says, is more important than a display of cooking prowess. He kickstarts the season in early December by baking cookies with his sons, Tyler, 12, and Darcy, 15, usually gingerbread and shortbread.
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To Sean Heather, the man who can’t stop opening restaurants (Irish Heather, Salty Tongue, Salt — Pepper opens very soon and, just recently, he opened The Lucky Diner, formerly The Diner), Christmas food is about stoking good memories and adding more to the bank.
“I’ve seldom had a bad Christmas, so it’s about remembering good times. It’s about spending time together and following traditions and passing them to my children,” says Heather. “If they [were] traditions like stealing cars, I wouldn’t want them to learn it, but this is good stuff, so yeah, why not!”
He starts the day as if his family were starving, cooking a full Irish breakfast of black pudding, white pudding, Irish rashers, pork sausage, stewed mushrooms, eggs and toast.
As an appy before the main event, Heather cooks up a Dublin-spiced beef brisket, which he serves with a chutney and Wheaton bread.
The main meal (for 18 family members this year) is a feast of Belfast ham brined, smoked, covered in honey and studded with cloves and mustard, turkey with sausage stuffing, Brussel sprouts and his mom’s Christmas cake with marzipan and royal icing.
“My kids will eat the legs off a chair. They’re great eaters,” he says.
Incidentally, his restaurant Irish Heather stays open from noon to 6 p.m., serving turkey and ham to Christmas orphans in the neighbourhood. It’s not advertised and it’s one of the few restaurants — other than hotel restaurants — you’ll find open on Christmas.
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For catering queen Susan Mendelson, of Lazy Gourmet, December centres around Hanukkah, which occurs Dec. 15 to 22 this year.
“It’s eight days of eating and visiting,” says Mendelson. On the 22nd, she will host a dinner for about 50, a “small” party by her standards.
“Because Hanukkah is a festival of the miracle of one night’s oil lasting eight nights, we eat a lot of greasy foods,” she laughs. For her, the symbolism translates to latkes with apple sauce, sour cream and roasted red pepper puree. One year, she made a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts dash to Delta to fill the oil quota. “We bought a whole bunch of boxes of it. Oh my god, it was fabulous.”
She’ll also make something with fish and a brisket. “I don’t want anyone to know, though, how I tenderize the brisket with a tin of Coke.”
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Running a restaurant and catering business helps with a chef’s big dinners. Some confessed to having staff help.
“I get some help now from the chefs at the restaurant,” says Heather. “In fact, they do a sizable chunk of it. The other thing is, I bring bus trays home. I put all the dirty dishes on them and take them to the restaurant to wash them in the industrial washer.”
He adds: “It helps when you have a restaurant.” Or two or three or four, in his case.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006