The Joaquin Family
Two years ago, Erwin Joaquin, chef and owner of Big E’s Hawaiian Grinds, switched up his family’s annual holiday dinner from a more traditional potluck to a multilayered Filipino kamayan feast that’s almost too vibrant to be true.
This massive spread, which is meant to be eaten with the hands, involves covering communal tables with banana leaves and piling on a seemingly endless assortment of edibles and condiments.
The feast is built on a foundation of 40 cups of cooked jasmine rice – spread over three separate tables – covered with food items that Joaquin assigns to different family members to prepare, such as smoked short ribs, fried chicken, fried milkfish, kare-kare (a peanut-based oxtail stew) and ginataang alimasag (traditionally crabs cooked in coconut milk, done here with shrimp instead). Garnishes include green onions and fried garlic chips.
Each participating household usually brings a signature dish: Joaquin’s father-in-law, for example, contributes the fried milkfish (which takes two days to make), and his mother does the kare-kare (a nontraditional addition to the spread).
Colourful piles of portioned condiments, such as ginger-soy vinegar, shrimp paste, papaya slaw, mango salad and salted egg with tomatoes, sit in front of each diner.
It takes the family around 45 minutes to assemble this 25-person feast.
Suresh Doss
The Lui Family
Trevor Lui, co-creator and chef of Cabbagetown’s Kanpai Snack Bar, curates a sprawling dinner that takes inspiration from regions such as China, Portugal and Malaysia. This Christmastime table began to take shape seven years ago, when Lui’s sister married into a Portuguese family.
Capons basted with soy-infused butter replace dry turkey, and stovetop stuffing takes a backseat to fried rice with Chinese sausage and chicken drippings. Instead of salmon, the family feasts on a traditional bacalhau com natas, a Portuguese cod dish with chunks of potato and heavy cream.
Chinese barbecue, such as char siu (barbecued pork), always makes an appearance, along with a curry (West Indian, Japanese and Thai have appeared in the past) and three-cheese mac ‘n’ cheese for the kids.
No celebration is complete without bolinhos de bacalhau (Portuguese salt cod croquettes), rissóis de camarão (Portuguese shrimp turnovers) or the baked sago pudding, which is picked up from a Chinese restaurant. The pudding is baked on low heat for an hour during dinner and is ready to eat just in time for dessert.
Suresh Doss
The Kular Family
After years of “bland” Butterball turkey dinners, Jaswant Kular – founder of local Indian spice-blend company Jaswant’s Kitchen – and her family decided to change things up. Now they cook food inspired by their travels, changing their holiday dinner theme every year.
For this Moroccan dinner, Jaswant and her daughters Nimi, Roupi and Simran used cookbook recipes adapted with ingredients familiar to them, such as biryani rice, their own spice blends and spices they brought back from travels to Istanbul.
A highlight of this holiday feast is the chicken tagine with preserved lemons and olives (the earthenware dish it’s in hails from Morocco), along with a fragrant jewelled rice cooked with orange blossom water, barberries, cranberries, pistachios, almonds and pine nuts fried in ghee.
For appetizers there’s a spread of meze (small dishes), which includes baba ganoush made from roasted Sicilian eggplants; store-bought lebneh topped with olive oil and pomegranate seeds; and homemade harissa with chilies pounded down with salt, garlic, cumin and coriander.
“We’re lucky to be in Toronto,” says Jaswant, “because we can get all the ingredients needed for the recipes.”
Suresh Doss
The Wong Family
Following in the footsteps of his grandmother, Craig Wong – owner of Patois and Jackpot Chicken Rice – hosts an annual Jamaican-inspired banquet for 60 family members and friends.
Wong’s grandmother passed away two years ago, so the family revives her Christmas Jamaican breakfast every year – preparing liver and onions, salt fish fritters and ackee and saltfish – and gathers around essentially the same collection of plates for dinner each year for nostalgic reasons.
Tapping into their Jamaican-Chinese roots, their dinner includes a Jamaican-style curry chicken that uses fragrant coconut cream cooked with potatoes and carrots, a stir-fried ginger-scallion lobster with chow mein and a helping of jerk pork.
“Uncle Lloyd is the most Jamaican of all of us,” Wong says. As such, Uncle Llyod is responsible for the island staples of ackee and saltfish and the piquant Jamaican-style peppered shrimp.
There’s also a turkey smoked in a Big Green Egg, ham, baked salmon, a saucy mac ‘n’ cheese with layers of boiled eggs and a stuffing made with bread, chicken livers, onions and scallions.
Suresh Doss
