What Sunset Editors Are Cooking This Holiday Season
Food traditions that are far from ordinary.
Thomas J. Story
We do holiday food better in the West. That is the wholly unscientific, entirely biased, thoroughly questionable, but incredibly delicious conclusion of a recent random polling of a few Sunset staffers.
In one editor’s family, a pan-Asian potluck routinely features egg rolls, shumai, and two kinds of Filipino noodles (pancit and “the kind of spaghetti they serve at Jollibee”). Yet another cooks a truncated version of the Italian feast of the seven fishes (“clam pasta, grilled Scottish langoustines, whole branzino stuffed with thyme and Meyer lemons from our yard”) then makes “a big roast—typically with Korean vibes like gochujang and a bunch of banchan we buy in Koreatown.” One family’s weeklong cookie-baking marathon culminates with a “frosting day” where friends and neighbors vie for invitations to help decorate the groaning board of sweets.
The traditions are sometimes in line with the families’ heritage and sometimes not. One staffer’s feast is perhaps the most multicultural and multiculinary: “We have tamales from an instructor at my brother’s Brazilian jiujitsu studio, strawberry rugelach, and some kind of beef roast, but always cooked on the rotisserie outside.” Many families have an aunt or uncle’s variation on green beans. There is sometimes a ham. Everybody at some point makes a ton of Mexican food. It’s diverse, freewheeling, celebratory, indulgent, yet unpretentious, indoor-outdoor, and all very Sunset.
If any of these food traditions sound appealing to you, take a look at some related recipes below.
Swiss Chard Egg Rolls
Swiss chard is the star in this egg roll recipe from chef David Kuo of Los Angeles’s Little Fatty.
Spicy Linguine with Clams
Sunset reader Gail Lively shares her take on pasta alle vongole—use crusty bread to sop all the sauce up.
Whole Roasted Sea Bass with Chile Garlic Vinegar
The banana leaves add even more flavor here. It’s easy to make it ahead and cook later.
Bar Le Côte Sea Bream Finished Dish
Chef Brad Mathews of Bar Le Côte says using dry-aged fish makes for crispier and a more consistent cook, but you can any whole fish for this recipe.
Easy Kimchi
Make this days ahead of time and cross one thing off your to-do list. It just gets better the longer it ages—just make sure to eat it within a few months.
Classic Sugar Cookies
The classic sugar cookie is the perfect canvas for icing, sprinkles, and more.
Chocolate Peppermint Surprises
Fudgy and rich, like brownies, these hide a treat inside—a melty peppermint patty.
Chicken and Green Tomatillo Tamale Filling
Cookbook author Marcela Valladolid showed us how to put on a tamalada—a tamale-making party—at her house near San Diego; this was one of the several tamales that day. If you want a mild filling, use fewer jalapeños and/or seed them.
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