Fun Fact: JB is on vacation! This week’s newsletter was written by Laurén Abdel-Razzaq.

December is full of holidays across a variety of cultures and religions focused on illuminating the darkness, bringing families and friends together in warmth and celebrating traditions that fulfill us.

Food is, of course, central to those traditions. 

Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Orthodox Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Santa Lucia, Epiphany, each holiday comes with delicious food traditions that are worth exploring. After all, a meal is the easiest way to bring people together in fellowship, regardless of belief or background. 

In that spirit, I reached out to some experts and wanted to offer up some of my own family’s traditional recipes for celebrating at this time of year. Maybe you’ll find something worth trying for your own holiday gatherings! 

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Feast of the Seven Fishes

My mom’s side of the family is from San Marino, a tiny country surrounded by Italy, and, as such, they celebrate a Roman Catholic Christmas with some Italian-American influences.

While its origins are not clear, the Feast of the Seven Fishes is a Christmas Eve staple that my family, like many Italian-American families, has celebrated long before I was born. 

Like the name implies, there are seven fish or shellfish dishes offered as part of this elaborate meal. For us, it’s always deep-fried calamari and shrimp – done in a cardboard-covered garage. The piping hot breaded critters are tossed with salt and dumped into pizza boxes to catch the grease (we collect pizza boxes all year just for this purpose). 

Inside, the food continues with tossed seafood salad, clams, salmon and bacalao, a salted cod dish. Of course, a cavalcade of desserts follows, thankfully of the non-fish variety.

Every household is responsible for bringing some component of the feast, and it’s my Aunt Cindy’s dish that I enjoy the most every year. She has offered up the recipe, and fittingly for an Italian celebration, it’s the pasta we start out dinner with. 

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Pasta with tuna sauce 

• ½ cup olive oil
• ½ large onion, chopped
• 1-2 tsp garlic, chopped
• ½ cup parsley, chopped
• 24 oz jar tomato puree
• 2 cans Genova tuna (in olive oil) 
• Water or broth to dilute
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Spaghetti, fettuccine or your pasta of choice

Instructions:

• Add olive oil to a sauce pan and sauté onions until they are browned and then add garlic
• Once you can smell the garlic, add tomato sauce and a little water or broth to thin it a bit
• Add salt and pepper to taste 
• Bring sauce to a boil and then turn it down to simmer for at least half an hour.
• Add the tuna and parsley and simmer for 10-15 minutes before serving over your favorite pasta. 

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The Karamu Feast of Kwanzaa

Detroiter Lawrielle West grew up celebrating Christmas with her family but as she got older, she realized she wanted to get away from gift-giving and focus more on community building. Six years ago, she tagged along to a Kwanzaa celebration and found a holiday tradition that fit just right. 

Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration where families and communities come together to honor and celebrate African and African-American culture while cultivating those bonds. Each day, celebrants light a candle on the Kinara, or candle holder, to represent one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. 

These principles are: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith).

As a community organizer, West says Kwanzaa is an embodiment of the principles she tries to live by all year round. 

“Even if people aren’t using the same words for it, a lot of us are already embodying the principles every day,” she said. 

For her first Kwanzaa celebration, she couldn’t find any products and had to rely on internet searches and recommendations from other Detroiters. That experience led her to start her own business, KwanzaaMe, a lifestyle brand helping African-Americans celebrate the spirit of Kwanzaa all year through products and programs. 

Now 30 and five years into her business, West is creating space for people like her, who are heads of households, to explore adding traditions like Kwanzaa. 

Kwanzaa runs from Dec. 26 – Jan. 1 and the sixth day, which falls on New Year’s Eve, is the Karamu feast. It often features a variety of African or Afro-Caribbean dishes like jollof rice, collards, gumbo, feijoada and black-eyed peas (which are traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve anyway for good luck). But West encourages individuals to plan a menu that their family will enjoy. Her favorite thing to serve at her annual Karamu brunch is chicken and waffles. 

“The important thing is it honors the traditions of the African ancestors before us and gives us an opportunity to try foods that tie back to the motherland.”

Here are recipes from West for a traditional Kwanzaa meal of white rice, collard greens, black eyed peas and stewed meat. 

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Black eyed peas

• 4 cups black-eyed peas (fresh or frozen)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp butter
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 tsp Cajun seasoning
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions:

• Sauté onion and garlic in butter until softened.
• Add broth, peas, Cajun seasoning, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil.
• Simmer for 30-60 minutes, or until peas are tender.
• Adjust seasoning and serve.

Collard Greens

• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 lbs collard greens, cleaned and chopped (2 large bunches)
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1/2 cup jalapeno pepper juice (use until needed)
• Hot sauce (optional)

Instructions:

• Sauté onion in olive oil for 5-6 minutes, then add garlic and cook for one more minute.
• Add water, paprika, salt, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then simmer.
• Add collard greens, cover, and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
• Halfway through, add vinegar 
• Taste and adjust seasoning, jalapeno pepper juice, or with salt or hot sauce. Serve and enjoy!

Neckbone/Brisket/Oxtails

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 1/2 lbs onions, sliced
• 3 1/2 lbs brisket, necklines, or oxtails
• Kosher salt & pepper
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups beef broth
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce or tamari
• 1/2 lb mushrooms

Instructions:

• Put mushrooms, garlic and onions in crockpot and season with salt and pepper, add oil, and sauté until lightly caramelized.
• Season brisket with salt and pepper, then sear in a hot pan until browned. Transfer to a crockpot fat side up, on top of sautéed veggies.
• Mix beef broth, Worcestershire, and soy sauce; pour over brisket.
• Cook: Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours until tender.
• Rest & serve: Let rest for 20 minutes, then slice or shred.

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Lessons of Hanukkah 

For Danielle Perczyk, Hanukkah is the perfect time to teach her children life lessons that resonate long after the holiday. 

“We do all the things, but we put our own little twist on it,” said the Boston Edison resident and mother of three. “As our kids get older, we get then more and more involved. Every year our Hanukkah traditions grow with them and their abilities.”

Perczyk has two daughters, 7 and 8, and a 3-month-old son. Growing up mixed and with multiple religions in her household (Black and non-denominal Christian on her dad’s side and white and Jewish on her mother’s side), she was exposed to different holidays and traditions. It made her realize that at the core of the holidays is love and coming together with your community. 

They also do other classic Hanukkah activities: eight days of celebrations that can include going to community festivals, gathering with neighbors, family and friends, opening small gifts each night and lighting a menorah for each person in the household. 

The traditions of Hanukkah date back to 2,300 years ago in ancient Israel where Jews took shelter in a Jerusalem temple during a war with the Greeks. The menorah, a giant structure in the temple, had to be lit with purified olive oil. The holiday celebrates the miracle of a day’s worth of olive oil lasting eight nights and the Jews winning the war. 

As a result, the traditional foods around Hanukkah center around olive oil: sufganiyot, a fried donut reminiscent of a paczki, and latkes, or potato pancakes that are all fried and enjoyed during the holiday. 

Perczyk has added her own take on the traditional: she makes fried chicken in olive oil and adds garlic, spices and pastrami to her latkes, which she likes to serve with a sour cream dip and apple sauce. 

And she’s sure to get her daughters involved in the cooking, using these traditional foods as a way to teach them life skills. 

“Sharing their heritage while teaching them kitchen skills in the process is very important,” she said. 

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Latkes with pastrami and garlic 

• 3lbs white potatoes shredded
• 1 medium onion shredded or diced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 to 3 cloves minced to taste in garlic press
• 3 eggs
• 3 table spoons matzo meal…(or flour..)
• 12 oz of chopped and browned pastrami

Instructions:

• Mix all the ingredients and pour into a strainer, so that the moisture secretes out of the potatoes and you can drain it. 
• Take a quarter cup or so of the mix and press it slightly together. Spoon it into a pan with heated olive oil to brown and cook on both sides. 
• Let cool just slightly so as not to burn yourself and enjoy with a dollop of apple sauce and/or sour cream.
• A fun quick dip choice is to add everything but the bagel seasoning, green goddess seasoning (my favorite), 21-season salute, french onion mix, or other seasoning blends of your choice to sour cream.

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Christmas in the Eastern Orthodox tradition

My cousin Paula’s family on her mom’s side is Greek, so she had different Christmases to celebrate. The family gets together on Christmas and, while the celebrations are similar to the ones with my Italian side, the food is on a level of its own. There’s always spinach pie, cheese pies, and grape leaves. They always say the Lord’s prayer in Greek before eating. And then they have an evening of games. 

Desserts include traditional cookies like koulouria (braided Greek butter cookies), melamokarona (egg-shaped with flour, olive oil and honey), kourabiedes (almond butter biscuits coated in powdered sugar) and baklava. 

There’s church service for some families and other families don’t celebrate Christmas until January. Many Eastern Orthodox followers celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 and marks the birth of Jesus Christ according to the Julian calendar (there’s a 13-day difference). According to the Pew Research Center, about 12% of Christians around the world identify as Orthodox. 

“It’s just about everyone being together in a loving environment, spending time together celebrating Jesus’ birth and sharing in the joy with the people you love the most,” she said. 

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Tiropites (cheese triangles)

• 1 large roll filo dough
• 24 oz cottage cheese curd
• ½ lb feta cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp farina 
• Butter (for between layers of filo) 

Instructions: 

• Strain cottage cheese and squeeze excess liquid from feta cheese.
• Beat eggs, add cottage cheese, crumbled feta and farina. Mix well. 
• In a pan, melt butter and coat between layers of filo dough. 
• To see how to fold up the triangles, check out this video. 
• Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and allow to cool before eating