Cooking the Holidays for a Two-Cuisine Family
Notes from the year the turkey and the steamed fish shared a table, and both were better for it.
By Cyman Huang · · 6 min read
Savor the Holidays has 150 recipes in it because our holidays needed roughly that many. One side of the table expected roast and stuffing. The other expected a whole fish, head on, pointed at the eldest guest.
Stop trying to make one menu
The mistake I made for years was blending: soy in the gravy, five-spice in the pie. Some of it worked. Most of it flattened two distinct meals into one apologetic one. The fix was to let both cuisines be themselves and plan the oven around it.
“A holiday menu is an oven schedule wearing a nice outfit.”
The schedule that finally worked
Cold and make-ahead dishes on the two days before. Braises the morning of, because they improve sitting. Anything steamed or stir-fried in the last fifteen minutes, while the roast rests. The stovetop, not the oven, is the real bottleneck.
What I learned writing the book: nobody remembers the dish that took six hours. They remember whether the cook sat down.
- holidays
- family
- menu planning
