I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I love the festive spirit that comes with it: the Christmas markets, the frosty weather that is perfect for beanies, all the Christmas lights and all the Christmas dinners and events going around.

However, come the week of Christmas itself, I’m always left wondering how I’ll be spending my time in what seems to have turned into a ghost town, with everyone and their mother having gone to spend time with their families.

Luckily for me, my friend Juan, who is Indian¹, and his family have adopted me for the last two Christmases! I want to take a moment to share the wonderful food that I had while I was with them.

Home Away From Home

A Warm Greeting

The moment I walked into Juan’s home, I was greeted with the fragrant smell of biryani prepared by Juan’s dad, Estimado Ronaldo². I’m assuming that the word biryani has already conjured up an image in your mind, and that you associate this dish with India, but did you know that the dish has its origins in Persia, and that non-Indian variants of it are heavily consumed in Gulf countries? In fact one of the most frustrating things I find is that when I make a biryani, I’m told that it isn’t a biryani, because the concept of a biryani is heavily associated with India³. Just so we’re all on the same page, a biryani is a type of rice dish where the rice is cooked separately to the meat and sauce. This is different to a pilau or plov (polo in Farsi), where the rice and meat are usually cooked together⁴. The flavors of biryani are typically more complex as a consequence of the cooking process, whereas I’d describe a pilau’s flavor profile as being firmly in “comfort food” territory.

Now, I bring you back from all this exposition to the fact that this is the only dish I forgot to take a photo of during my trip! The only explanation that I can come up for this mishap, is that the pull to eat was so intense that I was momentarily placed under a trance as I cleaned my plate spotless.

An Omelette With Extra Dimensions

If you thought that love has a limit, then you need to think again. Estimado Ronaldo made me breakfast the next morning (which I felt very embarrassed about, given my genetic predisposition to taarof – an extreme act of self-suppression).

I don’t normally shy away from savory breakfasts, but they tend to be very simple: eggs with salt, or mahveh (Evazi fermented anchovy paste). If I’m feeling very fancy, then I make myself a nice portion of Turkish eggs, or I might use pomegranate molasses and ancho chilli flakes to give my eggs an almost bacon-like aroma. However, it is very rare for me to use spices, herbs or onions with my eggs.

It was joy to experience an omelette with an Indian flavor profile. You can see below a sad piece of sourdough that I was trying to have with my eggs… what I really wanted to do was to have the omelette with a few different chutneys, and perfectly soft naan bread.

Kebabs With an Oompf

I’ve always maintained that we Iranians have the best kebabs, and as far as such statements go, this is a fairly uncontroversial one. However, I also make the mistake of judging others when they present me with kebabs that are different to my expectations: to me a kebab is always meat barbecued on a skewer. However, in India, kebab almost exclusively refers to minced meat. For my first lunch meal there, we had Shami Kebabs. While the concept of this is similar to the Shami that we have in Iran (and in Evaz, where we have a variant made from fish as well!), the texture is very different: ours are very soft, and they almost melt in your mouth, whereas these were much firmer, like burger patties. They tasted very good, and as I was going through them I realized that this trip is going to be filled with bold and strong flavors. The vegetables consisted of sweet potatoes, eggplants and peppers, spiced with Indian flavors.

Soups are Underrated

I get the sense, based on the people in my circle, that soup isn’t exciting. I’ve only heard of cravings for soup when people are sick, which is a massive stain on the PR campaign for soup.

I’m the complete opposite. To me, a soup can be more important than the main⁵: they are warm, fragrant and above all really tasty.

So when Juan’s mum, Auntie Camina Oscura⁶, told us that we were having a carrot and coriander soup for dinner, I was absolutely delighted. It was a carrot and coriander soup, perfect for a cold winter night (though I was blessed with highs of 14 degrees throughout my entire trip!).

The soup was really rich, and I felt that with every spoon, that every surface of my mouth was coated with goodness. We were also served chicken thighs, marinated with Indian spices. These were also excellent, but it was the soup that I kept going back for

Fish Curry Blew My Mind

I will not lie, the food was already so good that I couldn’t possibly imagine it getting better. This was until I tried Estimado Ronaldo’s fish curry. At first, major alarms were going off in my head: fish… in a curry? What kind of crazy nonsense is that. There’s no way this can be good. Fish disintegrates in the mouth…

All the above thoughts were quickly put down with my first bite of the dish. The curry itself was the best I’d ever had, and the fish did not take away from this, in fact I’d argue it added a lot to it. The texture was like that of perfectly cooked salmon: soft and neither rubbery nor chewy.

Of all the dishes that I had on this trip, this is the one that impressed me the most, and seriously challenged my beliefs of what can go in a curry.

Very important to highlight the side dish that Auntie Camina Oscura had prepared as a side to the curry: Aloo Gobi. If you and cauliflower have a loveless relationship, then show it some love and make this dish. All the spices and heat from the chilli are guaranteed to spice up your relationship, and if I dare say, save it, maybe even build it anew, and take you to places you never thought were possible! And yes, you may be raising your eyebrows looking at the photo below: that’s cheating! You have potatoes in there too! I say that if it’s consensual, then what you have is a beautiful throuple that you’ll never get bored of.

Mattar Chaat Is Mattar Chaat Awesome

I must admit that I found both the aloo gobi and fish curry spicy. Not intolerable, but they definitely lingered on my tongue for longer than I was expecting. In retrospect, I now see this as divine intervention to train my taste buds to enjoy my next meal: Mattar Chaat.

The base for this curry is white peas, called mattar. Chaat is a term that refers to savory appetizers in India, where you have a main ingredient (chickpeas, peas, potato, etc…) and a surrounding army of spices and side-textures, which include things like deep-fried crispy bread (puri). This chaat was much simpler than others that I’ve tried, but no less flavorful: it was served like a curry with an intense and spicy sauce. The texture was unlike that of green peas, where the peas themselves burst when you bite into them. This was chewy, but not hard. The closest texture I can think of is that of almost cooked dough… you know when it’s still chewy?

This was so tasty, and I’m sure even the most ardent meat lovers would consider a vegetarian life after trying this.

One Can Never Forget Paneer

For my final meal, we had a few delicious dishes: a chicken curry, roasted sweet potatoes and peppers, a lentil curry (arhar (split pigeon pea) daal) and a paneer curry (kaju (cashew) paneer). The latter was lovely, and you could tell that compared to all the other curries we’d had, this was the creamiest, most likely due to the cashews in the recipe. 

This was a phenomenal dish, and a really nice surprise since paneer curries that I’ve had before simply feel like the meat has just been replaced by the paneer. There was no disconnect in flavors in this dish. Everything worked together to create a lovely sensation with every bite, and an explosion of flavors. This was another wonder made by Auntie Camina Oscura.

A Christmas Feast

If you haven’t been blown away by the food you’ve seen thus far, be prepared for more. Juan’s family are part of a closely knit group of Indian families in Glasgow, who gather round each year at one of their houses for a massive Christmas day lunch. I’ve been to two of these thus far, and as an external observer I understand why Christmas is such a sacred time for Juan: he’s basically spent almost every year of his life with the same people for Christmas! Despite me being a guest, I was made to feel at home both times by all the families, and I also felt like I was a part of the extended family!

Since the number of guests is large, I understand that the Christmas lunch is expected to function as a sort of potluck, as each guest had brought something with them. However, the Auntie hosting us, whom I’ll refer to as K9, went overboard with the food she made. Like me, I surmise that she suffers from a disorder where the mere idea of a guest finding the slightest thing an inch off of absolute perfection, causes severe anxiety and heart palpitations. All the food was delicious and very well presented. My understanding is that the whole household had been busy in the kitchen since 7 am, and since lunch was served at 4 pm, you can only imagine the effort that went into every dish! This takes serious commitment, and it’s a character trait that I do not take for granted. I will forever be grateful to Auntie K9 and her family for hosting me for Christmas.

The theme of the Christmas lunch was French… so allez!

Starters

We were seriously spoilt for Christmas. This started with a delightful and bright cream of asparagus soup. Bright doesn’t just refer to the color here: as soon as the first drop touched my lips I felt like it was spring again. An absolutely perfect dish.

We were then presented with a duck salad. The pieces of duck were cooked to perfection. I found that the salad dressing brought out the more boring ingredients of the salad (looking at you lettuce) to life! And the nuts did their jobs, bringing me back to earth from my high after the delicious asparagus soup.

Prior to the main course, we nibbled on chips that we dipped in molten Camembert and other cheeses.

Mains

The main’s took how spoilt we were to the level of royalty. 

The first dish I tried was pommes boulangére (Literally: Baker’s potatoes), which consists of layers of onions and potato, both thinly sliced. The crust at the top is from molten cheese. The potatoes were perfectly sliced, and as I didn’t see anyone wearing any bandages, I can only conclude that the mandolin didn’t claim any victims that day. My only gripe with the dish is that, being French, the onions were cooked in a French style: really soft with an intense onion flavor (similar to the onions they put on top of onion soup), but with no Maillard reaction. Since I’m used to my onions either raw, deeply caramelized or crispy, I didn’t indulge in the pommes boulangére.

Following this was the bean cassoulet, brought by one of the other families as a vegetarian option. I don’t recall much from the dish except that I thought it had lots of potential. I thought the beans were well prepared, and that the sauce was flavorful. There was nothing jarring about the dish. The only thing it needed was a bit of salt to highlight all the hidden flavors.

The star of the show was the venison bourguignon⁷, prepared by Estimado Ronaldo. The flavor here was really deep, and I’m struggling to find more words to describe it. I could definitely tell that red wine was used in this dish, but there was no hint of alcohol anywhere. Sometimes, you’d get a really nice piece of carrot and you’d want another bite, but other times it was just… rich — a flavor that you just can’t get tired of, no matter how hard you try.

Finally, the non-vegetarians had a salmon filet topped with a dill and caper sauce. At first I was hesitant because the salmon looked fairly white, but as it was cooked to perfection, there was no hint of “fishiness” whatsoever. The dill-caper sauce paired with it really nicely.

In addition to the mains, there were a good selection of side dishes: carrot salad, polenta, crunchy garlic bread, celeriac coleslaw and honey glazed Brussel sprouts. They were all good, but the Brussel sprouts were, by far, the best. Much like soup, I’ve gathered that Brussel sprouts are really unpopular… which is perfect for me as I get to indulge every Christmas!

Dessert

For dessert, we had the monstrosity that is Christmas pudding, and a rum and raisin⁸ ice cream made by Estimado Ronaldo. The latter was tasty, though I’d have used much less rum if I were making it myself.

We also had two cakes: a carrot cake with Christmas spices prepared by me, and a chocolate banana loaf prepared by Juan. I thought my cake turned out OK, though was thrilled that it was very popular. Juan was very disappointed with his, as he’d used salted butter by mistake in the recipe! I personally didn’t find the cake salty, and went for multiple rounds, though I would agree that it would have turned out better with normal butter, plus only a bit of salt to bring out the flavor of the chocolate. 

To end this massive meal, we were served creme brûlée, an excellent taste to leave in our mouths as our brains were left to digest all the goodness that we had just consumed.

Till Another Christmas!

I admit that this post is late… fourth months at least. However, I’ve now committed to writing regularly, so there should be another Christmas post soon… since time flies and we’re already 4 months into the year!

I’m immensely grateful for Juan and his family for hosting me at their place, and for all the wonderful food that I’ve tried there.

Funnily enough, prior to this trip I was falling out of love with Indian food… but I’ve learnt that it was the Indian food from restaurants that I was falling out of love with. The real stuff you find in people’s homes, and it is unlikely that I’ll find myself not liking it anytime soon!

1. I see your judgmental mind thinking “but Juan doesn’t sound like an Indian name” 🧐. I will have to say that you’re probably still doing much better than chatGPT, whom when prompted for more creative blog post title ideas than the one I went for, suggested “a curry-our Christmas” as one of the top options! ↩︎
2. This one is a pseudonym ↩︎
3. This is not the only frustration… it’s the same with Halwa which has a different meaning in almost every country you visit! Examples are the Evazi Halva from Southern Iran, and Afghan Halwa. ↩︎
4. Note that even with these definitions, these terms are used interchangeably. ↩︎
5. Though I must admit that I also, like most, cannot see soups as replacing a main ↩︎
6. Also a pseudonym ↩︎
7. Ordinarily, this is a dish cooked with beef. ↩︎
8. Which, thanks to Juan, I can no longer read innocently ↩︎