From sticky rice to delicious desserts, Northwest Asian Weekly staff members shared what they and their family like to eat during the holidays. Here’s a sampling:
Khao piak sen (Photo by Nina Huang)
Pig trotter (Photo by Nina Huang)
Khao piak sen or Lao chicken noodle soup is probably my favorite Lao dish! My husband’s family, who is from Laos, introduced me to this dish years ago, and I fell in love with it. My mother-in-law makes the noodles from scratch and they have a sticky, chewy texture since it’s made with tapioca flour, and the broth is made with chicken bones (Costco’s rotisserie chicken works great!). It’s the perfect comfort food on a cold winter day, and we often eat it the day after Thanksgiving because we all know the turkey bones are the best part. Also, my dad has made traditional Taiwanese braised pig’s feet since I was a kid. We would eat it during birthday celebrations, special occasions, or just a normal day. It’s very flavorful and delicious to eat with noodles or rice. It’s definitely the perfect comfort food.
— Nina Huang
Non-spicy Korean BBQ (Photo by Kai Curry)
We have a multicultural household and family, so our holiday foods are either Asian or European. Mostly, we rely upon the excellent cooks in our family to dish up something. My husband doesn’t eat spicy food, which rules out a lot of both of our favorite Asian foods, and I don’t eat much meat, so that usually means a delicious vegetable dish, like quiche or samosas, and a yummy dessert, like German kuchen (cake, for us, almond-flavored). We also love (a modified) Korean BBQ. Our Chinese family members eat a traditional American holiday dinner, with turkey and potluck. However, if it’s a celebratory friends’ night, then it’s hot pot with tofu, meats, taro, and lotus.
— Kai Curry
Store bought pie and homemade pie (Photo by Sun Lee Chang)
During the holidays, our dinner table is covered with a colorful assortment of foods from Korea, Taiwan, and traditional American fare, such as turkey and mashed potatoes. Everyone’s favorite, by far, is the tradition of having one store-bought pie and one that is homemade. This year, it was berry pie from the store and apple pie made by my sister-in-law.
— Sun Lee Chang
A hot pot spread (Photo by Becky Chan)
Day after Thanksgiving meal from hot pot (below)leftovers (Photo by Becky Chan)
I spent Thanksgiving in Dallas at my sister’s. My family loves hotpot. Since a few of the nieces and nephews were not around, we had a small gathering to enjoy a hotpot dinner with two pots—one for the carnivores and one for the herbivores. On the day after Thanksgiving, my sister, using the leftovers from the hotpot dinner the night before, made a kimchi tofu pot, stir-fried meat & vegetable, and pan fried fish cake with lotus root. My brother, who recently found a new love in Chinese cooking, contributed pork knuckles with fermented beancurd and peanuts. Yes, my family loves to eat.
— Becky Chan
Homemade vegetable soup and bread (Photo by Mahlon Meyer)
During the holidays, my wife likes to cook homemade vegetable soup and homemade bread. When she was cooking this batch, one day, as I was returning home, I could smell the simmering garlic and herbs that wafted out into the street.
— Mahlon Meyer
Turon (Photo by Rizanino “Riz” Reyes)
Filipino family gatherings over the holidays usually means excessive amounts of food and it’s become kind of a joke in our family to “bring your Tupperware” because there’s almost always more than enough and hosts will often insist you take some home. On top of the usual lechon, pancit, hamon, and kaldereta, we usually have extra portions to take home, there’s almost always no dessert left over. The bibingka and leche flan are very traditional desserts during Christmas and are always devoured fully including my favorite to bring to parties—turon! Of course many expect piles of lumpia for any Filipino gathering, but the similarly prepared dessert composed of ripe saba banana rolled in brown sugar with strips of sweet jackfruit, and a dollop of purple ube wrapped in a spring roll wrapper, deep-fried and then rolled in a caramel coating, is easy to make ahead of time and frozen as the wrapping can be very time consuming. This way, you can pull however many you want from the freezer, have it thaw heading to the party, and kindly ask the host to have a pot of hot oil or the air-fryer ready to cook with when you arrive!
— Rizanino “Riz” Reyes
Wayne Chan’s wife’s famous sticky rice (Photo by Wayne Chan)
This is my wife’s famous “sticky rice.” She makes it every year to go along with the Thanksgiving turkey, and it disappears before the stuffing and mashed potatoes. We never have any leftovers because while she makes a lot of it, if we don’t finish it off for Thanksgiving, everybody asks if they can take some home with them! It’s our own twist on Thanksgiving and sometimes I feel the pilgrims were missing out because they couldn’t savor this special dish!
— Wayne Chan
A mix of American and Chinese food (Photo by Juliet Fang)
During the holidays, my family likes to enjoy both traditional American and Chinese food to celebrate the backgrounds of my brother and I as first-generation Chinese immigrants. Usually this means hot pot, dumplings, and egg tarts, along with holiday ham, apple pie, and sugar cookies shaped like snowflakes. I love eating both American and Chinese food because it allows me to taste the best of both worlds!
— Juliet Fang