Holy Dishes

A festival is nothing without a feast. Here’s a guide to five unforgettable holiday dishes by five local chefs.

BY RONY CAMILE

Contrary to popular belief, there are several other food-related holidays besides Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrated in the United States.

For instance, Islam’s biggest holiday is Ramadan, which in 2022 will be celebrated from April 2 to May 2. Here though, it’s the lack of food that makes it special. Ramadan is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, reflection, prayer and community building.

For some Buddhists, one most significant holiday is the Chinese Spring Festival or New Year, which will fall on February 1. And while such holidays are “holy,” when it comes down to it, it’s almost always about the feast no matter where you are in the world.

While interviewing the chefs and business owners in this piece I found some common threads: a passion for community and sharing and lots of rice. It’s easy to see why this is the case: Rice can be prepared and presented in various ways and flavors, which makes it so useful and filling.

These days, I don’t get to eat it as much, but each bite still brings a cherished moment of memories. And although I’m watching my carbs, my wife, Jenn, a native New Hampshirite, has delegated me to rice-cooking duty in our household because I make it the proper way.

Here is how these four cultures celebrate their holidays through food across our region. >>

Mami Luz’s Café Colombian/Puerto Rican | Tyngsborough, MA

Although Mami Luz’s Café Espresso and Martini Bar is just over the New Hampshire border on the banks of the Merrimack River in Tyngsborough, the owners Heidy and Mike Santiago have called Nashua, New Hampshire, home for just over two decades.

Mike, born and raised in Lowell, Mass., describes himself as a “sort-of Rican.” His parents are from Puerto Rico. Heidy hails from El Valle, Colombia, and arrived in New Hampshire in August of 1997 at the age of 12 with her siblings and her mother, Luz Millian, for whom the cafe is named.

In early 2020 just as the Covid-19 pandemic made it to our shores, the Santiagos were already opening up shop in Tyngsborough, acquiring necessary permits when state officials issued lockdown mandates. So, the couple stayed home and started cooking, testing and perfecting their menu in their home kitchen.

“We had so much time to perfect things,” says Mike Santiago, who worked in the restaurant business in the ‘90s in Lowell. Still he was surprised when it all came together. He had put his passion for cooking on pause for nearly 20 years, working for Nashua as a police dispatcher and parking clerk before jumping back as a chef a year ago.

Heidy and Mike Santiago at Mami Luz’s Cafe

Growing up in Colombia, Heidy recalls the holidays in her household making sweet buñuelos, a deep-fried dough fritter with cheese, and natilla, a Colombian-style sweet custard infused with cinnamon.

“It all depends on the region (of Colombia) you’re from,” Heidy says. “And each family is different. But for us, buñuelos and natillas were a must at our house,” she says. These two items are served together with some melted chocolate to create a beautiful harmony in your mouth.

Both Heidy and Alex Montoya, a bartender at Mami Luz who also hails from the same region, recall the days leading up to Christmas as a spiritual community event. From December 16 to December 24 marks the time of “novenas,” a tradition of devotional praying. And a week before Christmas with a plate in hand, Mami Millian would send Heidy and her siblings off to visit the neighbors for a neighborhood dish exchange to kick-start the nativity season leading up to the arrival of Baby Jesus on Christmas Eve.

“That’s the one thing I miss about Colombia. It was the best because we would go from house to house and collect gifts on the 24th,” Heidy says.

Pollo guisado with salad and tostones

Mike Santiago says that his most cherished memory in the kitchen during the holidays is helping his mother prepare sofrito, the aromatic base for most Puerto Rican dishes.

A basic sofrito calls for peppers, onions, garlic, oil and fresh herbs finely chopped in a blender or food processor into a paste. While this paste has different interpretations and names across the Caribbean Islands and Latin America, it’s the base to any dish and packs a ton of flavor.

He then creates pollo guisado or Puerto Rican chicken stew using that base. It’s a braised-chicken stew slow-cooked in tomato sauce, peppers and potatoes that’s served with (you guessed it) white rice along with salad and tostones (fried plantains). It’s one of the dishes the Santiagos introduced to their community in December.

And for an after-dinner dessert drink — coquito, a sweet coconut-based alcoholic beverage often called Puerto Rican eggnog. The creamy drink is infused with cinnamon and nutmeg, sweetened condensed milk, rum, coconut milk and cream of coconut.

To mark their first anniversary in business, it is through these foods that the Santiagos offered that treasured sense of community and shared their culture.

Pho Golden Bowl Vietnamese/Chinese | Manchester

A dish of popiah is prepared for Chinese New Year.

For Samantha Diep, manager of Pho Golden Bowl in Manchester, holidays meant honoring the deities and helping her grandmother and aunt feed their large family.

As Buddhists, there are two major holidays that Diep’s family celebrates. One is Chinese New Year (February 1) and the other is the August Moon Festival.

“For Chinese New Year, my grandmother had this one dish — she cut all the vegetables you can imagine into little pieces, and then she would stir fry all of them,” Diep says. “She would then take all of it to a big pot and combine all together, then roll it into what looked like a big burrito. This dish, called popiah (also spelled bò pía), could be described as a giant spring roll.

“That’s one of the biggest traditional foods in my life. It’s one of a kind,” she says. “When you eat the dish you think of your family,” Diep says. Another dish made for the Chinese New Year holiday is a che troi nuoc, a sweet sticky rice ball in ginger syrup. “It symbolizes a unique union like the whole family united,” she explains.

“Most Asian people like to keep their culture and tradition alive; we hope to keep it alive for the next generation. Even though my sister’s kids were born here, they all know that Chinese New Year is the time to go, to see Mom and to visit our family. And that’s the kind of tradition that we hope to last forever.”

Samantha Diep

Diep runs the Vietnam and Chinese food restaurant on Lake Avenue just across the street from the SNHU Arena with her sister Chan Loi and brother-inlaw Frank Loi. This cozy restaurant has nine tables and bright yellow walls lined with Asian-themed artistry and traditional red money pouches on the walls. The clean and open-concept kitchen produces lots of pho and Vietnamese cuisine. Pho (pronounced “fa”) is considered the national dish of Vietnam. It’s a soup consisting of hot broth, rice noodles, aromatic spices and herbs, and meat. While the Diep family grew up in the Cho Lon (China Town) section of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam, they can trace roots to the Fujian Province of China, located on the coast of the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea. Their grandparents and parents relocated to Vietnam in the 1930s. The family arrived in New Hampshire in 1993 and has been in business since 2005.

Habibi Mediterranean Café Egyptian | Portsmouth

While growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, Enes Abd helped her father run his bakery by taking orders from customers. Decades later, she and her family are doing the same thing running Habibi Cafe. Except the backdrop isn’t the Nile Delta, home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It’s actually in Portsmouth, home to one of the state’s oldest neighborhoods to be settled by Europeans: Strawbery Banke.

As a practicing Muslim, Abd and her family actively celebrate in the holy month of Ramadan by not eating from sunrise to sunset and engaging in reflection, prayer and community building.

Abd especially enjoys the sustaining food prepared to be consumed each day after sundown, like a beetroot and milk smoothie. “It has all the vitamins you need after a long day of not eating,” she says.

Tabouli and lentil soup is another good way to break the daily fast. “It’s always on a plate because they have all different kinds of vegetables,” she says.

Energy date balls is another beloved treat, mainly composed of pure sweet, fiber-filled dates.”You just put it on the mixer to make it softer, and you add some nuts to it, and you add some coconut and a little bit of vanilla [extract] to give it a nice flavor and smell. Then you kind of roll it into balls,” she says. It can be consumed as is or you can add it to warm milk, similar to a hot chocolate melt.

All these foods include an ingredient that makes everything taste better: hunger after a long day of fasting. “In my opinion, it’s just the best thing ever. I always tell my mom (when I was young) at the end of the day, when I break my fast with milk and beet, it is not going into my stomach; it’s going into my heart. That’s how much I love it,” Abd says.

Aneka Market Indonesian | Rochester

Not too far from Portsmouth, up the road off Route 16, you’ll find a shop sharing a church space serving a growing Indonesian community. While nearly 86% of Indonesians practice Islam, there are some crossover foods when it comes to celebrations. For instance, whether it’s Ramadan or Christmas, butter cookies are a must in any Indonesian home, says Jane Albertina, manager of the Aneka Market in Rochester.

Indonesia is home to nearly 1,300 ethnic groups, says Albertina. For nearly 350 years, Indonesia was held under Dutch colonial rule until 1945. The influence of the European nation is so vast that today both nations have the same legal system — and a love of butter cookies.

Aneka Market offers a variety of ethnic snacks as well as the ingredients needed for just about any Indonesian feast.

“During Christmas or during Ramadan, you would make this at home, or bake it using the instant dough mix,” Albertina said.

Albertina and her husband, Ronald Politton, came to New Hampshire from Bandung, West Java. Politton is a minister with New England City Blessing Church, a non-denominational church in Boston and Rochester. The shop, which launched in November of 2020, is located in the basement of the Rochester church.

“We have so many different tribes and groups and different dishes, but another thing we all love is fried noodle and fried chicken,” she says.

While not necessarily a holiday food, one dish that is a must for milestone celebrations is Nasi Tumpeng — a towering cone-shaped yellow-rice dish accompanied by vegetables, poultry and meats. Striking in presentation, it’s made from rice mixed with turmeric to make it yellow. This symbolizes prosperity, says Albertina.

According to local news reports, there are about 2,000 Indonesians calling Somersworth home as of spring 2021. It is also the home to the Little Indonesia Project, a long-term project to connect Indonesian communities with the Granite State and beyond through expressions of art, culture and economic opportunities via a vibrant, revitalized business district.

Ansanm Haitian | Milford

Ansanm, the Haitian Creole word for “together,” is the brainchild of Chef Chris Viaud, chef/owner of Greenleaf in Milford, and his family. They currently operate it as a monthly pop-up under the Greenleaf umbrella, offering traditional Haitian dishes.

According to Viaud, The cooking style used in Haiti and in their dishes blends influences of French and Caribbean styles guided by the back-story of African heritage and a hint of French complexity.

Soup Joumou, a mildly spicy traditional Haitian pumpkin soup, illustrates that complexity — not just for its delicious taste, kick and the various vegetables, pastas and meats in it — but because of its history. When the French occupied present-day Haiti for nearly a century, the soup was prepared by enslaved Haitians for the landowners — yet, they were forbidden to taste it.

Once Haiti became the first liberated Black republic in 1804, the new emperor of Haiti officially declared it the national soup.

“We’ve been having that soup every January 1 for 217 years,” says Viaud. Making and serving it is like “calling every person around the world that is denied freedom, denied dignity, to join on this table and share the soup with us, just as we did on January 1, 1804,” said Dominique Dupuy, Haiti’s ambassador to UNESCO on a recent episode of NPR’s Weekend Edition. The

United Nations agency awarded the soup protected cultural heritage status in December.

It was the first time that any cultural item from Haiti received this sort of status.

“It’s just like a reminder of who we are, where we come from, what we enjoy eating and what brings us back home,” says Viaud.

Chef/Owner Chris Viaud (far right) and his crew — above are just a few of the Haitian specialties they prepare.

Soup Joumou

HAITIAN SQUASH SOUP

Soup Joumou was awarded by the United Nations for its cultural heritage status.

Note: This soup can be made as a vegetarian dish if desired or beef stew meat can be added.

Yields 8 servings, 2 cups per serving

Ingredients:

1 ½ pounds of beef stew meat (optional) 2 tablespoons oil 1 medium yellow onion, diced 3 cloves of garlic, crushed 4 stalks of celery, diced About 2 pounds of butternut squash, peeled, cut into ½ inch cubes 1 cup of leeks 2 large carrots, peeled, cut into small pieces 2 golden potatoes, peeled, cut into ½ inch pieces sliced thin ½ of a head of green cabbage 1 turnip, peeled, cut into ½ inch pieces 2 stems of parsley 4 sprigs of thyme 6-8 cups of broth (vegetable, chicken or beef) Juice of 1 lime ½ pound of rigatoni 2 tablespoons of butter Salt and pepper to taste Cooking twine

Cooking Instructions:

1. Add broth and squash to a large pot and bring to a boil. Cook until squash is soft.

2. In a separate pot, cook the rigatoni al dente (do not cook all the way through). a. Make a bouquet with the parsley and thyme, tied with the cooking twine.

3. While squash is cooking, in a different large pot, add oil and allow to get hot. (If not using meat, add oil to pot and skip to step 4.) a. Add the meat and brown on all sides (add seasonings of choice). b. Let cook for about 10 minutes. c. Remove meat from pot and set aside, leaving oil in the pot.

4. Add onions, garlic and leeks to hot oil and let cook until soft and golden brown. a. Add the celery next, stirring frequently. b. Add carrots and stir.

5. Add the cooked squash to a blender or food processor and puree the squash. a. Reserve the water in which the squash was boiled (you’ll be using that water in the next steps).

6. Add the pureed squash to onion/leek/ carrots mixture. a. Add in reserved liquid from the squash to thin out the soup to your liking. (This soup can range from thin to very thick so add the liquid accordingly). If too thick,

add more of the reserved liquid or some broth. b. Bring to a boil. c. Add in the potatoes, turnip and parsley bouquet. d. Let cook for 6-8 minutes, then add in the cabbage. e. Cover and simmer for an additional 15 minutes.

7. Add in the cooked meat (optional), then stir. a. Add in the cooked pasta and lime juice, then stir. b. Let simmer for another 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. c. Add butter, then stir.