In East Indian homes, Christmas doesn’t begin on Christmas Day. It begins in the quiet weeks before, when the kitchen turns into the warmest room in the house, and the sound of a wooden spoon beating butter into sugar becomes the unofficial starter bell of the festive season.
Chef Freny Fernandes remembers it vividly. “As a kid, our most favourite thing was the roast chicken waiting for us in the oven after we came back from midnight mass.”
For Freny’s family, the season began with her mother’s annual marathon: 20 cakes, fruit cream, marzipan, guava cheese, nevries, bol de coco, and more. The first step—always—was the soaking of dried fruits.
“All of the prep starts a month or two in advance when she first soaks all the dried fruits and peels for the fruit cake,” says Freny. Her favourite memory? “Watching her beat logs and logs of Amul butter with sugar by hand!! The smell still reminds me of my childhood. We would try to lick some batter off her bowl. She never took any of our help because she knew we’d mess up her preparation, so the only help was to go to the nearby kirana store and get flour, sugar, etc.”
Ask any East Indian, and they’ll tell you that no two Christmas tables look the same. Recipes shift from gaothan to gaothan, each family carrying a culinary signature from the past. But for Freny, some dishes are non-negotiables. “The Roast Chicken definitely has to be there—it’s stuffed with chicken liver, hearts, gizzard, croutons, onions and peas! My absolute favourite!” Then comes mutton khuddi curry, pork indyal, roast or sarpatel, and wedding rice. If her mother is in an especially good mood, there are also hot fugyas.
Christmas, for East Indians, leans heart-first into sweetness. “I think Christmas is definitely more about the sweets! We all wait eagerly for Christmas to arrive so we can eat all the sweets, and even months after, we still enjoy them!” The dessert spread is nothing short of elaborate: mawa cake, fruit cake, bol de coco, nevris, kal kal, marzipan, jujubes, fruit cream, guava cheese and most of them handmade with infinite patience.
Freny grew up on a wine made in her grandmother’s home. “It’s made out of grapes and is called wine itself, but it’s loaded with spices like cinnamon, clove, etc, so very similar to mulled wine—but we have it cold! And it’s so sweet!”
Every East Indian Christmas table carries stories. But as times change, some dishes quietly slip away. “Now that we have the new generation, a lot of old recipes are forgotten and people are so busy that they don’t get time for the preparations like our mothers and grandmothers used to. So we end up ordering from ladies who still cook or bake these delicacies from home.”
At her own restaurant, Freny sees a shift. “Last two years at Freny’s we’ve been getting a whole lot of orders—for roast chicken, potato chop, fugyas and sarpatel.”
Modern life has altered festive cooking. Ready-made masalas and cake mixes make things easier. “Yes, a lot of the masalas are readily available these days… indyal masala, sarpatel masala, etc. Ready mixes are available for cakes, and fruit peel comes pre-soaked.”
At home, tradition still has the upper hand. “Mom still makes everything from scratch, but I like to order in some stuff that takes too long—like sarpatel or sweets.”
Even as recipes change hands—or disappear entirely—the spirit of Christmas stands firm. “What’s most important is that people still go for mass! And that families still come together, whether it’s elaborate dinners at home or at restaurants.” Younger East Indians, Freny says, are driven by memory. “A lot of it is just nostalgia. Young adults really miss their moms’ or grandmoms’ cooking. A lot of these recipes are difficult to replicate and very time-consuming.”
If there’s one recipe Freny could pull back from the brink of loss, it would be the fruit cake—rich, spiced, and soaked in memory. “I think for me it would be the fruit cake that mom makes! It screams Christmas and nostalgia and that feeling of home. The fruits and peels are soaked for a month in advance. When mom would bake it, the whole house would smell of rum, vanilla, cinnamon and all the spices!”
