FESTIVE FEASTING

Crowd pleasing dishes

Perhaps, at this very moment, you are thinking about all the last-minute groceries you have to buy before you make Christmas dinner.

And you are struggling, doing your best to finalize recipes and figure out what everyone’s eating these days. You know at least one person in your family is on a diet. Someone else refuses to eat meat. Still another can’t eat gluten and dairy.

And you’re caught in the middle, simply trying to make a festive holiday dinner for everyone.

Think of it as a chance to get creative, says Westin Calgary executive chef Michael Batke. “It’s a good challenge, actually,” he says. “It opens your mind as a chef, so you can’t just cook for yourself and what you like.”

Batke often deals with people who have up to 30 different food intolerances or allergies, and he finds ways to work with them all. He suggests using olive oil in place of butter in mashed potatoes for a dairy-free dish. For celiacs, have a gluten-free flour blend on hand for baking and as a thickener for gravy. And for vegetarians, always ensure that you’ve included a protein in at least one dish. (Lentils, he notes, are one of his personal favourites.)

Greta Podleski has some suggestions, too. She’s the author of the new cookbook Yum & Yummer: ridiculously tasty recipes that’ll blow your mind but not your diet (One Spoon Media, $34.95).

Her advice? Delegate. The youngest of six girls, Podleski rose to fame with the publication of the Looneyspoons, Crazy Plates and Eat, Shrink & Be Merry cookbooks, all co-written with her sister, Janet.

She says her family gathers every Christmas, but they rotate the host house, and they always hold a potluck. “We all contribute. Everyone makes what they’re best at, and what their favourite dishes are, and we get a great variety,” she says.

“If you’re the only person responsible for the entire meal, it can be very stressful.”

And don’t be afraid to get creative with your choice of side dish- es. As long as the mains are more or less what your family expects, you can play around with the rest of the menu.

“Side dishes are getting more interesting and adventurous, which is kind of cool because that’s the place to experiment,” Podleski says. “My mother would have just made green beans.”

One of Podleski’s favourite holiday tricks for cutting back on calories is to roast, then mash, cauliflower, as an alternative to mashed potatoes. “Sometimes people boil or steam the cauliflower and try to turn it into a mash, but then it’s soupy,” she says.

“When you roast it, it has so much more flavour. You can actually fool people into believing they’re having potatoes.”

Chef Keith Luce, from Calgary’s Tavernetta restaurant, suggests getting the best ingredients you can afford — and that includes vegetables. Alberta beets are some of his favourites this time of year. “Go to the farmers’ market and get really good quality beets, because they’re going to be the star of the show,” he says. “Roast them well, adorn them lightly, and embrace their natural beauty.”

He suggests gearing 15 to 30 per cent of your menu toward making dishes that your friends with dietary restrictions can eat. “Don’t think of it as restrictive,” Luce says. “Understand it as an opportunity.”

And remember that cooking a special meal for friends and family is about making others happy. If that means including a few glutenfree or vegan dishes, then, by all means, do it. “It’s about making the best possible meal you can for people,” says Luce. “I just want people to enjoy themselves and to enjoy what I’m making.”

Of course, for some, Christmas is a time to throw the rules out the door for a few days. Come Christmas Day, Podleski says she’ll be surrounded by family, eating and, well, being merry. “I eat healthy 90 per cent of the time, and 10 per cent of the time, I eat what I want,” she says.

“So I’ll be indulging in some great holiday food and not caring whether it’s healthy or not, for a change.”