Christmas

Wigilia at the E. Noyszewski's

We had a lovely Christmas. A very nice Polish Wigilia (the traditional Christmas Eve vigil supper) at the home of our dear friends Ed and Mary Noyszewski, in Berwyn, where I took a lot of pictures.

On Christmas Day, my brother and sister-in-law continued their longstanding tradition of an Internationally-themed Christmas dinner. Barbara (Basia) and Char were mildly stung by criticisms here when I mentioned their Oceania-themed dinner last year, and wanted me to point out that this year's Malaysian dinner was not intended to mimic what Malaysians themselves actually eat for a holiday feast, but is just a meal in honor of Malaysia. For one thing, Charlie says they used approximately 1/10th the amount of the hot spices the recipes called for. For another, Malaysia encompasses many cultures with several distinct cuisines, so no one meal can be typical of the whole country.

This great shot was my nephew David Johnston's idea.

The fun in the meal is that Basia and Charlie research it for a month ahead of time, seeking out the appropriate ethnic restaurants (they found only one Malaysian restaurant in Chicago), trying out various dishes to taste-test them, and locating incredients. One dish this year called for pig brain, liver, and intestines, but mentioned that if offal wasn't your thing, lean pork could be sustituted. The resulting feng made of pork tenderloin was superb.

Program by Mari Johnston

The meal was just fantastic. Every single dish was delicious. I especially liked the popiah. Every year, a favorite dish or two makes it into CharBarb's regular rotation, and they're going to have trouble exlcuding anything from this year. It was all great. Very tasty meal. Even if it was a lot less spicy-hot than Malaysians themselves prefer.

And by the bye, pavlova isn't Malaysian, but we all liked last year's Australia vs. New Zealand dessert so much that it's in the running to become an annual tradition. The garnishes this year had a Malaysian inflection, at least.

Here's today Christmas song: The Walkmen covering Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road" on A.V. Undercover. The NYC-based Walkmen are a band of friends from an elite East-coast prep school. An antidote to the whiteboyishness tomorrow.

On a photographic note (...and we're back on topic) I wanted to add a "Photobook of Interest" for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Today's book is Back to the Future. Irina Werning is the single-auteur apotheosis of the Young Me / Now Me idea, and is so skilled at recreating old snapshots that people from around the world write to her imploring her to work her magic on snapshots that are special to them. The work is about time and the ways we all change and can be both funny and touching.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Raden: "Nice post on Malaysian food Mike! Though as Pieter has pointed out in the Comments, to get a good sampling of Malaysian dishes you should visit Kuala Lumpur. By the way, watch this amazing time lapse of Kuala Lumpur by Rob Whitworth on Youtube. I'm a long time reader of your blog and have always enjoyed your writings. Thank you for sharing so much of your photographic knowledge with the rest of the world. From a Malaysian in Saudi Arabia."

Comments

[Mike R]

Nice post.

We have a pre-Wigilia tradition of every person putting their best effort to saying "Wesolych Swiat" - on the video cam, while displaying the ornament bearing those words. It has yielded some pretty comical variations. (Even having grown up with Polish-speaking parents, I find that particular combination of sounds a bit tricky to make. )

[Kenneth Tanaka]

You're a lucky man to have such a family, Mike! And that table shot is a veritable instant classic. Really a fabulous image, every element is perfect -- the drapes, the sweater, the postures, the lighting, the lens position. Oy!

I spent Christmas laid-up with a terrible cold, trying to keep it from advancing to bigger ground. But that was (is) fine, too.

[Mark Kinsman]

Sounds like a good time was had by all Mike. Ours was a good one too. These days, with the two Grandmas in thier early 90's, it's us bringing the fixin's to Grandma K's house Christmas Eve, to prep there for all, and dinner on Christmas Day at Grandma P's retirement home.
All that attended hope to be lucky enough to retire to such an elegant place, should we reach that state in life. Here's a link to one from that location - Fuji X-T1 Classic Chrome:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbkinsman/16087845006/

For me, the photographic delight was gifts of the Steidl printed - Saul Leiter two volume set: Early Black&White and my daughters find of a small 14 page booklet (?) of Ray K. Metzker: Earthly Delights from the Lawrence Miller Gallery.

[Benjamin Marks]

I had an obstacle course to thread this year: gluten-free brother-in-law, three vegetarians, two "pescatarians", one lactose-intolerant brother, a mother-in-law with a milk allergy and one picky eater (my nine year-old) for a total of 12, plus a babe in arms. Briefly considered putting a pitcher of water in the middle of the table and calling it good. But I couldn't resist the challenge. The menu:

Baked side of salmon w/(optional) Greek yoghurt-garlic-cucumber-dill sauce
Sauteed chickpeas w/sesame oil
Saffron risotto
Roasted brussel sprouts w/garlic
Beets roasted in balsamic vinegar w/goat cheese
Sauteed chard
Mac&cheese for the kids (just in case)
Almond/coconut cake (no wheat)
my grandma's applesauce cake
whipped cream on the side.

All fed, all happy, a good Christmas dinner was had by all. And let me just outright brag: the food was just awesome. Nothing burnt, and out of the corner of my eye I saw folks taking thirds. Nothing could make me happier. Four hours to make. 40 minutes to consume. So how about it RFC? What's the traditional (or non-traditional) Christmas meal for your and yours?

It was a very merry Christmas.

[Marc]

The first years of Mum & Dad's (quite young) marriage were spent on a RAAF posting to Malaysia. From Mum's extremely parochial origins it gave her a love of Malaysia and forever influenced her culinary practice, a long way from the classic Australian "meat-and-three-veg". So I grew up with a few staples of Malaysian origin at a time when all my friends were eating lamb chops with carrot, peas and mash. Lucky me. My food preference has emigrated to Thailand (though it holidays everywhere), but I know its origin was my parents' long ago posting to Butterworth.

By the way, your first photo is precisely the kind of photo I endeavour to take at social occasions (with the often satisfied hope that it puts me a little outside the event, a calmative to the rising panic of social anxiety). Your second photo is magically comical, again a my-kind-of-photo image.

Both of them are utterly delightful (and inspirational for me).

Happy holidays and merry Christmas and may the new year bring you, or encourage you to achieve, what you need for contentment.

[Pak-Ming Wan]

My family has Malaysian roots (both my parents were born there) and we visit fairly regularly (I fly very frequently through Malaysia from France).

I'd just like to add that your menu looks very, very tasty!

Hope you had a great christmas!

Pak

[Rick in CO]

So Mike, what about the Polish food?
An egg broth with mushrooms (can't remember the name)
Pierogi?
Fish?
Kielbasa or Kieshka?
When we lived in Switzerland we made pierogi with potato and Gruyere cheese - haven't gone back to the traditional since then!
How much Vodka?

[Jeremy Tan]

Merry Christmas, Mike. Just a quibble about the map of Malaysia on the cover of the program, what that shows is actually East Malaysia. Malaysia is actually in two parts: West Malaysia, which is a peninsula off the Isthmus of Kra (belonging to Thailand), and East Malaysia, which consists of the pink area of the Island of Borneo demarcated in your map (I hail from the southern of the two states shown there, Sarawak).

Your menu looks great though, except for the pavlova.

[Pieter]

Maybe you know, maybe you do not know. There is one country that is called Malaysia. But there are two parts. West Malaysia and East Malaysia. On your Malaysian Christmas Dinner card only the east part is shown. And that I think is wrong. Not saying anything wrong about East Malaysia, but for food you have to be in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia on West Malaysia. Malaysian food, Asian food or even European food, this is the place to be.
And next to visiting restaurants there is a lot to take pictures of in Malaysia. Very nice country with very nice people.

[Nicholas Condon]

I love love love those two photos. They look (at least, on web-viewed JPGs) like B&W film photos from another era.

[Mike]

That picture of the table and light needs to be a print sale.

[Mark Morris]

You have a quite cosmopolitan family. What happens to the people who only want turkey, ham and mash potatoes? : )

[Ilkka]

As has been pointed out, Borneo island actually only has one country, Brunei. Two out of 13 Malaysian states are there and four out of 33 Indonesian provinces. It is a bit like having a USA theme dinner and showing a map of Alaska. Sarawak, and to some extent Sabah, are actually quite different from the mainland Malaysia, both in food and in many other ways. I suppose in the same way as Alaska, or Hawaii, are quite different from Texas or Florida.

[JK]

Sorry, I know this isn't a forum, but just for the record: Kuala Lumpur is not the place "you have to be" for good food in Malaysia. The food is great in lots of places, particularly in the old Straits settlements (Penang and Melaka), and, in my opinionated opinion, a couple towns in E. Malaysia too, notably Kuching and Kota Kinabalu, in Sarawak and Sabah respectively.

More to the point, these are all wonderful places for photography. Sabah in particular offers some photo ops that are as true to the old SE Asia of lore as anywhere in the region.

[Jeff Smith]

I like the tones in the black and white photos. Perhaps you could tell your readers about how you convert to black and white. Thanks and Happy New Year. Jeff

[Tim Auger]

Just a point in relation to Malaysia: pork would appeal to the substantial ethnically Chinese minority, but not to the majority Malays, who are Muslims.

[Stan Rogers]

Right. That Magritte-like picture needs proper circulation. Back story matters not a whit; the lamp-headedness wins.