Close Connections: Jonathan & Lauren - happy Christmakkah

“Glorious food and beverages,” were, as Jonathan puts it, where his and Lauren’s love was forged. “We’re total food geeks and had quite different upbringings. I grew up in Vancouver celebrating Christmas with traditional festive dinners, while Lauren, now 40, split her time between her vegetarian British mum and Eastern European dad and family.

‘The amalgamation of the different cuisines and cultures we grew up enjoying was something we wanted to reflect with our Christmakkah dinner party.

“We’re really into seafood and vegetables, and I said to Lauren, let’s forget the traditional turkey dinner and create a spectacular menu of food we love to eat, while playing with those themes of Christmas and Hanukkah. Our guests were expecting celebratory decadence and we were determined to deliver.”

The couple’s guests piled into their ground-floor flat – a small apartment with a large dining table – and worked their way through the feast the pair had created: an epic nine-course tasting menu with spectacular drinks to boot.

“Those moments, sharing our creations with people we love meant so much to us. Hospitality is all about giving and making our guests feel their best, and despite the long shifts ahead as daylight broke on Christmas morning, our friends left with a celebratory and festive spring in their step.”

For one of the courses, Jonathan created a pumpkin seed and wild onion salsa verde turchetta, coupled with a stuffing sauce made from turkey bone stock, with plenty of thyme, crispy sage, rosemary, and cinnamon to enhance the flavour.

“It tasted like the essence of Christmas in a sauce and brought the Canadian element of Christmas to our dishes. To bring in the Hanukkah elements, we cured wild Pacific salmon gravadlax-style with a mixture of herbs, spices and sea salt.

“For sides, I made latkes – a potato cake typically enjoyed over Hanukkah. Traditionally, it’s flour bound with eggs and made into little pancakes, but I made one large one, and used potato starch instead of flour so it was a super-crispy and gorgeous latke to serve with our melt-in-the-mouth salmon.”

There were many mouth-watering sides, too, with roasted carrots drizzled with a shaved celeriac and parsley remoulade, plus homemade preserved lemons, capers and olives.

“I also used Lauren’s leftover pineapple pulp and honey to ferment chillies we’d bought at the local farmer’s market for a few days, then blitzed until it was smooth. I later caramelised it with rosemary, butter and roasted carrots to create a winter carrot dish.

“The dinner party was full on, and Lauren and I didn’t sit down until the end. Throughout the early hours, we tag-teamed in our small kitchen and, even with the windows wide open, the air was thick with smoke from pans. We soaked up the magic of it all, sipping celebratory flutes of champagne out of the window in the crisp, freezing December air.

“The event was a deeply satisfying experience for us both. Having a dining table full of great foodies with great palates tucking into our food, and each time looking at me or Lauren and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, that is so good’, was a sensation I’ll never forget.”

The couple’s first Christmakkah dinner party was in 2011 and, since then, has been repeated at their home seven times over. “We’ve done ticketed versions, too, but those are never as sweet as being at home, hanging out with our friends and sending them home bleary-eyed at 5am.”

But for Jonathan, the sweetest part of Christmakkah comes in the 90 minutes after all the guests leave. “Lauren and I never go to sleep with a messy kitchen or house so, afterwards, we spend time cleaning together, and going over the highlights of the early hours.

“Those quiet, private moments were always the sweetest ones as a couple. We’re never happier than when we are indulging our shared love of food, each other, and the craft to which we’ve both dedicated our lives. Sharing that with the people we love most with our take on Christmakkah brings us so much joy as the festive season sets in, and we hope to keep doing it for many years to come.”

See their cured salmon stuffed with latkes recipe.

This feature originally appeared in Good Food Magazine, December 2022.