It keeps giving

Christmas dinner is a meal with plenty of tradition, but it’s not as hidebound as Thanksgiving. It’s more a matter of choice than obligation. We tend to serve the same dishes year after year, but it’s because we want to -- because we love them and feel like celebrating when they’re on the table.

As a result, Christmas dinners vary widely from one family to the next. Perhaps you look forward all year to roast goose, or maybe you can’t wait to slow-roast a prime rib. One person’s meal wouldn’t be complete without a pecan pie; another’s favorite dessert is pavlova. To cop a cliche: It’s all good.

Here’s a sampling of the Christmas traditions of our Times Food staff.

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Roasted goose can make a Dickens of a yuletide feast

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Once I lived in a place where winter temperatures regularly dipped below freezing, and my best friend was my goose-down comforter. My downstairs neighbor was a Renaissance English scholar, and every year he did the whole Dickens Christmas feast complete with goose. I had my own Christmas celebration, but he’d give me the goose fat and any of the leftovers, which I used in my New Year’s Day cassoulet, prepared from Julia Child’s lengthy recipe.

It wasn’t until I moved to sunny Southern California that I made a roast goose myself for the first time. I love it, but it always takes a round of phone calls to find out which butchers, if any, have a fresh goose, preferably one raised somewhere cold so it developed a good layer of fat. Once, I ordered a terrific (and very expensive) goose from Healthy Family Farms at the Santa Monica farmers market, but when I called the next year, owner Sharon Palmer told me she wasn’t going to raise geese anymore: They’re too mean!

Is there anything more festive than a crisp roast goose in all its considerable glory? Luckily, roasting a goose is not quite the production a turkey is. It’s basically very simple. Air-dry the bird in the refrigerator for a day, bring to room temperature, salt and pepper it all over and stuff it with a quartered apple, orange, onion and a few sprigs of thyme. Prick the skin all over so it can release the fat as it cooks, and roast in a 350-degree oven on a bed of chopped onions, carrots and celery. Add a half-inch of water to catch the fat. Use a turkey baster to siphon off some of the fat as the bird roasts. It’s done when the thigh reaches 165 to 180 degrees, about 21/2 hours for a 10- to 12-pound goose.

I follow Kurt Gutenbrunner of Wallse in New York and author of “Neue Cuisine: The Elegant Tastes of Vienna” in all things goose. And I like to serve it with the traditional sides he recommends: spaetzle and braised red cabbage. Last year I made his roasted apples stuffed with marzipan too.

Roast goose is a beautiful match for mature Pinot Noir, Rioja or Chinon. This year I’m pulling out a 2004 Luciano Sandrone Barolo “Cannubi Boschis.”

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irene.virbila@latimes.com

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Christmas and Hanukkah: It’s like holiday dinner meeting dessert

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What am I cooking for Christmas dinner? Well a goose, of course, a fine, fat one, cooked in the Barbara Kafka way that involves high heat and an hour of resting in the cooling oven; and my mom’s sweet-and-sour red cabbage; and blanched Brussels sprouts finished in hot fat. There will be no foie gras this year for the obvious reason, so there may be another pate, something absurdly luxurious made from pheasant and juniper berries or some such.

But mostly there will be potato pancakes, lots of them: fragrant, brown and served with sauteed apples and the best sour cream. I used to think that I made potato pancakes because I was making the dinner Frank Morgan’s character describes in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy “The Shop Around the Corner.” I liked the idea of a Christmas dinner that was so evidently the food of middle European Jews.

Then I watched the film again and realized that what Morgan was hungry for wasn’t potato pancakes but boiled potatoes with butter, which is quite a different thing. Observant Jews may not eat buttered potatoes in the same meal as goose as part of the general prohibition against consuming milk with meat. I must have been mishearing the movie for my own reasons.

Or maybe I just like making potato pancakes. They’re crisp, they’re delicious and they provide an excuse to saute apples. Your hands smell like onions the rest of the week. If Hanukkah ends before Christmas, as it did this year, the latkes extend the dreidel fun just a little longer, and when the two holidays coincide, all the merrier.

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jonathan.gold@latimes.com

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A pecan pie was her ticket past Thelma’s door

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“Where’s the pie?” my grandmother-in-law would ask behind the screen door.

She was a little woman, close to 90 when we first met, feisty and hunched over with age and needing a walker. She’d ask the same thing every time I showed up on her front porch -- the extent of her greeting -- rather severe as she squinted and looked me over. She wouldn’t open the door until I produced the pecan pie.

I couldn’t tell whether she was serious or simply having a private joke at my expense. But it was the same every time.

I loved that woman. We would sit at her table over a slice of pie and a dollop of whipped cream to talk about cooking. Thelma Bowman was a professional cook back in the day -- a working woman when many women stayed at home, and she ran the cafeteria at a public elementary school for years. We’d talk favorite recipes and working in various kitchens during her long career. After I switched my own career and decided to go to culinary school, she was one of my biggest mentors.

She loved my pecan pie, a special recipe I’d learned from my mother. When she passed, she left me a lifetime’s worth of her cherished recipes, stored in a yellow Bakelite box.

The pie is simple enough. I whisk together some eggs and egg yolks and add some dark corn syrup and dark brown sugar, whisked in along with melted butter. I always add a touch of bourbon -- the liquor enhances the flavors . Then I finish with pecans.

The filling is poured into a homemade pie shell and baked until done.

I make the pie now for my father-in-law every Christmas. Because my in-laws can no longer cook, I make the dinners and desserts whenever we come to visit (their own personal chef, they like to brag to all their friends). My father-in-law always looks forward to the pecan pie.

We’ll have a slice with a dollop of whipped cream, as we talk and share family stories. Because stories are what keep history alive. Every bite I take, I think of my mother and my family, the family I’ve joined and Thelma. That is Christmas to me.

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noelle.carter@latimes.com

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A deep affection for creating the Tuscan confection panforte

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Panforte’s name translates to “strong bread,” but it is more confection than cake or bread, barely bound with flour and heavy with preserved fruit and honey that dissolve together as they cook. It’s studded with toasted nuts and spiced with black pepper, cloves, coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon and cocoa.

Maybe it’s because panforte is so often compared with fruitcake and confused with panettone -- the raisin- and candied fruit-studded, brioche-like Italian bread -- that we don’t see enough of the traditional Tuscan cake during the holidays. So I make my own, ever since discovering a recipe that makes an exceptionally fantastic panforte. It is the best panforte I have tasted -- that’s not a boast but a testament to the recipe.

The recipe comes from the cookbook “Tartine” by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson. Approached leisurely, it can take two days to make, and I like the journey of it. The gathering of the ingredients: pounds of pistachios and almonds, tiny currants, soft dates, fresh quince, oranges and lemons, along with a small pile of the spices, cocoa and citrus zest. (You’ll have to grate 11/2 whole nutmegs.)

The quince get peeled, cored, sliced and cooked in sugar, the orange peel cut and blanched twice before candying. All the nuts are toasted. And then I get down to the business of making the actual panforte itself, mixing boiling, bubbling honey syrup with the fruit and spices before it goes into the oven and, finally cooled, dusted with powdered sugar.

Not cloying but warmly, deeply spicy, panforte is excellent with cheeses and sparkling wines or as dessert with tea. And a wedge of it wrapped in brown paper makes an excellent gift.

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betty.hallock@latimes.com

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Posole, the taste of Christmas in New Mexico

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My family has lived in Southern California for more than 25 years now, but at the holidays we still seem to think of ourselves as transplanted New Mexicans. We string red chile lights, bake anise-flavored biscochito cookies, put out the candle-lighted paper bags called luminarias and, most notably, make gallons -- and I do mean gallons -- of posole for our annual open house.

Posole in New Mexico is a little different from the version that is usually served in Southern California. Rather than a brothy soup with condiments, New Mexico posole is more of a stew. It derives its rich texture and deep flavor from long cooking rather than last-minute sprinkling with garnishes (though I have had a hard time convincing partygoers of that -- I find that no matter how many admonitory signs I put up, they can’t resist doctoring -- tainting? -- my posole with the chopped green onions, cilantro and even sour cream I put out for the black beans).

It’s an elemental stew, and I’m afraid there is no set recipe; the exact mix varies from year to year, and I insist on believing that’s part of its magic.

There are some must-have ingredients, of course. Primary among these is pork butt. Lots of pork butt. Lots and lots of pork butt. Last year I used 10 pounds of trimmed pork, and we ran out of posole in less than an hour. After 12 months of hectoring from my lovely wife, this year I used 15 pounds and we were OK.

Besides pork, there is also more pork. Neck bones are great when you can find them (the meat that comes off after cooking is sublime). And you absolutely have to have pig’s feet. They contain so much gelatin that the chilled posole sets up like a terrine.

Posole takes time to make properly. Two nights before the party, I cut up the pork butts and marinate them in red chile. Sometimes I make the sauce myself; sometimes I use the very good Bueno brand frozen red chile I get at my supermarket -- it’s a great convenience when you’re making gallons. At this point, I’d like to say a word in favor of having a big box of disposable plastic gloves when you’re working with red chile. If you haven’t, you’ll understand why the first time you rub your nose (or anything else).

The next day, I cook the pork with the pig’s feet and the neck bones in even more red chile, with onions, a lot of garlic as well as a healthy shot of dried oregano and a smaller dose of ground cumin. After three or four hours, when the meat is almost falling apart, I refrigerate the stew overnight.

The day of the party, I remove the fat layer from the stew, rescue the neck bones and pig’s feet (remember those gloves!), strip them of their meat and chop that coarsely. Then I return the stew to the heat and add the posole corn. When I was younger and more ambitious (and had access to great posole corn), I would cook the hominy separately and add a bit of the broth from that to the stew. These days, I confess, I used canned hominy (well-rinsed), and no one has ever complained.

It takes a couple of hours for the flavors to meld; more is even better. That’s a lot of preparation for one little stew, but when I close my eyes and taste it, I can almost believe I smell snow and pinon smoke in the air -- even if I’m wearing a T-shirt and standing under my backyard lemon tree.

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russ.parsons@latimes.com