What to serve at Christmas instead of ham, according to top Brisbane chefs

Ham is a ubiquitous centrepiece for Australians at Christmas, but does it need to be?

Oscar Solomon, group development chef at Apollo Group, which owns Greca and Yoko at Howard Smith Wharves, isn’t so sure.

“My mum grew up in the country, so we’d have Christmas lunch with her parents – this is in Canowindra in the middle of NSW – and it was roast pork, chicken, ham,” Solomon says. “It’s too hot for that, man.”

These days, Solomon’s family opts for seafood during the festive season. It better suits those hot Australian summers, he says, and is typically easy to prepare and cook.

We asked Solomon and a bunch of other top Brisbane chefs how they spend Christmas day and what they plan to cook this year – instead of ham.

Oscar Solomon – Yoko and Greca

Solomon’s family Christmases are all-in, all-afternoon affairs.

“Even our cousins from separate sides of the family will go to other family things and come in the afternoon. Because we sit down for lunch at 4pm,” he says.

“By this stage, we’ve already worked our way through 14 regions of chardonnay, and then it’s just this whole afternoon of eating and drinking.”

His pick for a non-ham Christmas this year is a prawn and mango salad.

“For me, nothing captures Christmas in Queensland like prawn and mango, right? It’s just a no-brainer in this part of the world.”

Solomon’s current method for the dish involves using large leaf radicchio and baby cos and shiso (but mint works, he says). The dressing has a South-East Asian bent, throwing together vinegar, lime juice, lime zest, a little bit of orange, and a touch of soy and sugar.

“I bought U15 [king] prawns – maybe 700 grams or 600 grams, and it was $15 – and my partner and I ate it, and it was way too much.

“It’s quintessentially Queensland and that South-East Asian element reflects Brisbane, particularly Sunnybank or Inala – you go to Thai Hoa Grocer [in Inala], grab some shiso, a couple of wasabi leaves and loads of radicchio, mix it all together into this ridiculously crunchy salad.”

“Beyond the prawns, we maybe grill a fish, and we might throw in a white-meat protein. Otherwise, keep it light. It’s Australia.”

Will Cowper – Otto Brisbane

Will Cowper remembers, when he was young, his mum waking up at 4am to begin preparing the turkey and ham for Christmas lunch. Not any more, he says.

In 2023, Christmas will be all about gathering around the pizza oven at his sister’s house in Sydney.

“Christmas is about indulgence,” Cowper says. “We don’t do ham. We don’t do turkey. We don’t do any of that stuff. It’s just good seafood, cooked simply, so we can spend time together.”

Cowper’s go-to these days is lobster, either from Western Australia or Tasmania – Tasmania this year because it’s going for a better price.

“We cut them in half and put them on a big tray, and usually do some sort of butter with them. Last year it was confit garlic with chopped parsley, lemon and black pepper.

“And you just load the butter on the half lobster and chuck it in the pizza oven,” he continues. “It takes four or five minutes because the pizza oven runs pretty hot. Usually, we’re by the pool, so we’ll just eat with our hands. It’s very chill.”

Not everyone has a pizza oven, of course. In which case, Cowper says to turn the kitchen oven to 250 degrees Celsius and cook the lobster, flesh side up, for between five and six minutes, depending on the size.

“We tend to go for about 700 or 800 grams,” he says. “That’s a good size for one person.”

To go with the lobster, Cowper might prepare a caprese salad and a fresh iceberg salad with some herbs and cucumber, “and that’s it”, he says.

For drinks, Cowper says it’s negronis to start, a good bottle of chardonnay for the lobster, and homemade limoncello to finish.

Emily Yeoh – Emily Yeoh Restaurant

Malaysian-born Emily Yeoh doesn’t have extended family in Australia, so Christmas for her is getting together with her husband and the crew from Emily Yeoh Restaurant to cook seafood on the coals in the backyard – in particular, lobster, blue swimmer crab, stingray and pipis.

“People tend to associate me with mud crab but there’s so much amazing seafood, generally, in this part of the world,” she says.

Yeoh keeps it dead simple at Christmas and wraps her seafood in banana leaf (cheap this year, she says, because of a bumper crop), usually with a bit of salt and pepper and a house-made sauce.

“The seafood itself is already fresh, it’s beautiful,” Yeoh says. “So the best way to prep it is with some salt and pepper, and a bit of olive oil … I serve it with some fresh salad and Asian slaw, and that’s about it.”

What sauce goes into the banana leaf parcel depends on the seafood: with the stingray, Yeoh might use her own sambal; for the pipis, she leans towards a black pepper sauce.

“But sometimes it’s just a simple garlic butter,” she says. “Use a bit of curry leaf, a bit of chilli, and you’re set. Wrap it up in the banana leaf, throw it on the fire – beautiful. Take it off the fire, cut open the leaf and the juice will just run onto the plate. It’s amazing.”

Yeoh keeps drinks uncomplicated, with a pinot grigio or a prosecco.

As for dessert: “Mango is so, so cheap at the moment,” Yeoh says. “So, use it and some pineapple to make a salsa and save the rest for a fresh dessert.”

Gabriele Di Landri – Sasso Italiano, South City Wine, Casa Chow

One dish is always on the table at Christmas for Italian-born chef Gabriele Di Landri: spaghetti vongole. But he makes it a little differently to back home.

“I use pipis rather than [clams, which the traditional recipe calls for], because it’s hard to find the nice kinds of clams we have in Italy,” di Landri says. “But Australian pipis are fantastic and you don’t want to force tradition. If the pipis are better in Australia, use the pipis.”

Di Landri usually buys his pipis from Sunnybank Fish Market – “they have nice big ones there,” he says – and leaves them in salt water until it’s time to cook them on the day.

“We use lots of olive oil on the pan – if it doesn’t go ‘glug-glug-glug’ it’s not Italian,” he says. “Then I throw in chopped garlic, chopped anchovies, a few slices of fresh chilli. You create the sofrito and then throw the pipis in.”

Di Landri deglazes his pan with a splash of white wine and then separates the pipis and sets them aside while he cooks his pasta (he prefers Pasta Garofalo spaghetti).

“I get the pasta al dente and throw it in with the sauce, add some more olive oil, and throw the pipis back in. I then add a generous amount of parsley, let it emulsify nicely. Done.”

Di Landri plates it up with a herb-lemon crumble, which he makes with old bread toasted in the oven and then blitzed with lemon zest and any leftover herbs he has lying around.

“And we finish up with fermented chill oil, Sasso Italiano-style, to give a bit of fizziness. My mum not gonna approve but I’m gonna do it anyway,” he says, laughing.

To go with the pasta? A slick Italian fiano.

Louis Tikaram – Stanley

Louis Tikaram says you absolutely need a centrepiece dish for Christmas lunch, but it needn’t be ham (or turkey, or pork either, he says).

In recent years he’s opted for whole coral trout cooked on the barbecue.

“One year I just threw it on there with salt and olive oil,” Tikaram says. “It gets a crispy skin, cooks the whole way through. Really, it’s just perfect.

“You make a sauce of butter, capers and lemon and tip it on. And you cut it open at the table, pop it on the plate and it has the same effect [as another centrepiece meat].”

Tikaram sometimes also steams his trout with ginger and shallot, using a turkey tray on the closed barbecue.

“But I think it’s really important to serve these kinds of things,” Tikaram says. “Now, we can have it for Christmas. Before, it was all going overseas. During COVID, we got some of the quota back.

“Christmas, it’s always hot and I want to go surfing either before or after dinner. So it’s good to keep it light, rather than go into a food coma and waste my one day off.”

For drinks, he keeps it light and fun with a pet nat or an orange wine.