FOR THE FULL STORY: https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2024/12/22/festive-family-recipes-from-home-cook-peter-padman-and-his-wife-ivy-george
In their sun-soaked apartment in Petaling Jaya, Peter Padman and his wife Ivy George are hard at work, huddled over the kitchen counter as they put the finishing touches to their family’s Christmas meal.
Their young adult children Shenna-Anne Shilpa Padman and Joash George Padman hustle in the background, ready to wash dishes or transfer food into new containers. Everyone has smiles on their faces, laughs aplenty and the spirit of Christmas burning strong.
It is evident that this is a family with love as a foundational force. Stewarding this ship is Peter, a seasoned F&B professional who first managed hotel restaurants before working his way up to managing hotels all over Malaysia and beyond, a role he currently holds at a hotel in Cheras.
Peter grew up in a family where cooking up large feasts for Christmas was the norm. His wife Ivy meanwhile grew up on a plantation and says her mother used to cook huge spreads for family, friends and staff at the estate come Christmas time.
When Peter and Ivy got married, they started their own Christmas food traditions, anchored by their love for their little family and their fondness for feeding people. While some of their Christmas dishes allude to their roots and ancestral recipes, some are entirely new concoctions that have since become family favourites.
Like Peter’s stuffed chicken for instance, a delightful meal that contrasts tender, succulent, garlicky chicken with a creamy yet vibrant lemon butter sauce – a combination that is insanely, addictively good.
“This is my own creation actually, and it’s a bit more Western, but every hotel that I’ve worked in I’ve always made it a signature dish. It’s stuffed with cheese and mushrooms and rolled in garlic and breadcrumbs. So it’s also very popular among the family as well. They remember me because of that,” he says, laughing.
Then there is his Greek-style moussaka, which he learnt how to make when he was working in Switzerland and which has since become a family staple. Moussaka features layers of eggplant, minced meat in a tomato sauce and a rich bechamel sauce.
Peter’s version is spectacularly good – rich and luscious and yet so intoxicating that it’s hard to stop yourself from repeated eats.
“I did a kitchen internship in Switzerland and the chef there taught me how to do it. It’s a bit tedious because of the process – you have to fry the potatoes, make a Bolognese sauce, fry the brinjals and then make a white sauce. And it’s rich because it’s stuffed with lots of cheese and white sauce.
“In 1984 when I came back for a vacation, I made this dish and everybody loved it. So every year, if there is a Christmas gathering, everyone will say, ‘Can you make your moussaka?’ So it’s been like a tradition,” he says.
Peter’s Christmas staples also include traditional Indian dishes that his mother used to make like fish cutlets, which are breaded, deep-fried rotund parcels filled with fish and potatoes and seasoned with a range of Indian spices.
Ivy meanwhile also makes a mixture of old and new dishes for Christmas. Her nod to yesteryear is in the form of her mother’s vegetable pilaf, which is filled with all sorts of vegetables and is a soul-warming family-style dish.
“These days, my 88-year-old mum will call me up and say, ‘Can you give me the recipe for this?’ And I will say ‘But that was your recipe, I just changed it a little bit’. And she will say, ‘I don’t remember it tasting this way,’” says Ivy, laughing.
But it is perhaps making desserts that Ivy enjoys the most because she can exercise her creativity and come up with new and inventive sweet treats. Her delightfully holiday-themed ginger and orange cheese cake for instance is something that she and son Joash crafted after brainstorming for ideas for Christmas.
“He suggested ginger as a Christmas spice. So I worked around it and came up with an orange and ginger cheesecake. So it’s like a Christmas-themed cheesecake,” she says.
For Peter and Ivy though, the ultimate satisfaction in continuing to cook these festive dishes for Christmas is the reward of getting their family together and nourishing them with good meals.
“Food brings people together. So when people say they look forward to our food at Christmas, it really does boost my morale because the food that I cook is from the heart,” says Ivy.