The season for cooking too much and sharing it all
Sugar-dusted mandazi kick off a day of feasting on Christmas morning for L.A. cook and video producer Kiano Moju.
(Silvia Razgova / For The Times; food and prop styling by Kiano Moju)
Dec. 20, 2020 8 AM PT
With no gatherings for celebrations this year, I’ve managed to avoid cooking too much for any one meal, slimming down my favorite recipes to feed two. That is, until now. It’s five days until Christmas, and I just can’t
not cook a lot. This whole week, I’m baking cookies, cakes and all sorts of fruitcake-like holiday breads that I’m sure no one loves as much as I do (but my friends will still smile and accept them because they’re wonderful people). Come Christmas Eve, I’ll be making way more food than my partner and I can eat, and the leftovers will as I did for my Thanksgiving spread go again to friends who are alone for the holiday or can’t bring themselves to cook. And this year, it will be
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For Kiano Moju, cooking on Christmas Day is a high-stakes affair. She cooks for her entire family, presenting a menu for approval before preparing a feast fit for her relatives’ very particular requests.
“My whole life, we’ve done it this way,” says Moju. “Every holiday meal, we always have two different meats, because if we just have one, someone will feel slighted or upset. It also just seems like a normal day if we have one. And no, chicken doesn’t count.”
Moju lives in West Hollywood and is half Kenyan Maasai and half Nigerian. Her cooking reflects both sides of her heritage, plus where she lives now, in a style of cooking she calls “Afri-Cali.” Nowhere else can you see that in full effect than in her family’s Christmas feast, a blend of East African dishes customized with California ingredients and touched with flavors from West Africa.