Eschew the roast and calorific trimmings for these Yuletide treats

CHRISTMAS DAY CALORIE consumption can be anywhere up to a hefty 6,000 calories, nutritionists say. That might be acceptable if we followed the meal by tramping home through snowy mountain passes or ploughing a field or two. But in Hong Kong, we waddle down to the taxi stand.

Here are some alternative Christmas Day dining ideas – culled from three of Hong Kong’s top chefs – which don’t stint on the opulence or the joys of sharing.

Ditch the Turkey
If Chan Yan-tak at the Four Season’s Hong Kong’s Lung King Heen can’t do a good turkey stir-fry, neither can you. He’s tried making a dish with black bean sauce and green and red peppers but found turkey meat too tough and dry for the Chinese treatment.

Gary Robinson is executive chef at the Kowloon Shangri-La and, as one might expect of a former personal chef to Prince Charles, somewhat of a stickler for tradition. But even this fan of tradition didn’t go for the whole roast last year. Robinson removed the legs from the turkey, boned the rest (which he suggests can be done by a good butcher) and mixed the leg meat with apricots as a stuffing, rolling the bird up into a giant sausage. This was poached and then fried to make the skin crisp and colourful. Robinson joked that as his kitchen at home is very small, he had to be creative with his technique. “Rolling it up in the bathtub was a bit awkward.”

This year Robinson is tempted to convert a roast turkey and trimmings into a salad. This shows respect for his “sense of tradition,” Robinson says, “and gives the turkey element and the Christmas sensations without the heaviness.”

His idea is to poach and flake a turkey breast and mix it with flash-fried, shaved Brussels sprouts and chestnuts “for the Christmas cheer,” along with some bitter, crunchy leaves. He recommends dressing the salad simply with olive oil and orange juice, mixed and slightly warmed in the pan used for cooking the sprouts and chestnuts.

Going Local
The Four Season’s Chan recommends a radical departure that is also elegant, and he lists Hong Kong’s favorites celebration foods: shark’s fin, abalone, conpoy, steamed lobster and wagyu beef. You make them Christmassy by creating dishes that are red and green. The chef’s wagyu dishes are enhanced with red Chinese wolfberries, while other dishes such as braised superior shark’s fin soup with bamboo piths or baked king prawn are naturally green or red. Both chefs recommend seafood starters. Robinson is a firm believer in canap?s and Champagne as the ideal way to start a Christmas meal and his creations include mini-Scotch eggs with a turkey meat coating instead of pork, and a salmon and caviar “lollipop” (actually more of a lozenge), that coats the fish with a cream containing the sturgeon roe. Chef Chan’s starter is a gratinated seafood and avocado dish served in the avocado shell (see box for recipe).

Caring, Sharing
The great thing about serving Asian dishes for Christmas is that everything is made for sharing. In Thailand, banquets come in the form of a soup, a curry, salad and rice that should all be served at the same time.

Food does not come much more colourful than the green chicken curry (see box), spicy prawn soup (tom yam goong) and the papaya or pomelo salad (som tam) suggested to us by Chef Siriluk of the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong’s Thai & Grill Restaurant in Club JJ’s. “Chef Mum,” as she is known to staff and regulars, says her recommendations may sound like everyday fare, but she insists that these Thai dishes are great for special occasions.

Sweets Time
A simple dessert solution might be Chef Chan’s mango and sago pudding, which has a layer of mango pudding on the bottom, made from top-quality Philippine mangoes, finished with a layer of sago cream.

Readers pinning for the traditional might be tempted by Robinson’s deep fried Christmas pudding ice cream with mulled wine jelly shots layered with fruits. What could be more festive than cake, ice cream and jelly?