Growing up in Puglia – the heel of the Italian boot – Cucina Porto chef Martino Pulito was surrounded by unique Christmas traditions. “I went to a private convent school when I was a kid,” he says. “We were surrounded by nuns, by priests. On Christmas Eve we weren’t allowed to eat meat, only seafood – especially eel.”

A Pugliese Christmas Day starts with plenty of seafood, too. “When you sit down you have your antipasto, which is pretty much raw seafood,” says Pulito. “Puglia is one of the biggest places for raw seafood. We’ve got mussels, oysters, vongole – vongole is a kind of pipis that we’ve got in Italy.”

Despite the focus on eating (and eating well), Christmas Day isn’t a day the Italian people want to spend in front of the stove. It means doing the prep ahead and spending as little time cooking as possible. “Because it’s a family feast, you don’t want to spend time cooking, so we usually make lasagne,” Pulito says. “That’s when Italians make lasagne. They don’t make lasagne like everyone thinks during the week; they make lasagne just on the festivity because they can make it the day before. Then the day after they’re just going to warm it up and put it in the middle of the table.”

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Christmas at Cucina Porto

At his restaurant Cucina Porto, Pulito will be serving a special Christmas Day menu influenced by his upbringing. Things will start off with the traditional seafood course – expect mussels, oysters and prawn cocktails – with a couple of mains to share. Lasagne can be a little tricky to serve in a restaurant, so Pulito is adapting the idea. “I took the same recipe as the lasagne but made it with casarecce pasta,” Pulito says. “It’s going to be like a ragu pasta in the middle to share.”

There’s another traditional main course – this time from Italy’s north – that Pulito is doing, too. “We’ll do a whole roasted capon,” Pulito says. “It’s a big chicken which is going to be stuffed inside with chestnuts and guanciale.”

Dessert will be millefoglie – ¬an Italian dish similar to the French mille-feuille. “The millefoglie is a pastry,” says Pulito. “You bake it and it’s nice and crunchy, then we put on gianduiotto ganache – it’s got a similar flavour to Nutella but it’s more like a mouse. It’s really good; when you try it you can get addicted, big time. Then you’ve got fresh berries – raspberries, strawberries – you just put everything inside. That’s the simple millefoglie.”

Cooking at home

Though he’ll be busy at Cucina Porto this year, Pulito has cooked for plenty of Christmas gatherings at home. Like his family did in Puglia, Pulito recommends home cooks prepare food in advance. “For me, for Italians, it’s better that you prep everything the day before and it’s ready to go so you just heat them up and put them on the table,” Pulito says.

Take your cues from the traditional lasagne and prepare a baked main course ahead of time. “It can even be rice. We’ve got a recipe for rice which looks like lasagne which we do in Puglia, but it’s made with a layer of potato, rice and mussels inside. Then on the actual day you just need to warm it up.”

Pulito also recommends a dish called pasta pasticciata. “It’s a pasta with penne, peas, ragu and bechamel all inside,” Pulito says. “You mix it the day before, then you put a lot of cheese on top in the tray and on the day after you just bake it. Super easy. On Christmas day it does the same job as the lasagne. There’s actually a fight for who’s going to take the edges because the edge is the part where they get burnt, and they’re crunchy. That’s the best bit.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with The Star. See how Sokyo's Daniel Kwak and Flying Fish's Peter Robinson celebrate the festive season.