Dec. 21—At Bishop’s Lodge SkyFire Restaurant, chef Pablo Peñalosa Nájera carefully crafts his two-day, slow-cooked mole sauce — a painstakingly detailed recipe that combines chiles with chocolate, fruit, cinnamon, plantains and other ingredients.

But for holidays at home, he turns to the recipes his grandmother made.

“I remember waking up in her house to the smell of fresh tortillas. The salsa that she made was so fresh. It was amazing,” said Peñalosa Nájera. “Everything from breakfast until you’d go to leave, the food was amazing.”

The truth is, many chefs whose menus list complex dishes that leave guests Googling duxelles (mushroom paste), dauphinoise (potatoes in cream) or beurre blanc (butter sauce) often leave such fancy recipes in their commercial kitchens and at home embrace comfort foods for holiday gatherings with family and friends.

The New Mexican spoke with four well-known local chefs about how they handle Christmas, not only for customers but also for themselves and their friends. The subject got them, well, cookin’.

‘Cooking with respect’

The sweet tamales Peñalosa Nájera learned to make from his grandmother in Tecate, Mexico, were a far cry from the raisin-infused tamales his family made in Mexico City, a dish for which he had to acquire a taste as a young boy.

A self-described picky eater, Peñalosa Nájera said he had first smirked at Lupita Corrales’ sweet red fruit-infused tamales — until he learned to cherish them as much as he did the family gatherings in her kitchen. Corrales died when Peñalosa Nájera was just 12, but her handwritten recipes and legacy of creating comfort dishes for her family live on.

“My grandmother cooked all day, everything from scratch,” he said. “She never bought tortillas. She only made them by hand. Every time we had a gathering at her house, everything ended in the kitchen. It was something I loved.”

In fact, it’s likely what inspired him to become a chef.

“I was 16 years old, and it was time to decide what to do with my life,” Peñalosa Nájera said. “So I had a conversation with my mother, and while I was having this conversation, I was chopping an onion.”

In the 23 years since, he has served as an executive chef in Spain, London, Mexico City and Colombia, launching innovative, best-in-class restaurants and overseeing the operations that made them a success.

He was drawn to Santa Fe three years ago for its unique culture, architecture and flavors, he said. Here, he “cooks with respect,” meaning it’s important to understand a culture before you attempt to cook its foods.

“For example, in New Mexico, if I use green chiles with tomatillos, it will be offensive for the people here. That’s cooking with respect,” he said.

‘I’m a sauce nerd’

At Market Steer Steakhouse, Kathleen Crook takes three days to make her famous french fries.

“On Day One, we cut the fries and rinse and soak them in a brine solution. Then we let them sit overnight,” she said. “The next day, they’re drained and blanched and cooled. Then they’re frozen and cooked on the next day. The freezing process changed the game on fries. I’m very passionate about my french fries.”

Her dish Arroz con Bogavante is perhaps her most complex recipe, featuring lobster, shrimp, mussels, bomba rice, saffron and tomato broth.

At home for the holidays, though, Crook turns to her simple Fresno Chimichurri sauce to wow her friends on Christmas night.

“It’s an Argentinian pesto,” she said. “I’m a sauce nerd. You can put this on anything — steak, potatoes, chicken, shrimp. It’s very versatile, and people love it.”

She also loves to prepare seafood for the holidays, crab dip or her favorite holiday comfort food, shrimp and grits.

Simple dishes stemmed from growing up on an 18,000-acre ranch in Artesia, she said, where her grandmother “ate farm-to-table before it was cool.”

In those days, the family had a big garden and held a community canning session at fall harvest.

“We’d go to granny’s house and can everything we had from the farm so we’d have it through winter,” she said.

After earning degrees in business and history on a rodeo scholarship and returning home to help run the farm, Crook said she became bored with ranch life.

Then she saw an advertisement for a cooking school in Arizona.

“I sold my truck, trailer and horses in March and was in school by the first of May,” she said.

That was 2002. These days, Crook runs the kitchen while her wife, Kristina Goode, handles the front of the house and manages the business end of the restaurant.

Christmases are spent quietly at home, opening presents with a bottle of Champagne or mimosas, she said. It’s a day most chefs are hard at work, but not at Market Steer.

“We close on Christmas Day. I want my staff to be with their families,” she said. “I want them to see their kids’ faces light up with presents and not rush to come to work.”

‘You have to nail those temperatures’

La Fonda on the Plaza chef Lane Warner has for 30 years worked to create “good, clean, wholesome fresh food, perfect every day,” he said. “We don’t get all froufrou with all these little garnishes, chefs using tweezers to put things on the plate. Put it on the plate, and get it to the people hot.”

His emphasis in his busy kitchen, he said, is on consistency.

“The fishes are the hardest to cook,” he added. “You have to nail those temperatures. That’s the toughest dish on our menu to prepare.”

During holidays, however, he dishes up fresh game for his hotel family.

“I’ve got two big, nice, venison backstraps downstairs that I’m going to cook after lunch. I’ll take them up to the executive offices, slice them all up and put a nice little sauce with them and feed it to everybody,” he said. “I share all my wild game with my crew.”

After a trip to Montana over the weekend to hunt pheasant and duck with his hunting partner, a 6-year-old Deutsch-Drahthaar dog named Ice, he will present his hotel family the “gameless” flavors of the birds he hunted there.

He is as passionate about his big-game bowhunting as he is about creating flavors surrounding his kills.

Wild turkey breasts require tenderizing with a jaccard, “an outdoorsman’s favorite tool,” that needles the meat, breaking down its connective tissue, he said.

Then you have to know how to cook it.

“If you overcook it, it will be dry,” Warner said. “It has a totally different flavor profile from domestic turkey. It’s cleaner.”

He also offers tips for cooking wild turkey legs and thighs, which most hunters discard due to the meat’s toughness.

“They need to be braised for five, six, seven hours before the meat falls off the bone,” he said.

‘Don’t surprise them’

For chef Johnny Vee, there is no better traditional holiday recipe than his green bean casserole, a dish he said quickly disappears at holiday parties.

A stark departure from the complex Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Italian and French dishes he prepares at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, Vee said he loves the flavorful dish that does not leave the green beans mushy.

In his 1940s bungalow on South Capitol Street where he lives with his two cats, Vee’s kitchen is tiny but filled with ample equipment.

“I’m either standing at the kitchen counter eating a rotisserie chicken out of the box with a glass of wine or veal saltimbocca with duchess potatoes,” he said.

Like Crook, Vee doesn’t work on Christmas, instead choosing to dine in restaurants or accept invitations to parties.

It’s then that he whips up his favorite green bean casserole or his green chile sopaipilla stuffing.

“This has no canned beans and Durkee onion rings,” he said. “It’s made with a real mushroom sauce and fresh green beans.”

It’s also the most repeated holiday dish in America during the holidays, Vee said, so he wanted to make one that would be remembered.

Vee said it’s best not to show up with a surprise dish at a party, adding, “Unless you warn them that you’re going nontraditional by doing a Caribbean Christmas, don’t surprise them with a nontraditional dish.”