'tis the season

Make a Candy-Cane Turkey Like Christmas Goddess Debi Mazar

Debi Mazar.
Debi Mazar. Photo: Richie Buxo / Splash News

A weeklong series on the art of entertaining, for women who are too busy for Pinterest.

When it comes to holiday feasts, Debi Mazar goes all out. She doesn’t roast or even deep-fry her holiday bird — instead, in the grand Italian tradition, the Entourage actress wraps the whole thing in pancetta. “Technically that makes it pork-turkey,” she admitted at UNICEF’s annual Snowflake ball on Tuesday night. “It’s a nice, crispy, wonderful turkey. It’s pretty amazing — it looks like a candy cane.”

Mazar and her husband Gabriele Corcos, who’s Tuscan, also celebrate La Befana, the Italian Christmas witch. “La Befana comes on January 6. If you’ve been good she leaves you candy, but if you’ve been bad you get coal,” Mazar explained. “Except now the coal is just black candy. So sometimes we give the kids coal just to mess with them.” Their daughter, who is 8, has already divined the nonexistence of a certain man in a red suit. “She said, ‘Mom, how come you and Santa have the same handwriting?’ So yeah, that’s over.”

Like many moms, Mazar gets up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and stays in her pajamas all day. The kids open gifts, and the whole family cooks Christmas dinner together. And like many moms, she has a foolproof trick to get the decorating done on time. “I make sure to have sex with my husband to ask him to hang the Christmas lights, and that works. Otherwise, he procrastinates. But that’s not an unusual tradition.”

Make a Candy-Cane Turkey Like Debi Mazar