Christmas
1676 recipes found
Pan de Jamón (Venezuelan Ham Bread)
This recipe for the traditional Venezuelan Christmas bread comes from Martha Beltrán in Austin, Tex., who brought the recipe with her when she moved to the United States and now considers it essential to her family's Thanksgiving feast. Ms. Beltrán always starts the bread the day before she serves it, laminating it with butter three times before rolling it up with ham, bacon, olives and pimentos. The process can be long, but the dough can be left in the fridge for a flexible and forgiving amount of time, even overnight. When the finished loaves are sliced, each piece reveals a festive butter-slicked swirl.
Winter Squash Casserole With Rosemary
A pungent bath of minced garlic and rosemary gives a squash casserole new life, and in turn, this casserole gives new life to your fall and winter tables. It comes from Sarah Leah Chase, a cook on Nantucket, Mass., whose book "Cold-Weather Cooking" is full of good things for the winter holidays. Flouring the squash cubes helps them form a crust, and prevents the casserole from becoming mushy; the whiff of ginger in the coating is barely detectable but adds freshness. Slow-baking the squash turns it tender and sweet.
Celery-Leek Soup With Potato and Parsley
This celery-forward soup is in essence a potato-leek soup that substitutes most of the potatoes with brighter celery, and skips the vast quantities of cream in the original, resulting in a lighter flavor and texture. Woodsy herbs like thyme and bay leaves, and fresh, raw parsley give the soup its intensely green, almost grassy taste. It’s worth trying the soup without dairy, then admiring the transformative effect of a splash of crème fraîche or cream, which subdues the louder celery notes.
Wild Mushrooms and Brussels Sprouts
Here, wild mushrooms and brussels sprouts get crisp and golden in the oven while brandy-glazed chestnuts add a touch of sweetness. You can make the shallot-chestnut mixture the day before and refrigerate it in an airtight container. Sprinkle it evenly over the roasting vegetables during the last 5 minutes of cooking to warm it through.
Coconut Kale
The kale in this recipe, adapted from Meeru Dhalwala and Vikram Vij of Vij’s Restaurant, in Vancouver, British Columbia, is rich and fiery, sweet and salty all at once. Grilling softens the texture of the kale without entirely removing the mild bitterness of the leaves, while the marinade of coconut milk, cayenne, salt and lemon juice caramelizes in the heat to create a perfect balance of flavors. Made over a charcoal fire or even in a broiler or wickedly hot pan, it becomes a dish of uncommon flavor, the sort of thing you could eat on its own, with only a mound of basmati rice for contrast.
Creamy Potato Gratin
There is an annual color war in our household, with one faction demanding sweet potatoes with marshmallows, the other countering with a potato gratin. I parcook the potatoes in half-and-half before baking the gratin. It’s easier to fine-tune the seasonings that way. And if there are leftovers, reheat them in the microwave and serve before the end of the weekend; this is not a dish that freezes well.
Sweet Potatoes With Bourbon and Brown Sugar
These silky mashed sweet potatoes are spiced with cloves, nutmeg and a little black pepper, brightened with lemon zest, and spiked with bourbon (or orange juice, if you'd prefer). Puréeing them in a food processor yields the smoothest, airiest texture, but for something a little more rustic, you could mash them by hand. Whichever you choose, these reheat well, either in a microwave or in a pot over low heat.
Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry Chutney
This is an easy and surprisingly delicious way to get a dramatic-looking sweet-potato dish on the table with little fuss. The heat of the jalapeños in the chutney, mixed with aromatic vegetables and the sweetness of the dried fruit, gives the cranberries depth. A dollop of sour cream goes on the halved sweet potato, followed by a generous spoonful of chutney. Make the chutney up to two weeks ahead and keep it in the refrigerator. It also freezes well. Assembly on Thanksgiving is an easy last-minute task.
Mashed Sweet Potatoes With Maple and Brown Butter
This recipe is a grown-up take on sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows. A generous swirl of browned butter and maple syrup give the potatoes an earthy sweetness and great depth of flavor, while salted, toasted pecans sprinkled on top add a savory crunch. To save time on Thanksgiving, toast the pecans and make the brown butter up to a day in advance. Simply store the pecans in an airtight container, and the brown butter in the refrigerator. (Gently melt the butter in the microwave before using.)
Clementine-Pomegranate Jello Salad
A gelatin salad, or Jell-O mold, may seem retro, but when you make one from scratch, substituting fresh juice and fruit in place of artificial flavoring and color, it can be spectacular, making a great showpiece for a dinner party or buffet. This particular combination of tart clementine and sweet pomegranate is quite refreshing for a very light dessert, but it may also be served as a fruit salad.
Brussels Sprouts With Pancetta
This recipe came to The Times in 2003 from Suzanne Goin, the Los Angeles restaurateur whose braised vegetables are a hallmark of her cuisine. It is a marvelously flavorful dish, rich with garlic and salty pancetta. It is one to keep.
Roasted Butternut Squash and Red Onions
Here is an easy, healthy addition to a Thanksgiving feast or weekday dinner from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, which was included in a Julia Moskin video feature in 2013. Chop up a few red onions and a butternut squash, roast them in high heat, and drizzle them with tahini sauce, herbs and pistachios. That’s it. (Keep an eye on the onions, though. They may cook faster than the squash.)
Lemony Brussels Sprout Slaw
Like cabbage, raw brussels sprouts do well when shredded and mixed with a tart apple, lemon juice and zest, and a dressing of Dijon mustard and mayonnaise. It’s not a traditional slaw, but the concept is the same. Serve this immediately, or give it some time in the fridge to let the flavors meld. (You may want to drain it before serving if it has released a lot of liquid.)
Potato Mousseline
Here is a riff on the classic side dish that calls for running the potatoes through a ricer (if you don't have one, a splatter screen over a bowl will work just as well), the addition of brown butter and a sprinkling of grated nutmeg. The result is something just as comforting, but a bit more complex and flavorful. (And for everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Braised Celery With Thyme and White Wine
Inspired by the French method of cooking duck or chicken confit, in which the meat stews slowly in its own fat, this recipe simmers celery in a classically French sauce, with white wine, stock, shallots and herbes de Provence. The celery is first blanched in heavily salted water, which jumpstarts the cooking process and seasons the stalks from the inside-out, then it’s roasted in liquid until submissive and silky, with a texture reminiscent of roasted fennel. Once the celery is tender, the liquid is reduced on the stovetop until just thick enough to coat a spoon. The resulting sauce bears an uncanny similarity to the jus underneath the Thanksgiving turkey, in both flavor and mouthfeel, and the dish is equally at home at the Thanksgiving table as paired with a store-bought rotisserie chicken and some mashed potatoes. Like classic confit, you can prepare it in advance and simply reheat before serving.
French Onion Macaroni and Cheese
This outrageously good macaroni and cheese fuses two classic comfort foods into one dish. Caramelizing onions can be a time-consuming affair, but here, the process is sped up by using high heat and and a little water to prevent scorching. The sauce is made with a combination of Gruyère, to remind you of French onion soup, and white Cheddar, to make it melty and smooth. Instead of topping the dish with a dusting of diminutive bread crumbs, it’s dotted with Gruyère toasts that become melty and crisp after a few minutes under the broiler. (You’ll want to slide a sheet pan underneath before baking, in case some of the sauce bubbles over.) This is over-the-top richness at its best.
Glazed Parsley Carrots
This is a French classic, carrots Vichy, or glazed carrots. The idea is simply to cook the carrots with some sugar, water, lemon juice and butter until they are tender and glazed with the melted sugar. Care must be taken to avoid overcooking and burning the sugar mixture.
Brussels Sprouts With Bacon and Figs
Brussels Sprouts With Peanut Vinaigrette
This recipe came to The Times from Karen Van Guilder Little, an owner of Josephine, a restaurant in Nashville, along with her husband, the chef Andrew Little. These succulent brussels sprouts are served there and at her Thanksgiving table every year. “I started playing around with peanut butter — it’s rich and salty like bacon — and it just clicked," Mr. Little said.
Brussels Sprouts Gratin
The most indulgent way to eat any vegetable is to bathe it in cream and top it with cheese, but few benefit from that treatment as much as brussels sprouts do. Whether or not you decide to top them with crispy bread crumbs (you should), the end result is a decadent, but never too heavy, side dish that could easily become your main course.
Sous-Vide Cheesy Mashed Potatoes
Savory Cheddar and Parmesan, along with sour cream for tang, are the keys to this rich, flavorful mash. If you have a vacuum sealer, you can use it to seal the potatoes into their sous-vide bags before cooking; this makes them easier to weigh down so they stay submerged. Once the potatoes are done, you can also keep them warm alongside the sous-vide turkey breast, if you’re making it: 145 degrees, the temperature at which the turkey breast is cooked, is the perfect temperature to hold the potatoes. If you don’t have a sous-vide machine, you can boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, then drain and mash them, and proceed with Step 2. You might not need the milk since boiled potatoes will have a higher moisture content than those cooked by sous vide.
Rutabaga-Potato Mash With Bacon
For the food historian Jessica B. Harris, humble rutabagas laced with rich, smoky bacon fat were the highlight of every childhood Thanksgiving. The ones her mother cooked were sharper than the ones we buy today, so she cut them with mild potatoes, but you can adjust the proportions to your liking. If bacon is off the menu for you, add butter or olive oil to the pot instead, and more to taste after mashing.
Roasted and Raw Brussels Sprouts Salad
If you like a good kale salad, or any type of crunchy salad, then you will love this one, which combines shredded raw brussels sprouts with roasted brussels sprouts leaves. As with any sturdy greens, the raw sprouts benefit from marinating in the dressing, which uses fresh lemon juice and salt as tenderizers. While the uncooked greens can be prepared in advance, you’ll want to add the warm ingredients just before serving, so you can enjoy the contrast of the crisp leaves and toasted almonds with the tangy shredded sprouts.