Christmas
1676 recipes found
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
These are classic mashed potatoes, brightened up with a substantial amount of garlic. Feel free to adjust the garlic to taste, and to deepen the flavor, try roasting the cloves before mixing them in with the potatoes. (For everything you need to know to make perfect potatoes, visit our potato guide.)
Roasted Cauliflower With Lemon Brown Butter
Roasting vegetables is easy, but this technique elevates the everyday dinner staple. A pan of water in the oven with the cauliflower helps maintain its succulence, while an even temperature browns it and brings out its natural sugars. Brown butter and sage take it over the top.
Honey-Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Harissa and Lemon Relish
Roasting brussels sprouts may be the best and most delicious way to prepare them. Exposed to high heat, they caramelize and become very crispy (even more so when tossed in a sticky and spicy honey-harissa mixture before roasting). Here, they're finished with a slightly bitter and wonderfully tart lemon relish to bring them back from the brink of too much sweetness.
Apple Cider and Bourbon Punch
Apples and oranges! They’re often presented as exemplars of opposition, as though they have nothing in common. But both fruits make appearances on many Thanksgiving tables, with orange in some cranberry sauces and cornbread stuffings with apple, and they mingle beautifully in a mellow punch that gets its verve from bourbon and its depth from a brown sugar and cinnamon simple syrup. For extra apple flavor, try swapping an apple spirit, such as Applejack or Calvados, in for the bourbon. The leftover simple syrup is great in cocktails -- a festive Old Fashioned, for example -- and also on oatmeal and rice pudding.
Italian Roast Potatoes
These potatoes are beloved by children and adults alike, and they are very easy to make. Just cube the potatoes (don't bother to peel) and tumble them into a pan. Pour on the olive oil, sprinkle the oregano, peel the garlic cloves (you don't even have to do that if you're pushed for time), mix everything together and stick the dish in the oven. Serve alongside some lamb chops and a simple salad, or just the salad.
Smoking Bishop
‘‘I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family,’’ Scrooge tells Bob Cratchit near the end of A Christmas Carol, ‘‘and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop!’’ This recipe, adapted from the book Drinking With Dickens, by Charles Dickens’s great-grandson, Cedric, reflects Scrooge’s new disposition and largesse perfectly: it’s warm and sweet and meant for sharing. (To Cedric Dickens’s recipe, I’ve added some fragrant cardamom pods, because years of drinking glogg have shown me how well they play with orange and wine, but you may omit them). If you’re unable to find Seville oranges—marked by a pleasant, pronounced bitterness — substitute five navel oranges, and add the juice of one lemon when you add the port to the pan (do not stud the lemon with cloves or roast the lemon with the oranges).
Christmas Day Clementine Sour
Here’s a cocktail that’s both a tribute to my mother (who loved whiskey sours laced with amaretto) and to my favorite flavors of the Christmas season: clementines, cinnamon and cloves. Juice the clementines a day in advance to save yourself some trouble on the holiday.
Smoked Salmon Sandwiches With Cucumber, Radish and Herbs
For these elegant open-faced smoked salmon sandwiches, use a good quality Pullman loaf or a dense brown bread. Choose the best sweet butter you can find (think French) and don’t stint; the combination of buttered bread, smoked salmon and herbs is ethereal. Thinly sliced cucumber and radish add color, along with the briny pop of salmon caviar.
Hot Buttered Rum
There are many ways to make this classic winter drink. Using brown sugar is traditional, but maple syrup is awfully nice, too. Stirring in the butter with a cinnamon stick while you slowly sip the drink makes for a cozy ritual, but if the sight of a floating lump of butter disturbs you, add the butter earlier in the process, with the sugar—it’ll melt faster. You can also make the drink sweeter (add more sugar) or spicier (substitute spiced rum for dark rum), or both, to your taste.
Bijou
This classic 19th-century cocktail’s name means “jewel” in French, in supposed reference to its combination of gem-colored spirits: diamond-clear gin, ruby-red sweet vermouth and emerald-green Chartreuse. While the original — often attributed to Harry Johnson, who published a recipe in the 1900 edition of his “New and Improved Bartender’s Manual” — called for equal parts, this variation skews the drink toward modern palates by reducing the amount of green Chartreuse. The final drink is balanced and dry, yet still plenty herbal. Serve and sip as is, or split between two very small, very pretty glasses for a petite-in-stature, big-in-flavor nightcap.
Batched Boulevardier
Some drinks are meant to be made and consumed immediately, others benefit from aging. The Boulevardier — a wintertime Negroni that substitutes bourbon for gin — swings both ways. Give this blend of bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth time to mesh in a tightly sealed bottle in the fridge and the drink’s texture skews softer and more velvety. This batch recipe is lightly diluted, enough to enjoy the drink up, without ice, but not so much that it can’t be enjoyed over ice. One rule to follow: If you’re letting the batch sit for more than two weeks, leave the water out and add it the day you’re serving. Otherwise, marry it all, let it sit and drink as desired — or needed.
Classic Eggnog
Aaron Goldfarb, a liquor writer who was raised Jewish, was not introduced to the joys of eggnog until he married a woman who loved Christmas. Making a batch of homemade eggnog became his self-designated duty at their annual Christmas party in Park Slope, Brooklyn. For the spirits, Mr. Goldfarb prefers Maker’s Mark or another bourbon with a heavy wheat content, which lends sweetness. He also cautions against using spiced rum, as he feels the spirits involved already possess enough intrinsic baking-spice qualities. Mr. Goldfarb loves a slightly aged nog; see Tip for his advice.
Gingerbread Apple Cocktail
Venison Chops With Shallots and Cumin
Wintry weather and holiday get-togethers require celebratory food to share. Try venison instead of the more common roasts. A rub of cumin and pepper gives these chops warmth, while bacon adds a whiff of smoke and some fat with which to baste the lean meat. This recipe avoids the usual tart-fruit component, so the spices have less competition. Instead, seared shallots go alongside. For venison, the rack is the easiest cut to prepare. and in a hot oven it is quickly done and cut into chops. The meat is hearty and succulent, with the merest hint of gaminess. Be sure to cook it only to medium rare or it will toughen. Since most venison that’s available (unless you know a hunter) is ranch-raised in America or New Zealand and carries a hefty price tag, you do not want disappointment.
Figs in Blankets With Port-Mustard Sauce
This clever riff on the classic pigs in blankets comes from a Champagne bar, with branches in San Francisco and New York, where they’re made with fresh figs. Using dried figs gives them year-round adaptability. The figs are plumped in port and stuffed with Stilton, though any blue cheese will be fine. The port used for soaking is reduced to a syrup, and flavors a mustard sauce. The figs in blankets are a great holiday tidbit with white, red, rosé or sparkling wine, with cocktails or punch. Serve them alongside a salad or as part of a cheese course. They’re easily prepared in advance and frozen. The puff pastry is quick to prepare in a food processor using frozen butter. The figs in blankets can also be made with purchased puff pastry; one pound is what you’ll need.
Deathbed Manhattan
Allen Katz, founder of the New York Distilling Company in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, spent years worrying over his first rye whiskey, tasting and testing it until it was ripe for bottling. So it only makes sense that he would fuss over the manhattan recipe that uses his new Ragtime Rye. After some tests, he settled on splitting the vermouth component between two products: the bolder, fruitier Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth and the more complex, dry, herbaceous Punt e Mes. Otherwise, it’s a straightforward version of this classic cocktail, which traditionally called for rye. And it lives up to its name: It’s so good, you may request it as your final drink.
Green Tea Punch
This rum-based drink is made with lime juice and freshly brewed hot Sencha tea and Moroccan mint green tea.
That Stinger
With the social season and the holidays headed into high gear, there are likely to be nights when you'll want a cocktail at the end of the evening as much as at the beginning. My suggestion is a stinger, a Prohibition-era cocktail as classic as the Chrysler Building. Most agree it is one of the few cocktails that will also qualify as an after-dinner drink, though it's no Kahlúa on ice cream, either.
Grain-Mustard Jus
Crown Roast Of Pork With Grain-Mustard Jus
Onion Toasts
Alice Waters’s Cranberry Upside-Down Cake
This recipe requires a little extra effort – you have to whip the egg whites separately and then fold them into the batter - but the reward is a light, ethereal cake topped with glistening, caramelized cranberries. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream, and prepare yourself for accolades.
Hinds Head Chocolate Wine
