Christmas
1676 recipes found
Chocolate Sugar Cookies
These are almost brownie-like in flavor, and remain slightly softer than many traditional sugar cookies. The recipe was developed by Georganne Bell, a professional cookie-decorating teacher in Salt Lake City who doesn’t like traditional vanilla sugar cookies. Unlike many sugar cookies, these don’t need to chill, and can be rolled out immediately after they are mixed. Avoid the temptation to add more flour (unless the dough is really sticky), or to use too much flour while rolling and cutting them, or the cookies will be dry. They don’t spread in the oven, so you can bake them close together. They are sturdy enough to decorate wildly with colored royal icing, but also taste good with just buttercream or a simple glaze of powdered sugar and water flavored with a little lemon juice or vanilla.
Rosemary and Citrus Turkey for a Crowd
This recipe makes things easier on you if you’re feeding a crowd at Thanksgiving. Instead of roasting two birds, or a giant, hard-to-maneuver 22-pounder, borrow a trick that caterers use at large weddings. There’s the official wedding cake for show, while in the kitchen there are sheet pans full of the same cake recipe, baked into flat, easily sliceable pieces. Using the same logic, here you’ll find a recipe for one whole turkey roasted for that Norman Rockwell moment. Then, pans of easy-to-carve turkey parts are cooked in the same oven at the same time. Monitor everything carefully: The whole bird takes the longest to roast, while the parts roast in about half the time, the white meat often finishing before the dark. You will need a large roasting pan with a rack, and two 9-by-13-inch baking pans.
Filipino Embutido
This recipe for embutido, a festive Filipino meatloaf featuring ingredients that appeared in the Philippines during the American occupation, is adapted from Emma Phojanakong. She often prepares it as a stuffing for chicken; inspired by that, this recipe features a simple citrus-and-soy-spiked chicken sauce to go alongside. Serve it with watercress and steamed white rice, but it also makes great next-day sandwiches.
Stuffing With Mushrooms, Leeks and Bacon
Discord swarms around the issue of stuffing. Should it be cooked in the bird or baked alongside, as dressing? White or corn bread? Firm enough to slice or soft as pudding? Call this recipe the peacemaker, because it’s adaptable enough to make everyone happy. You can use white or corn bread (and gluten-free corn bread works perfectly). The mushrooms allow vegetarians to nix the bacon without sacrificing all the flavor. We advocate baking it separately (which technically makes it dressing), but if you want to stuff the turkey, you can do that, too.
Sicilian Pistachio Cake
Without much prompting, Maria Luca Caudullo, whose in-laws founded the Bronte pistachio company Antonino Caudullo, will reel off any number of pistachio recipes. Filet of beef with a pistachio crust, “olives” made with crushed pistachios and sugar syrup, panettone with pistachio paste, and also for Christmas, a simple pistachio cake. “That one I only make for Christmas,” she said. Her instructions were simple and clear enough, though the baking temperature of around 120 degrees Celsius, or about 260 degrees Fahrenheit, raised some doubts. Baked at 275 degrees, the cake takes longer than the 25 minutes she suggested, but the results are excellent.
Bean Puree
Caviar Sandwich
I now prefer the caviar sandwich to all other more classic presentations at the holidays. All that caviar crammed into a sandwich makes me feel giddy and extravagant and very lucky to be alive the second I set eyes on it. Context is everything; what I could reasonably splurge for would feel forlorn if showcased on a proper silver trolley atop a mound of shaved ice with a mother-of-pearl spoon at the ready on its nearby velvet pillow, but here, by contrast, in the context of a lowly sandwich, it feels as decadent as if I were eating caviar straight out of the tin, like a midnight pint of ice cream. Buy the caviar you most prefer from a retailer you trust the most—the most expensive may by no means necessarily be your favorite-- and see if this luscious sandwich doesn’t make you feel pretty giddy, too.
Peanut Butter Balls
Depending on where you live, these chocolate and peanut-butter confections are known as either peanut butter balls or buckeyes. In the Midwest, they are known as buckeyes because they look like the nut of a buckeye tree, thanks to an exposed circle of peanut butter that's left after they're dipped in chocolate. Be sure to start with a good-quality peanut butter, and don’t skimp on the salt. Those small touches carry a lot of impact.
Roast Pheasant
Meringue Topping
New Mexican Pozole
In New Mexico, there is abundance and generosity and plenty of comfort food at holiday parties. Posole, the savory and hearty, rather soupy stew made from dried large white corn kernels simmered for hours, is traditional and easy to prepare. Stir in a ruddy red purée of dried New Mexico chiles to give the stew its requisite kick. This is satisfying, nourishing, fortifying fare. The corn stays a little bit chewy in a wonderful way (canned hominy never does), and the spicy broth is beguiling.
Tart Dough
While Dorie Greenspan uses this dough for savories, it’s really an all-purpose recipe that produces a not-too-rich, slightly crisp crust that is as happy holding pastry cream for a strawberry tart as it is encasing a creamy cheese filling for a quiche. This is a good dough to use anytime you see a recipe calling for pâte brisée. Be prepared: The dough should chill for at least 3 hours.
Molten Hot Chocolate
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Here’s a simple, foolproof way to prepare brussels sprouts: Toss with a little olive oil or bacon fat, salt and pepper and roast until tender inside and crisp outside. Finish with a little red-pepper flakes or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, if you'd like. This recipe serves two, but it doubles or triples easily.
Soft Herb Salad
In addition to how nice it looks, the beauty of this herb salad is that it can be as sweet or as pungent as you like, served in a big heap as a fresh first course, or a small pile as a refreshing side dish, or as a palate cleanser with a cheese course. It is especially energizing when served alongside heavy winter feasts:The leaf-green herbs, pink peppercorns and buttery golden almonds perk up the browns of roasts and braises. Picking the herbs and cleaning them is a finicky task, but can be done a day or two before.
Salmon Rillettes
A light but rich tasting spread made with fresh and smoked salmon. This is my adaptation of David Lebovitz’s adaptation of Susan Loomis’s salmon rillettes, a recipe that I have been wanting to make for years. A more buttery version is in Susan Loomis’s wonderful book “Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin,” and on David Lebovitz’s eponymous website. David uses a mixture of steamed fresh salmon and smoked salmon, and I have followed suit, changing the proportions slightly. I used much less butter – 1 tablespoon, and a tablespoon each of olive oil and crème fraîche, as well as some Greek yogurt, and I still came up with a mixture that I can call rillettes. You can serve the spread with sliced bread or crackers, spoon onto endive leaves, cucumber rounds or squares of red and green pepper, or use as a filling for miniature bell peppers. You can also substitute these salmon rillettes for the smoked trout rillettes in the recipe for “Lentils With Smoked Trout Rillettes” from earlier this week. As always, use a fork, not a food processor, to make this.
Roasted Turkey Stock
When you’re making a turkey, making stock with the bones is the logical next step. This recipe, from the Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin, has the usual aromatics — carrots, celery, onions — plus a concentrated shot of white wine and a dried chile, which add a welcome breath of freshness. (Sometimes poultry stock can taste flat.) Roasting the bones and the vegetables in the same pan streamlines the process and adds depth of flavor. You can use this stock in virtually any recipe that calls for chicken stock (except for chicken soup).
Holiday Ham
Sautéed Brussels Sprouts and Apple With Prosciutto
At the elegant restaurant Piora in the West Village, the chef Chris Cipollone separates each brussels sprout into individual leaves to make this autumnal dish. Thinly slicing the sprouts is faster, though less refined. The slivered sprouts are then sautéed with cubes of sweet apples, and garnished with an icy, porky snow made from frozen prosciutto grated on a microplane. Grated pecorino cheese can be used instead for a meatless version.
Glazed Holiday Ham
Fannie Farmer’s Parker House Rolls
In 1896, Fannie Farmer, then principal of the Boston Cooking School, wrote and published a cookbook that revolutionized the way home cooks thought about cooking and housekeeping (she introduced the concept of using measuring cups and spoons, among other things). The book, originally titled “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” was a smash hit in the United States and became known simply as “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.” It is still in print. This classic recipe is an adaptation of one found in a revised edition by Marion Cunningham. It takes time but very little effort, and you will be rewarded with soft, pillowy, butter-rich rolls worthy of your best breadbasket.
Fresh Ham Roasted With Rye Bread and Dried Fruit Stuffing
Scallion-Cheddar Cornbread Stuffing
This stuffing — or, you can call it a dressing — is baked outside the turkey so that it develops a crisp topping. You’ll want to make sure your cornbread is stale here: If working with fresh cornbread, dry it out in your oven. Crumble the pieces, then spread them on a rimmed sheet pan and bake at 300 degrees until firm and dry, but not hard. Timing will depend on how moist the cornbread was to start, so be sure to keep an eye on it.
Laurie Colwin’s Gingerbread
The writer Laurie Colwin had an obsession with gingerbread, publishing a few different essays and recipes exploring its charms. In the essay that precedes this moist, cakelike rendition, from her book “Home Cooking,” she writes that it is “home food” — not fancy restaurant food, that is, but soothing cold-weather food that is simple to make, ideal for an afternoon spent holed up indoors. The essay is also a paean to Steen’s cane syrup, from Louisiana, which comes in cheerful yellow cans. Steen’s is easy to find online, if not at your local supermarket, but the recipe does not suffer if you use another brand of light molasses instead. Serve the cake plain with whipped cream, or with fruit and a dollop of crème fraîche, or glazed with lemon icing, as Ms. Colwin often did. (The New York Times)