New Year’s Day
363 recipes found
Eggnog Overnight French Toast
Like a good pitcher of eggnog, this French toast is rich, sweet, boozy and covered in nutmeg. Slicing the bread but keeping the base connected not only makes this an attractive breakfast centerpiece, it also feeds family and friends with little effort since all the servings bake simultaneously. Allowing it to soak in the refrigerator overnight deepens the dish’s flavors. Don’t worry about forcing the bread pieces apart when pouring in the soaking mixture: The loaf will flower naturally as it bakes. This dish is sweet enough to eat without a final drench in maple syrup, but it’s great with a mountain of fresh, tart berries. A little homemade whipped cream wouldn’t hurt either.
Abstract Art Cookies
Some cookies feature tightly piped designs that require a master draftsman’s talents. That’s not this cookie, which looks best decorated with a looser hand. Here, sugar cookie dough is flavored with rosemary and lemon zest, baked, coated with lemony glaze, and sprinkled with crushed pistachios, freeze-dried raspberries, rose petals and pomegranate seeds. Finally, they are drizzled with a bit of pink glaze, Jackson Pollock-style. Each one looks like a little abstract painting, no special skills needed.
Clementine Confit
In the age-old French tradition of fruit confit, it takes many days and many pounds of sugar to make a whole clementine shimmer like a glass orb, preserving it for many and making it more of a conversation piece than anything you actually might want to eat. This is a decidedly fresher take that requires less sugar and time. Individual segments of the tart citrus take a long, warm oven bath in a light sugar syrup until chewy and translucent. They are a perfect topping for Ginger Chocolate Cake almost any dessert or even a bowl of yogurt, fruit and nuts.
Crunchy Chickpeas With Sesame, Cumin and Lime
It's a bit more work than just tossing chickpeas, oil and spices together onto a sheet pan, but dry-roasting the beans first, then stirring them into oil that's been infused with spices encourages the seasoning to cling to the bean. Here, nutty sesame seeds are combined with earthy cumin before being tossed with roasted chickpeas and a little lime zest for brightness. They make a nice addition to a charcuterie plate or as a topping for roasted vegetables such as carrots or baby turnips. They also make a great high-protein snack for kids of all ages.
Kelly Fields’s Haystack Cookies
I toasted the rolled oats called for in Ms. Fields's recipe, just to get a little more texture out of them. Make sure the mixture is hot when you drop the cookies or the texture will be too crumbly.
Peppermint Stripe Cookies
Inspired by a series of brushstroke paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, these sugar cookies are meant to be lined up in a tight grid, painted with bold red stripes and arranged randomly. To paint on cookies, they must be first coated with royal icing and allowed to dry, preferably overnight. Luster dust and petal dust, colored powders used in cake decorating, are mixed with peppermint extract (or lemon extract, if you prefer) as a medium. (The dusts are available from cake-decorating stores, craft stores or online.) Make sure the peppermint extract you use is primarily alcohol, which evaporates immediately, leaving the pigment behind, and not primarily peppermint oil, which might stain the cookies. Flat, soft art brushes work best to apply the color, and a plastic paint tray with wells is best for mixing them.
Collard Greens and Cornmeal Dumplings
Collard greens are a common dish in many African American households, and are especially important during New Year’s celebrations. In folklore, the greens represent dollar bills, and the more you eat, the more money you’ll have in the new year. In this version, adapted from “Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking,” by Toni Tipton-Martin, cornmeal dumplings simmer with the greens in a smoky stock. The dough is made using that rich potlikker and then added towards the end of cooking so the dumplings don’t become soggy. This combination of greens and dumplings parallels the West African pairing of soups and stews with fufu, an accompaniment traditionally made from pounded yam, cassava or other starch. This is delicious on its own, but even better with black-eyed peas and rice.
Tteok Mandu Guk (Rice Cake Soup With Dumplings)
You can eat a bowl of tteok guk, rice cake soup, as South Koreans do on New Year’s Day (by the Gregorian or Lunar calendar) and freeze any leftover broth for multiple soul-soothing meals in the new year. The soup sometimes includes mandu, as it does here, and those dumplings also can be frozen. An aromatic gochugaru oil turns this ordinarily snow-white dish crimson, flavoring the bold, spicy-sweet kimchi dumpling filling and tingeing the final broth with its heat. The tteok, rice cakes, here come in the form of thick, cylindrical pieces rather than soggy coins, and are added at the last moment to maintain their pleasurable chewiness.
Black-Eyed Peas With Ham Hock and Collards
For the New Year’s good fortune, a plate of black-eyed peas or other beans is considered auspicious, auguring wealth and prosperity. In the American South, they are traditionally eaten on the first day of the year. Adding cooked greens (the color of money) is said to make them even luckier. Simmered with onion and a meaty ham bone (other options are salt pork, bacon, pig’s feet, hog jowl and ham hock), black-eyed peas are often seasoned quite simply, with just salt and pepper. They may also be made highly seasoned with hot pepper and spices. Freshly baked cornbread is the perfect accompaniment.
Collard Greens
Collard greens, a staple of Southern cuisine, are often cooked down with smoked turkey or pork neck bones. The greens form a potlikker, or broth, full of briny, smoky flavor. When braised with smoked meat, they’re equally delicious as a side or a light one-pot meal. The longer the greens cook, the better they'll be. Top them with a generous dash or two of hot sauce, and pair with cornbread. What tomato soup is to grilled cheese, potlikker is to cornbread.
Seafood Gumbo
For many African Americans, seafood gumbo is an essential part of New Year’s celebrations. This version, adapted from the chef JJ Johnson, uses celebratory seafood, such as scallops, crab, lobster and shrimp, and includes okra rounds in a nod to his family’s southern roots. Mr. Johnson also pulled inspiration from Gullah Geechee cuisine, Native American and West African flavors and Louisiana's culinary traditions for the ultimate melting pot of gumbo. Be sure to make the gumbo spice mix, which adds heat and depth to this luxurious and comforting stew.
Vermouth Royale
Bubbly, citrus-forward and refreshing, the Vermouth Royale is just as lovely served in the dead of winter as it is poolside during the summer. If you don’t have a muddler, the business end of a wooden spoon or tapered rolling pin work just as well. Since crème de cassis can quickly skew a cocktail saccharine, the Vermouth Royale starts with a half-ounce. That said, if your preference for sweetness skews a touch higher, feel free to use up to three-quarters of an ounce of crème de cassis.
Chocolate Kolbasa (Russian No-Bake Fudge Cookies)
The chef Bonnie Morales Frumkin upgraded this recipe from a treat her Russian family often made during the Soviet era as a way to stretch precious supplies like cookies and cocoa powder. By adding bittersweet chocolate and toasted hazelnuts, she has made it positively luxurious. The treat gets its name from its resemblance to a salami, with bits of nuts and cookies studding each slice.
Turkey Breast Roulade With Garlic and Rosemary
Ina Garten has been known as the Barefoot Contessa since she opened a gourmet store by that name in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1985. She shared this recipe from her book “Modern Comfort Food” with The Times for Thanksgiving in 2020, when many cooks were looking for alternatives to whole turkey. If you don’t like fennel seeds, leave them out: Garlic, sage and rosemary give this roast the flavors of Italian porchetta, and it will still be fragrant, juicy and delicious without them.
Black-Eyed Peas
Black-eyed peas are a Southern good-luck tradition for New Year’s Day, one with deep roots in African-American culture. Simmer the peas with charred onion, chile de árbol and cloves, and they’ll soak up deep flavor. This recipe comes from the chef Mashama Bailey, of the restaurant Grey in Savannah, Ga., who makes it for her New Year's feast. Her family always cooked the beans with ham hocks, but Ms. Bailey prefers to make hers vegan, so all can enjoy it. These peas are also fairly customizable: Purée a portion of the mixture for a thicker sauce, doctor with your favorite hot sauce or dollop with sour cream to add richness.
Baked Eggs With Kale, Bacon and Cornbread Crumbs
This Southern riff on bacon and eggs comes together quickly and with just a few ingredients. Using a store-bought corn muffin to make the toasted cornbread crumbs is a quick shortcut that gives this dish its star power. (Try using these crumbs as croutons in a kale Caesar salad, too!) Curly kale, collard greens, Swiss chard or a combination may be used in place of the Tuscan kale. For a vegetarian-friendly version, this recipe can be made without the bacon: Just sauté the garlic, onion and greens in 3 tablespoons olive oil, and add an additional 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Kir Royales
Molten Chocolate Babycakes
This is a fancy restaurant dessert that's easy to make at home: mix up the little cakes, stash them in a fridge for a day and then take them out as you sit down to your meal, popping them in the oven just 10 minutes or so before serving them with a dollop of vanilla or pistachio ice cream. As each oven varies, it's worth having a practice run of these to see exactly how long the babycakes need to give them this glorious texture.
Pork Meatballs With Ginger and Fish Sauce
These nuoc cham-inspired meatballs are perfect to fill lettuce cups topped with fresh basil or cilantro. (Add steamed rice for a more substantial meal.) The Ritz crackers here make for a juicier meatball, but feel free to substitute plain dry bread crumbs. To make the Ritz crumbs, place the crackers in a resealable plastic bag and lightly crush them with the back of a wooden spoon or measuring cup. For an easy dipping sauce, spike 1/4 cup mayonnaise with 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil or soy sauce. And save any leftover meatballs: They're great simmered in chicken broth the next day. The ginger and garlic in them release their aromatics into the broth for a deeply flavorful soup base.
Vegan Mac and Cheese
Many creamy vegan pasta recipes call for an arsenal of expensive ingredients, but this one relies on more approachable ones, like cashews and almond milk for richness, nutritional yeast for tang and soy sauce for complex saltiness. Sautéed onions do double duty: They serve as a thickener and help offset the sweetness of the cashews. This simple stovetop pasta is wonderful on its own, but feel free to add roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, spices, harissa or hot sauce. For a quick-baked version worthy of Thanksgiving dinner, pile the prepared mac and cheese into a casserole dish, top with panko and more nutritional yeast, and broil for a few minutes until golden brown.
Creamed Corn Without Cream
When you grate corn on the large holes of a box grater, you get a lot of creamy milk from the corn, so no dairy cream is necessary for this version of what is usually a very rich dish. If the corn is sweet, as corn should be, I prefer to let the dish stand alone with no additional flavorings; that’s why I’ve made the shallot or onion and the herbs optional.
Raw Beet Salad
This is a beet recipe for someone who is skeptical of their earthy, rooty flavor. Uncooked beets are less sweet and earthy than they are when boiled or roasted. This is a messy affair, so peel and grate them near the sink.
Spiced Irish Oatmeal With Cream and Crunchy Sugar
A shower of heavy cream and plenty of caramelized Demerara sugar may make these Irish oats seem more like dessert than something you’d serve first thing in the morning, but that’s all the more reason to bake them up for a special occasion breakfast or brunch. Cardamom and cinnamon give them an especially earthy, perfumed aroma, and toasting the oats in butter before baking them lends nuttiness and depth. They’re also extremely easy, and you can assemble the dish the night before, then bake them in the morning. Just add about 10 minutes to the baking time if you’re starting them cold from the fridge.
Cornmeal Waffles With Smoked Salmon
A touch of fine cornmeal in the batter gives these waffles a delicious crispness. For a savory approach, they are embellished with smoked salmon, crème fraîche and caviar, perfect for a celebratory soiree, midnight supper or brunch. Serve a whole waffle or cut in quarters for appetizers. If you don’t have a waffle iron, the batter can also be used to make pancakes or blini. Of course, if preferred, serve these corn-perfumed waffles with sweet toppings instead.