Holiday
A few months ago my father got an inkling to make Beef Wellington, beef tenderloin smothered with mushroom duxelles, wrapped in puff pastry and baked. Who knows where he got the idea, maybe just curiosity. Beef Wellington is one of...
Looking for a festive holiday side dish? One my favorite winter sides is my dad's sweet and sour red cabbage. The following recipe takes that Austrian standard up a notch with the addition of apples, onions, and roasted chestnuts. So...
Here's a festive salad for the holidays, and one that I think would be especially good paired with prime rib or roast beef. Blue cheese and celery is a classic combination and is especially good with the additions of dates...
I love cooking with friends, so when Garrett came over with a bottle of champagne in hand and a suggestion to make champagne sorbet for New Years, I was all over it. Unfortunately, our first two attempts were miserable failures...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord as he shares some of his best-loved holiday chocolate crinkle cookies. ~Elise One of the best parts about any holiday—be it Christmas, Thanksgiving, a birthday, Diwali, Columbus Day, whatever—is that you get an excuse...
Please welcome Garrett as he shares the most chocolate-y of shortbread cookies. We ate them ALL. ~Elise If you're lucky, you have a certain special someone who surprises you with dinner when you get home and takes out the trash...
"I'll make cioppino," my brother John announced as the family discussed what to make over the holiday weekend. "Great!" said my father and I, relieved that someone else would do the cooking for a night. "Have you ever made cioppino...
I live for lamb chops. Juicy, tender, rare (please please give me rare), deep reddish pink, browned, crusty, herbed, fatty goodness. So when my father sent me on a mission to make rack of lamb (what? 8 lamb chops in...
Every fall we await the arrival of fresh cranberries in the grocery aisles. "Have you seen them yet?" "Are they in?" We compare notes for cranberry sightings at the local stores. When the cranberries do finally come in, we load...
Cranberry-glazed turkey meatballs. Holiday party anyone? I don't know about you, but I love party appetizer meatballs. These are particularly fun, in that they are sweet, sour, spicy, and savory, all at once. Cheerful little flavor balls in a festive...
My father loves cranberry sauce. I think he enjoys turkey during the holiday season just as an excuse to eat more cranberry sauce. He stocks up on fresh cranberries when they are in season in the fall, and freezes them...
Most of us have memories of special food we enjoyed at Christmas when we were little. The clearest memory for me is of my dad making fudge for all of us (six kids). The last time I recall him making...
It's Easter weekend and the Internet is abuzz with tips, tricks, and recipes to help us sail through it. Here are a few links I found to share with you:
We grew up with eggnog, the kind you buy in a carton, and every Christmas holiday we kids drank up as much of it as we could. I didn't even know that eggnog was a "spiked" drink until well into...
Here's a perfect cake for the holidays, an eggnog pound cake. This recipe by Flo Braker is a favorite of my friend Evie, a professional pastry chef, who passed it on to us. If you like eggnog and pound cake...
Time for gingerbread! Please welcome Garrett McCord who has whipped up this beautiful dark and gingery gingerbread for us. ~Elise I get cravings throughout the year for the spicy, treacly flavor of gingerbread. Sure, I can easily satisfy myself come...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he kicks off our holiday baking season with gingerbread cupcakes. ~Elise As much as I love gingerbread, it’s a pain to make. The last time I made it I was...
No cookie says Christmas more than a gingerbread man cookie. It's been thirty years since I last made gingerbread men, and it took all weekend to get this recipe right. After starting with a truly terrible recipe from a 1974...
A big baked ham is one of the easiest things to prepare for a holiday celebration. It's economical, even a half-ham can feed a dozen people with leftovers, and a full ham typically goes on sale the week before Easter...
"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?" Words of wisdom from Theodore...
We almost always have puréed sweet potatoes or garnet yams with our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Usually we just bake them, scrape out the insides and mash them with a little butter and brown sugar. My father found a wonderful...
Now this was a happy accident. I don't know how I ended up with some red wine in a cup with honey in it, but it happened, and I'm so glad it did. Once I discovered how lovely my red...
This was the year I fell in love with black eyed peas. (The food. Already loved the band.) They have a wonderful flavor, almost smoky, even without bacon or ham. Earlier this last summer we put them in a salad...
Tis the season to be jolly, and to drink hot mulled cider. This delicious hot apple cider drink is a specialty of New England. Spiced with a clove-studded orange, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon, hot mulled cider is the perfect drink...
See the complete photoset here. Making a gingerbread house is no simple task (unless of course you get one of those pre-fab houses, in which case these notes will be of little help). These houses took several gatherings, one to...
Have you ever dreamt of cooking a Christmas goose, but were a bit intimidated by the prospect? When I wanted to learn how to roast a goose, without smoking up the kitchen, or overcooking the goose, I turned to the...
Have you started your holiday meal planning yet? We are just now getting around to it. If you like glazed carrots, here's a way to dress them up for a feast. Sauté the carrot rounds in butter, and then cook...
Please welcome Hank Shaw as he shares a Passover treat with us. Hank made the savory version of matzo brei for my parents and me the other day, we loved it! ~Elise I grew up in a New Jersey town...
From the recipe archive, originally posted November, 2003. Turkey ready to go in the oven My mom's turkey is unlike others. The breast meat isn't dried out, requiring cupfuls of gravy to taste good, but moist and flavorful. I've been...
This is my grandmother's recipe, which my mother has been using to make our Thanksgiving turkey stuffing for more than 40 years. I've never tasted any turkey stuffing that has come close to as good as mom's. Although years ago...
When I told my friend Becca that I had made oyster stew, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and asked, "well, did you like it?" As I nodded yes, she added laughing, "it's a lot better...
Every year around this time, we anxiously await the arrival of a package from my dad's friend Fred. What we crave is a loaf of the most wonderful fruitcake, packed with dates, raisins, and glazed cherries, a raisin bread on...
A traditional and quintessential Christmas treat, peppermint bark is ridiculously easy to prepare and can be done in a few minutes. Sweet white or dark chocolate holds in place broken chunks of peppermint candy. Eat it straight, place it in...
Holiday cookie season is in high gear with another one of guest author Garrett McCord's delicious cookies. We ate these right after the photo was taken, super chocolate-y! ~Elise If this cookie doesn't capture the seasonal taste of Christmas, then...
I love peppermint ice cream! Too bad around here the grocery stores only stock it during the holiday season. This week I decided to make my own and got some great advice from the king of desserts himself, David Lebovitz...
Whenever I make ice cream from scratch, we usually have lots of leftover egg whites to use up. Meringues (or as my nephew calls them, "little pavlovas") are little cookies made with basically just egg whites and sugar, with a...
Prime rib refers to the king of beef cuts, the standing rib roast, "standing" because to cook it, you simply position the roast on its rib bones in the roasting pan, no need for a rack. Estimate 2 people served...
Reposted from the recipe archive, because it's that time of year again and it was so good the first time round! ~Elise This is one righteous pumpkin cheesecake. (Hmm, now that I think about it, what does that mean? I...
The most important thing to remember about cooking a lamb roast is to not over-cook it. Lamb has such wonderful flavor on its own, and is so naturally tender, that it is bound to turn out well, as long as...
Please welcome guest author, the inimitable David Leite of Leite's Culinaria. Looking for a good side for Christmas dinner? David shares one of his favorite recipes from his fabulous new cookbook, The New Portuguese Table ~Elise I know within two...
Who knew the boy could bake? Here's another classic Christmas cookie from Hank. Enjoy! ~Elise This cookie is my other favorite Christmas cookie, along with walnut snowballs. I am sure my mum made all kinds of Christmas cookies over the...
"We can EAT these?" Andrew (age 5) asked incredulously. "Yes, you can eat them," I replied, "they're cookies. You can also hang them from your tree." "What's inside?" asked Matthew (7). "Lifesavers. And Jolly Ranchers." "LIFESAVERS? AND JOLLY RANCHERS?" It's...
Photos of this batch of cookies by SA Stephens When looking for good recipes for sugar cookies, I turned to my dear friend and Alabama native, Steve-Anna. She gave me two family favorites and we each picked a batch to...
A Simply Recipes reader recently informed me that Swedish coffee bread is a Christmas tradition in Sweden, along with Swedish meatballs and other goodies served on Christmas Eve. According to Sara Sabo, "it is a lot of work but the...
I've had so many friends rave about sweet potato pie that when I found a recipe for one in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine I just had to try it. Given that I completely botched the first pie crust (forgot...
"How many pies should we bake, dad? There are only 5 of us for dinner." "Two." "Two?" "Two. Because there is nothing better on God's green earth than apple pie for breakfast." "Ah yes, of course." We are making...
Thanksgiving is coming upon us. In the last month I've actually twice bought and cooked a whole turkey just to make sure we had the instructions right and some decent photos for my mom's Roast Turkey recipe. (Her method...
Looking for ways to prepare all that leftover turkey from the big day? Here are a few ideas from this site, as well as from other food blogs. Enjoy! Turkey Leftovers Ideas from Simply Recipes Turkey Chili Turkey Soup...
Can you say addictive? Get into the holiday spirit with Hank and his snowball cookies! ~Elise This was my all-time favorite Christmas cookie when I was growing up. Mum made them by the bushel, and we'd pop the walnut-sized balls...
The texture of a Yorkshire pudding is nothing like a pudding in the modern sense of the word. Not a custard, it's more like a cross between a soufflé and a cheese puff (without the cheese). The batter is like...
