How I'm Cooking Christmas
If you live in NYC, come to the Greenpointers Holiday Market today from 1-7! I’m selling cookies and Jenn is making random sandwiches.
I’m also excited to announce a special event coming up in the new year: I’m partnering with Smallhold to teach an all-mushroom cooking class! We’ll be making beet-marinated lion’s mane steaks, a crunchy salad with huitlacoche and an umami-rich mushroom dressing, sweet potato fries served with Smallhold’s new mushroom pesto, and shiitake chip cookies. More details here. I think a ticket would make a pretty great gift! I can even send you a card so you have something to wrap.
And speaking of classes, did you know that I can teach private lessons at your home? Another great gift idea! I’ll tailor a lesson to the skill level and interests of any kid or adult (or a small group) and do all the shopping and cleaning up. Reviews I’ve gotten from picky eaters include, “That was actually pretty good,” and “I didn’t think I’d like it but I do.” Email me kate@kateray.net with inquiries.
The end of this year has been hell, but Miro loves the lights strung up all over Greenpoint and, well, I do too. I’m an atheist Buddhist, but I like Christmas and I even like my extended family and I’m looking forward to relaxing into the slow pleasure of home cooking (rather than making 265 cookies like I did over the past 2 days). I have too many cooking plans and not enough days, so let’s get into it.
I’m linking to a lot of my recipes in this email. I’m pretty proud of the work I do on them and I’d like to share them with more of you, so I’ve updated my referral program so that you only need to refer ONE person, and you’ll get access to all my paid-subscriber recipes for a month (there won’t be many new ones over the break). And what the hell, I just lowered the cost for a year of subscription to $35. I’m gonna bump it back to $50 after the break, so now is a great time to get in there.
The recipe I just released is for a vegan banana gingerbread loaf that is nice and spicy, rich and moist, and keeps well for days. Check it out here:
Cookies & Cookies (& cookies & cookies)
Cookies are the best format for flavor experimentation. Here are some of my favorites, organized into recipes that “accidentally” vegan and recipes where the butter or eggs do so much work that I couldn’t leave them out.
Accidentally vegan:
These cookies mostly use a combination of coconut oil and nuts to add richness without butter. Though I’m not vegan, I like messing around with vegan recipes and usually I find the bakes to be less dry and last longer than versions with butter and eggs.
Salted Almond Butter Rye Chocolate Chip - These are the canonical chocolate chip cookies I want to eat always. They’re chewy and not crazy sweet, have a satisfying heft from the almond butter, and they’re an excellent place to showcase your good dark chocolate.
Almond Jam Dots - Perfect raspberry jam dots that taste a little like marzipan.
Almond Cardamom Cookies - I guess I’m really into almonds? Anyway these cookies are ridiculously simple, and while I love cardamom, you could swap out cinnamon+cloves+nutmeg to make them Christmas-spiced (and maybe switch the rose water to orange blossom or ½ teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia).
Rich Chocolate Brownies - You could add ½ teaspoon of peppermint extract to the batter and some crushed peppermint candy on top if you want to make them
The Butter Is Worth It:
Homemade Oreos - Dark chocolate sables with a mascarpone filling. You could chop up some candy canes and add them to the filling.
Buckwheat & Orange Peel Financiers - So classy! So easy! Such a good way to use up egg whites.
Black Sesame Oatmeal Raisin - (These and the ones below actually don’t use butter, but do have eggs). Extra toasty oatmeal raisin cookies that are, of course, chewy and soft.
Lemon Ginger Turmeric Snickerdoodles - These look like the sun and they taste bright too. They’re sweet like all snickerdoodles, but have a much stronger flavor from the lemon and powdered ginger.
Flat Gingerbread Architecture
Last year, I spent the better part of 4 or 5 days crafting a brownstone gingerbread house from scratch. It looked so damn good, and I neglected so many family members, other activities, and sleep to work on it. This year, if I feel moved in the decorating direction, I’ll make the dough for some sugar or gingerbread cookies and cut it in the shape of houses or buildings, and I might make stained glass windows by crushing Jolly Ranchers and scattering them in the windows before baking. Then I’ll decorate the cookies flat, creating a scene that’s intricate the way a gingerbread house is without needing to stand up by itself.
Baked Brie for Christmas Eve
It was a New Years Eve awhile ago, when Anthony and I had no plans, that I decided to make a baked brie that the two of us would split for dinner. Isn’t that all you want to do when you see one as part of a cheese course? Then last year on Christmas Eve, we were all tired by the idea of cooking anything when we were already planning a Christmas meal for nine, so I made a really big baked brie, we got some olives and stuff, and that was dinner. It was special and indulgent, but not stressful.
You can look up recipes online, but all you do is heat your oven to 400°F, cut off the very top of a piece of brie or Camembert and put it on some puff pastry, and then add something fun on top of the cheese: nice jam or marmalade or chutney, za’atar + honey, figs + chopped nuts, a scattering of fresh herbs, caramelized onion or fennel, roasted mushrooms, pesto. If you’re vegan or dairy-free, Dufour makes a pretty good vegan puff, and you could fill it with some kind of dip: mushroom pate, romesco, pkhali, a chunky artichoke dip, eggplant caponata, a bunch of greens cooked down with olive oil and garlic and pine nuts.
Special Cinnamon Roll for Christmas morning
I think I’d like to make this a tradition as Miro grows up. On Christmas Eve, we design and bake a special flavor cinnamon roll that we heat up for Christmas breakfast. “Cinnamon roll” is a misnomer, because what’s fun about the spiral-shaped enriched bread is that you can pair it with so many fillings. Here area few ideas: Lemon curd + poppyseed, pumpkin + pumpkin spice, pistachio + orange zest, apple butter + cinnamon chips. Or savory: jalapeño cheddar, goat cheese and fresh thyme, porcini butter and roasted mushrooms, chili crisp and scallions. King Arthur has a very good cinnamon roll recipe, but I actually prefer the olive oil based dough I developed here, which is a little sturdier so it stands up to a lot of filling. Either way, bake them the night before, let them cool completely then cover with plastic overnight, and reheat in the morning.
Some ideas for Christmas dinner
Green phyllo pie with tomato confit
Layers of crispy phyllo spilling over the edges of a cast iron skillet containing a filling made from two pounds of cooked down spinach with just a little ricotta and egg to hold it together, and topped with salty, umami-rich tomato confit made with the good olive oil. This is my fantasy vegetarian centerpiece, which would be extra cute on a Christmas table because it’s green and red. I haven’t made it yet, though I’ve done all the parts separately at some point, so if you want a full “recipe” before Christmas, you can ask and maybe I’ll make a test run.
Christmas tree focaccia
I’ll be teaching these in a holiday break class focused on Italian baking. The idea is to make a focaccia “garden” that uses rosemary leaves, parsley, and cherry tomatoes to create a Christmas tree or wreath design on the surface of the focaccia. It comes out surprisingly well and it’s a great project for kids.
Tortilla Española with Yams and Rosemary
Awhile ago, I made a riff on a Spanish tortilla that could be a more interesting way to serve potatoes at a holiday meal. The yams add a little sweetness that goes well with the rosemary, but overall it’s still a savory dish.
Mushroom Gravy
It’s nice to have a stunning main dish, but if you’re a vegetarian at an omnivore’s table with lots of sides then all you really need is a good gravy to pull it together. I’ve been using this mushroom gravy for a long time — it’s a burst of umami that’s good with basically everything.
Pkhali and Muhammara balls
Pkhali is a Georgian appetizer made from spinach and walnuts that’s often served in small greens balls dotted with pomegranate seeds. Muhammara is a Syrian red pepper and walnut dip that’s chunky enough that you could serve it the same way if you left out some olive oil. Make both, and you can have a little plate of green and red balls that look and taste great together.