Holiday Goodies

Some people think Roast Prime Rib is tradional for Christmas and lots of people just go with Roast Turkey – stuffed, brined, fast-cooked or whatever – but we thought it would be fun this year to serve duck or goose. Here's to hope, change and peace in the New Year. Happy Holidays from all of us at One for the Table.

Bacon-Wrapped Roasted Duck

Beijing Duck Redux

Braised Duck with Turnips

Duck Breasts with Quince Sauce

Duck with Port-Cherry Sauce

Easy Duck

Honeyed Duck

Ina Garten's Roast Duck

Christmas Goose

Roast Goost with Fruit Stuffing

Steam-Roasted Goose

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday. Families gather. And as they surround the dining table they celebrate and give thanks for all blessings, including the bountiful meal before them.

When my mom was living, she prepared most of the Thanksgiving meal herself. Trying to please everyone, she’d make baseball-sized dumplings and sauerkraut for my German dad, lump-free mashed potatoes for the grandchildren, sweet potatoes with a crunchy topping of melted marshmallows for her daughter-in-law, stuffing for her son-in-law, and lentils for herself and me. My brother wasn’t hard to please. I think he ate everything. And, of course, there was always a huge turkey. I am not kidding when I say there was hardly room on the table for our dinner plates.

Not to be forgotten was the wild rice. In Minnesota, where wild rice is plentiful, most cooks have favorite ways to prepare this “gourmet grain.” It seems my mom could never come up with a recipe that lived up to her expectations. Too dry, too mushy, not enough flavor, too much sage or thyme…just never quite right. Her wild rice challenges may have been due to the fact she had been transplanted in Minnesota from Indiana, where she had never even heard of this aquatic grass seed, the only grain native to the North American continent.

Are you looking for that perfect cookie to round out your holiday cookie platter? The one that will please the chocolate lovers, the coffee lovers and nut lovers alike? This is it!

It is complex and full of goodness. I suggest tripling the recipe because it is crazily addictive. But, here is why I like it for a cookie platter. You need variety in your assortment of holiday cookies, but every cookie can't be a labor intensive nightmare. You'll never get it done. Listen to me, I'm so cynical?  But really, it's experience talking. You know what I mean. We all want these gorgeous plates of holiday cookie beauty, but it is so hard to do.

You have to have a few cookies that knock it out of the park on taste and are easy-schmeazy to make. This one doesn't need eggs and all that other fancy stuff. It's so easy to throw together between all the sugar cut out cookies.

A couple days before Christmas, my sister and I were having our annual bitch-in about all the kitchen time we were putting in that week, when Lindsay mentioned she was making a Clementine Cake. I assumed this was something akin to a Key Lime Pie. “Sounds great,” I said, mentally dismissing it as way too Florida for a proper holiday dessert, and likely way too complicated for a week with cooking chores so numerous I was already as irritable as Scrooge.

As I am perversely interested in exploring ill-advised recipes, I Googled Clementine Cake: only five ingredients. Right up my crabby alley!

I made the cake and it changed my life. (Okay, well maybe not like say, childbirth did, but, you know.)

‘This cake (from Nigella Lawson) is easy to make and it tastes like Christmas—not Christmas in South Palm Beach, more like in Dickens. Delicious. Plus it has no gluten or dairy, which appeals to my picky daughter, so it’s pretty much a miracle food.