Are You Christmas Ready????

Christmas is a week away. Are you all set for another holiday meal? Do you have enough for your baking extravaganza? Are you Christmas ready?

The most important question is do you have your main meal planned out?  By now you should have your ham if you're planning on serving it. With it should come a good supply of cloves and pineapple. You can always buy the ginger ale for it the day before or use the brown sugar left over from baking for a sweet rub. As for the turkey, you have a few days leeway time. It can be bought as late as the 22nd or 23rd.  Yams can also be bought on the weekend too along with potatoes and onions. Once you have the dinner sorted out , it's time to reevaluate the linens. Are they OK after Thanksgiving? Are there any stains that need to be washed out again. Then use baking soda on them and a good wash and rinse through the washing machine. This also applies to those linen napkins too, Be careful , though, when you're dealing with hand embroidered or heirloom dinner linens. These will have to be presoaked in the tub and then gently wash in either the tub or sink. Try to use something gentle such as  The Laundress' The Baby Detergent,It's meant for baby clothes but it also can be used on delicate vintage fabrics too. Another must is checking the silver and glassware. Make sure everything is polished along with being tarnish and crack free. If you're wine glasses or tumblers aren't up to par, then head to your local store like Target or Macy 's for a new replacement set.

The second big kitchen to-do is the whole holiday baking. Since we're now so close to the holiday, you can buy the ingredients right now when the stores have them on sale. Take advantage of this, especially if you have a lot of baking to do. Buy up the cookie mixes if you don't have the time or experience to create scratch ones. Betty Crocker has some good flavors, like peanut butter and oatmeal.Also  stores like Stop & Shop has sales on cake and brownie mixes, perfect if you want to make more substantial treats like cupcakes and brownies. If you are making scratch cookies and cakes, make sure you're stocked with a variety of flours such as plain flour and gluten free for those with allergies. Flavorings are used a lot during this time. Keep an eye on your vanilla, almond and peppermint extracts. If they're looking a little low , then it's time to bring in new bottles. The same goes for the sprinkles and nuts too. You should also be well stocked when it comes to all the sugars. Not only does granulated sugar go fast during this time, but also confectioner's , light and dark brown sugars. Buy your eggs and butter close to the day you start baking. The fresher they are, the better they'll perform. This is also a good time to assess your cookie sheets, cookie cutters, and cake pans. Make sure you also have parchment paper for some butter cookies and meringues. Do you have enough tins to hold them? If not , buy a few festive holiday ones and even platters to serve them on.

Christmas is a week away, Be ready. Be prepared.  That way it'll make holiday cooking and baking easier - and better.

A Very Vegan Christmas

Christmas is the time for good will towards all and that includes animals. For a more sympathetic and Franciscan holiday think about going vegan and vegetarian. It's surprisingly easy to do  -not to mention delicious with the right foods and treats.

What do herbivores eat for the holidays? I'm asked that all the time , as I cook and bake in a vegetarian household. (I'm not one myself and I will allow myself dairy , eggs and meat/seafood from time to time). For main meals  some kind of tofu pr plant based "meat" is the star. Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers have expanded the range of no meat recipes. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out my local Stop & Shop had all different kinds of plant based meats, including Beyond Burgers meat loaf and sausages. Even Stop & Shop itself has their own version of the faux meat which is exciting. The chopped "meat" can be made into a fancy loaf and decorated with grape tomatoes, olives and peppers. You could also make a meaty vegan lasagna, perfect for a crowd as a second course. Tofurkey has these little "hams" that have an amber ale glaze or just plain. There 's some fancy recipes regarding them, with one giving it the Hassleback treatment. This is slicing the ham and stuffing the slits with rosemary and tart apples. it's served on a variety of veggies like carrots and fingerling potatoes. Tofurky also gives us their famed tofu turkey loaf and feast package. There is a breadcrumb and rice stuffing in their loaves, while the feast comes with gravy and even a cheesecake.

Many feel that seafood is a luxury, perfect for a lush Christmas Eve or Christmas Day meal. Gardein which has excellent vegan meat like their turkey and gravy and chicken strips offers crab puffs. These mini balls are a perfect way of starting off a meal and have relatively the same ingredients as the real thing. Onions and peppers along with a hint of garlic give them that extra flavor, associated with crab cakes. Vegan Essentials, a great site for all things vegan has some good fish and seafood substitutes. I recently made their Match Meat brand  crab cakes. They were just as good as the real thing, especially with the seafood taste and crumbly texture. One large cake can satisfy one person and they're perfect with a salad and a light side. There's also a nice lemony aftertaste thanks to addition of lemon juice in the recipe. Vegan Essentials also sells "lobster chunks" by Loving Hut which I ordered for Christmas and am excitedly. anticipating their arrival.They're made with konjac root, an herb found in Asia. The lobster supposedly tastes like the real thing so I will have plenty of melted vegan butter on hand. For real luxury there is Caviart, a faux roe that's made with seaweed.

Vegans can eat well for the holidays. There's a wide array of faux meats and fish that can satisfy any taste. The best parts is that no animals were harmed in the making of the Christmas meal.

Your Great American Christmas Bake Off

It's that time of the year. Spice is redolent in the air. Mixing bowls are filled with icing and ovens are full of cookies. Yup, it's The Great American Holiday Baking Show. Paul Hollywood, he with the icy blue stare is back, frowning and smiling  - and ultimately charming not only his bakers but America as well.

ABC or local New York Channel 7 is airing this for three consecutive Thursdays between nine and eleven PM.It ends the day after Christmas, a time when , frankly, people are sick of anything baked and iced. Mr. Hollywood is the anchor of this with Sherry Yard replacing Prue Leith and the great Mary Berry. Ms. Yard is no hack, She is a pastry chef who has won the James Beard award three times for her amazing pastries and was pastry chef at Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Los Angeles. She kind of reminds me of Berry, with her chic outfits and cooking teacher demeanor. To inject humor there is Baby Spice, Emma Bunton and former Chicago Bear , Anthony "Spice" Adams (get the connection there?) They're not as sharp and witty as the original hosts , Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc but they do offer some levity. The program is the same with three different bakes with themes. There is the signature bake - a challenge for the bakers to show off their recipes, followed by a technical bake. This is usually a classic recipe  that has a series of steps omitted. The bakers have to guess what was omitted and add it in. The third bake is the showstopper. This allows the bakers to show off their skills and talent. In the past it had been gingerbread houses and cakes in the shape of elaborate mushrooms and cheeseboards.

One thing that is different. The Yanks are flown to the UK instead of Hollywood and friends coming to the states. They're baking in the picturesque Iver Heath , a Buckinghamshire town seventeen miles west of London. That alone is worth the trip and I hope the bakers all got to enjoy some sight seeing as well as experiencing English country life. The bakers come from all different backgrounds and states. There is even a priest  along with a research scientist, a former FBI agent and a chemist with a Harvard degree. That alone is an interesting mix. I watched or tried to watch the first episodes , as hard as they were to see  on a wonky DVR. The very first signature bake was an exciting one - an olive oil cake. To be honest I've always shied away from this recipe, deeming it too dense, and maybe too oily a bake. Yet seeing the bakers creating them and putting their own personal spins into the recipes has made me change my mind. Some added cranberries  while others added apples or grapefruit. The technical challenge was an angelfood cake with a passionfruit curd filling. I'm sure there will be cookie and cake challenges along with a fruit cake one.

If you're a big fan of The Great British Baking Show and Paul Hollywood's icy blue stare, then this is the show for you. It's also inspiring - filling your heard with more than just sugarplums. Look at the challenges and see if you can recreate them.

A Sweet Hanukkah Treat Churros

This is the season for  sweet, tasty treats. Hanukkah is one of the holidays that give the reason to make and indulge in homemade goodies. One, churros, is hitting the holiday tables, sharing the spotlight with latkes and suganiyots - jelly doughnuts. Is it an unusual choice? Not really if you know history.

The recipe was featured in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Joan Nathan, know for her Jewish cookbooks and documentaries about Jewish cooking  wrote about this crunchy and sweet choice. The idea is not as crazy as it sounds. Many Sephardic Jews , the ones from Spain, brought the recipe with them to the various outposts of the Spanish Empire. They were made in the Caribbean , mostly in Cuba and found their way to tables in Columbia and Costa Rica.  Ms. Nathan uses Genie Milgron's recipe for them, which includes anise for flavoring It is taken from Ms. Milgron's cookbook Recipes Of My 15 Grandmothers: Unique Recipes And Stories From The Times of The Crypto-Jews During The Spanish Inquisition. Ms. MIlgron was born and raised a Catholic in Cuba but traced her family's origins to pre-Inquisitions Jews in 1405.  Her ancestors  were raised  as crypto-Jews, practicing Jewish customs and traditions while converting to Catholicism. Some of the recipes are the original but churros are the Spanish influence.

Ms.Nathan tried the recipe several times, making the churros with a friend who dream of owning a churro truck. The first attempt was like a choux paste with eggs and butter whipped together into the dough. Don't use this. Opt for the simpler one which is just two cups of all purpose flour mixed with one and a half cups of Pernod or similar anise liqueur. There's also a cup of granulated sugar and a tablespoon of cinnamon, the traditional flavoring for churros. If you think the cup and a half of Pernod is too much for any treat, the liqueur is boiled down with one and a half cups of water and a teaspoon of kosher salt. It's removed from the heat and cooled so the flour can be added to it.Blend with a wooden spoon until the batter resembles wet cement and is well blended. To get that ridged look, the dough is placed inside a pastry tube fitted with a large French star tip. The dough is then piped into six to eight inch length pieces and fried in canola oil. The oil should be heated to 350 degrees Farenheit. Fry them for six minutes or until golden brown. Ms. Nathan supplies a  homemade strawberry sauce made with frozen strawberries , brown sugar and vanilla. You could use dark chocolate or dulce de leche for a richer dipping sauce. Caramel also works too.

Churros are a fun and different Hanukkah treat. They're an easy make and fry, perfect for using the symbolic oil to create a fried and crunchy sweet. Try them for a new twist on a traditional holiday.

The Best of The Year

Was 2019 a good year food wise? It was the year Beyond Beef hit our tables and palates We found ourselves trying different foods and rediscovering the classics. There were some good restaurants and wand much loved recipes that made 2019 special. Maybe it was a very good year.

That was the idea of today's New York Times Food section. Many of the contributors and even readers weighed in about this last year of the teens. Pete Wells, the paper's restaurant critic. If you're in New York for the holiday season, please try some of his recommendations. Odo is one of his three star favorites. This is a kind of fusion restaurant that features soba waffles and Wagyu beef burgers (there's also veggie and chicken ones too).There's also a sushi bar at this trendy Flatiron District eatery. Another three star fave is Rezdora , creation of famed chef, Stefano Secci, who spent time working for another famed chef, cerebral experimentalist  Massimo Bottura. Mr Wells raves about the interesting uovo ravioli which spurts egg yolk when you cut into them and the handmade maccheroni al pettine, that's raked with a comb , made that way to have the sauce adhere to the pasta. It too is in the Flatiron  District. Another fusion restaurant, Llama San is the third three star eatery which nods constantly to Peru and Japan. nThe star dish is the nigiri, a hand rolled ball of rice with a duck breast draped over it. Another three star is Benno, created by Jonathan Benno, which features such lush dishes as risotto with truffles along with caviar and lobster dishes.

Home chefs also had their favorite recipes. The top number one dish was the vinegar chicken with crushed olive dressing. Alison Roman came up with this turmeric laced chicken baked on a sheet pan. Crushed Castelvetrano olives make up the sauce. Samin Nosrat gives us the second most popular ,a thrice (!!) washed salad that has five different kinds of lettuce and a honey, garlic, and Dijon dressing. It was inspired by  Via Carota, Insalata Verde. Pork lovers nominated the pork chops in lemon caper sauce which is also spiced with thyme and parsley. A Hawaiian dish, Huli Huli made it to number four. It originated in 1954 when a Honolulu businessman, Ernesto Morgado served a group of farmers chicken that had been marinated in teriyaki sauce. The sauce has been updated to include ketchup, soy sauce, and light or dark brown sugar. Garlic and ginger give it spice and bite as it's grilled for half an hour on a hot barbecue. It's worth dragging out the grill for this tasty dish.If you prefer a more indoor dish, then try number five, creamy chickpea pasta with spinach and rosemary. Alexa Webel created this blend of chickpeas, heavy cream, garlic, shallots and spinach. The chickpeas are browned first , and then half are removed   to break down and thicken the sauce. It can top either spaghetti or bucatini.

Was 2019 a good year in food. Yes. There are some good eateries and recipes out there that will definitely please the palate. Visit these three star restaurants  Cook these top five dishes. Enjoy what made this year a good food year.

The Beyond Meat Beef

There's a big controversy over a little - well - mid-sized burger. It seems the beef lobby is having problems with Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger. Accusations are running wild, with questions about the integrity of this latest food trend. Are they valid?


It was the topic of an article in today's New York Times Science section. Anahad O'Connor , who writes about consumer health and national news  for the Times delved into this burgeoning fight.
 There is even a heavy advertising campaign by the Center of Consumer Freedom, a public relations firms with ties to the meat industry. The ads call the Beyond Burgers as "ultra processed imitations" and casting aspersions about what's in  it. The burgers have even been compared to dog food with the question of what's in it. Meat producers are taking this fight to lawmakers. At least twenty-five states have introduced bills making it illegal to use the words "beef" and "meat" on products made from plant products. This also includes meat that's been cultured in a lab. The bills also calls for Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger to put the word "imitation" on all their packages. Missouri became the first state to pass the bill which was initially proposed by who else - the Missouri Cattleman's Association.

As you can tell I'm a big fan of the Beyond Beef burgers, having made them for tonight's dinner. They are not dog food. just an alternative to unhealthy meat and  lifesavers in a vegetarian household. They're made from canola and coconut oils, rice protein and potatoes. Beet juice  extract is added to give them that red meat look. The Impossible Burger is somewhat similar in composition but has the addition of heme - an iron containing compound from soy. it enhances the meat flavor of the patties. The burgers may have the same amount of calories but are close to nothing when it comes from cholesterol and saturated fat. They're also high in sodium with 370 milligrams of salt  in the Impossible Burger and 390 in the Beyond Meat . A regular beef patty only has 75 milligrams. My advice - don't eat them that much. Have a burger or any any other plant based "meat" two or three times a month. There are many meatless alternatives out there from bean dishes to recipes that are made from fresh veggies. Save the plant based burgers for special meals.

There should be no controversy when it comes to Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers. Buy them at your local Burger King (and watch other fast food chains come out with them) or grocery markets. Enjoy them. They are good for you if eaten in moderation. They're also delicious to the point of addictive. Try them today and see.




Run  free, little Honey, run free, angel.

A Very British Christmas

Somehow Christmas and England go together. Maybe it's because that one of the best Christmas stories of all, "A Christmas Carol" is set in London of the 1840's , written by that great British writer, Charles Dickens. Or maybe it's because some of our culinary  traditions have come from there. Whatever it is, recreating a very British Christmas is easy to replicate.

The British are big on turkey. It's mentioned in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge having a boy buy the biggest turkey in the market for the Cratchit family. You could easily make this, if you're not sick of the Thanksgiving leftovers. If not, the Brits love ham and a good beef roast. The last is always served with the mouth watering Yorkshire pudding. This is kind of like a giant popover being made with ,eggs ,water and flour. A half cup of pan drippings from the beef gives it a buttery , rich flavor. Serve it heaped with slices of the meat. Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes round out the meal. Of course it wouldn't be a holiday meal with out mince pies. This may not be for some thanks to the suet or beef fat added in. You can omit it if you want, and just leave in the dried raisins, currents and various peels such as candied lemon and orange. What to drink with all of this? A sweet port wine has been gracing British Christmas tables for three centuries.it originally came from Northern Portugal, from the Douro Valley.It was during Britain's early 17th century battles with France that they discovered this sweet, rich brew, They hated anything French , including wines and turned to Portugal for them. Of course sloe gin is a must , both on Christmas and on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.

The Great British Baking Show Master Class  shows have introduced us to a variety of holiday treats. One luscious one is Tunis cake, popular in the northern part of the country. It is a Madeira cake, another holiday bake topped with a thick layer of chocolate ganache. If you want to go full on British Christmas , then think about a steamed pudding. This is an elaborate make with fresh breadcrumbs baking powder and suet blended with raisins, currents and candied lemon and orange peels. Baking soda is added to give the pudding rise and flour is used for body. it's more of a steamed fruit cake, boosted up with  brandy. The batter is poured into a buttered or greased pudding bowl. It's then steamed for six hours in a hot water bath.It's served with brandy butter, a mix of butter, confectioners sugar hot water and brandy. This can also be served with mini mince pies too. Trifle is another fun British dessert that graces holiday tables. It's a boozy mix of Madeira or pound cake, cream, sherry, English gelatin and strawberries. (you could use Jello if you're in the states), Sometimes the meal also ends with a plate of rich Scottish shortbreads.

A British Christmas is a fun one. The dinner will make you burst. The desserts are just as rich and filling. It's a memorable way to celebrate the holiday  - with a Dickensian kind of flair.