The end of the year — and next year’s beginning — are awash with opportunities for cooking and feasting. There are brunches and late-night gatherings, cocktail parties and family-or-friend meals. You will need some blowout dishes, like a gobsmacking take on shrimp cocktail. You will also require some underpinning healthful plates, like a mess of west African collard greens. Holiday time and the deep of winter is now.
Gochujang-Butter-Braised Tofu
A garnish of torn seaweed snacks is a welcome touch (Image credit: Isa Zapata / Bon Appétit)
The recipe’s name sure is a mouthful. The ease of the dish’s preparation is a breezy contrast. Minimal chopping; one skillet; enormous flavor. The Korean red pepper paste, gochujang, does the robust heavy-lifting. Onion and soy and fish sauces provide contrast, and a wallop of butter buffs the sharp edges smooth. Comfort eating at its most efficient.
Cornbread
Butter? Honey? Cane syrup? All garnishes welcome. (Image credit: Bronwyn Wyatt)
Put together two great pastry chefs-slash-writers and the results are going to sing. The British one, Nicola Lamb, recently invited the Southern one, Bronwen Wyatt, to write an article and recipe for cornbread on Lamb’s Substack newsletter. After much testing and futzing, Wyatt landed on a kind of platonic cornbread: corn-y with a touch of wheat flour and sugar. Deep-dive the article’s research, if you like. Or hop straight to the recipe and bask in the praise from your holiday-table guests.
Crispy Hash Browns with Crème Fraîche
Luxury in stick form (Image credit: Victor Protasio / Food & Wine)
During the holiday season, there is essentially no wrong time to serve hash browns. Any kind will do, but a luxurious homemade version brings particular joy to dinner or brunch. Cook them ahead and store them in a freezer. One winter morning you will be thrilled they are there.
Liberian Collard Greens with Smoked Herring
These greens are eager to fix you (Image credit: Matt Taylor-Gross / Saveur)
All the extravagant cooking of the holiday and winter season warrants tonifying contrast. Thin-sliced collard greens are stewed with onion, bouillon cubes and smoked fish, in a preparation modeled after greens cooked by the author’s Liberian grandmother. In about 30 minutes the dish is ready, an encouraging tangle of tasty equilibrium.
Caesar Roasted Broccoli
Romaine has met its green match (Image credit: Amanda Suarez / Serious Eats)
Yes, you can really and truly Caesar-ify most any vegetable. That slick, umami-centric dressing composed of egg, garlic and anchovy is a winning mixture on an array of produce. Here, breadcrumbs are laced with the core Caesar elements, then strewn over simple roasted broccoli and finished with a hailstorm of shredded Parm.
Roasted Shrimp Cocktail with Horseradish Sauce
An elegant appetizer for an elegant cocktail party (Image credit: Armando Rafael / The New York Times)
The classic shrimp cocktail, with its poached crustaceans and zippy cocktail sauce, is a friendly standard. But throw the shrimp in a ripping-hot oven so their sweetness takes on a caramelized roughness, then match that with a spiky mayonnaise and horseradish sauce and, well, welcome to the new shrimp-cocktail frontier.
Shakshuka
Breakfast — or brunch — for a crowd that might claps its hands (Image credit: Thomas Schauer )
Lior Lev Sercarz is a master of spices. His shakshuka takes the tomato-and-pepper mold and spins it into a gambol through fields of celery and coriander seeds, ground chipotles and sweet paprika. Poach a few eggs in the heady base, and experience a fresh divulgence about a dish you maybe only thought you understood.