Free recipes - food and drink recipes

It may seem odd to latch onto a Southern tradition when you’re born and bred in New York City. But once I discovered a few years ago why Southerners eat hopping john on New Year’s Day - a few bites and you’ll have a lucky year - I’ve been hosting a hopping (or hoppin’, as it is often spelled) john party ever since. Who doesn’t want good luck, especially nowadays?Southerners aren’t the only ones who mark New Year’s with food rituals that hope for good things ahead - in Italy, lentils are eaten to bring prosperity; in Spain and Malta, people eat 12 grapes, one for each month; a sour grape means you’ll have a bad month so you can plan - or at least resign yourself.

There isn’t a holiday that doesn’t have some sort of food tradition, and many of us continue the traditions handed down by our family.

A few weeks ago, the IJ asked readers to send in some of their holiday food traditions. Here’s what they shared:

Maya Manny, San Rafael

Growing up in the Netherlands, foods were very seasonal (no strawberries in November!) and at this time of the year we would be focusing on the all-important arrival of Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas. This used to be celebrated with witty clever poems, small, fun gifts and certain traditional foods for St. Nicholas Eve, Dec. 5. and St. Nicholas Day, Dec. 6. Even though we still were rationed on sugar in the fall of 1948, three years after the war had ended, somehow the necessary ingredients for some of the traditional food items appeared. This one is named banketletter.This is a quick and easy recipe and can be shaped into two long sticks or into eight letters, so you can give everyone their initial to eat. You also may find a chocolate initial in your shoe if you put it near the chimney and sing an appropriate song.

At Christmas time, I make the dough into circles and tie a red ribbon and green sprig on them.

Banketletter

For outer dough

2 cups flour (I use unbleached, unsifted)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

Mix quickly in Cuisinart or cut in by hand until crumbly. Add 1/3 cup ice water and spin, then gather it by hand into a sticky ball and chill at least 30 minutes.

For the filling:

7 ounces almond paste

1 egg

3 tablespoon sugar Ê Ê

In Cuisinart (or by hand) mix the filling and chill. Can be done the night before. Ê

Halve the dough, put rest back in fridge. Roll out between wax paper sheets or on silpat liner or on a lightly floured surface until a bit less than 1/4-inch thick.

Cut into 2 strips to make two wreaths or letters.

Layer the filling into a narrow strip, fold, moisten the edge, seal with a fork, turn upside down, connect the ends so the filling will not leak out.

Mix 1 egg yolk with 1 tablespoon water and brush all over the pastries. Bake in 350-degree oven for 30 minutes till golden brown. Slice in 1-inch pieces.

Note: It is a good keeper. Freezes beautifully; reheat for 7 minutes in a hot oven.

Shirley Graves, Novato

My mother was a great cook - every meal was a work of art and nutrition! But the Christmas treat that I remember most was only “arranged” by Mother. We lived in a lovely 54-unit apartment building in Joliet, Ill., until I was 12 years old. A lady from Denmark, Mrs. Farb, lived upstairs. At Christmas she baked traditional Danish cookies for many neighbors. They were small, sweet and either dark red or dark green. I have never seen anything like them.Mrs. Farb did not ask for money from the neighbors she baked for, just that they provide the sugar and butter for their batch of cookies. The problem was, this was the 1940s, our country was at war, and many things were rationed, such as the sugar and butter that made up most of the cookies. Everyone had a government-issued book of ration coupons to use to purchase certain items. Our cookie-eating neighbors and my mother chose to use some of their coupons on a Christmas treat!

Lori Smith, San Rafael

For the past 15 or so years, I have prepared apple baked yams for family and friends on Thanksgiving Day. My two college-aged daughters, Jenn, age 20, and Heather, age 23, absolutely love this Thanksgiving treasure! When serving these yams over the holidays, I hear many comments such as: “This taste just like apple pie,” “These are the best yams I’ve ever tasted,” etc.Jenn, a junior at UC Santa Barbara, is studying abroad in Grenoble, France, this year, and wasn’t home for the Thanksgiving holiday. She recently called me long distance to request that I prepare a Thanksgiving dinner at Christmas time, and include her favorite apple baked yams on the menu. Without hesitation, I let her know that her wish was my command.

I can’t wait to have both daughters home at Christmas break, and to prepare this dish for my wonderful family. With pleasure, I share this recipe that has been enjoyed by family and friends over the years.

Lori’s apple baked yams

This recipe makes 5 to 6 generous servings. I usually double the recipe.

5-6 medium yams (pierce the skin before cooking, peel after cooking and when cool to touch)

1/2 cup low-fat milk

1/3 cup butter

3/4 cup raisins

3 Macintosh or Empire apples, peeled and sliced

1/4 cup granulated sugar

Cinnamon to taste

Cook the yams in preheated 400-degree oven for approximately 40 minutes, or in a microwave oven on high for 15 minutes, or until tender. Mash yams with milk, 2 tablespoons butter and raisins. Place a layer of yams in a greased 3-quart casserole dish. Add a layer of sliced apples, and sprinkle lightly with sugar and cinnamon. Dot with butter. Repeat layering of yams, apples, sugar, cinnamon, dot with butter, and finish with a layer of yams. Dot surface with butter. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for approximately 1 hour.

Patricia Biondi Krantzler, San Rafael

My father’s favorite recipe at Thanksgiving and Christmas time was Portwine Salad. I can’t remember a time when my mother forgot to serve it on those holidays. The dinner would have been incomplete if that would have happened, and my dad would have been very, very disappointed.My father worked as a painter on the Golden Gate Bridge. He would come home hungry as a bear at 5 p.m. He would lean over the kitchen sink and pour a couple of shots of very good whisky into a little shot glass. He would down them and then he would be ready for dinner. He always made the comment that this helped defrost him. It was freezing most of the time on the bridge and although he wore two sets of long underwear and two pairs of wool socks and boots, he still froze.

My mother knew that she had better get dinner done on time otherwise, she said, my dad would start gnawing on the kitchen table. The salt air and the cold gave my dad a wonderful appetite.

When I was a little girl, I thought the Golden Gate Bridge was my dad’s bridge because he never had to pay as he crossed; he just “signed in” every time. All the toll collectors always said, “Hi Boss, how are you doing?”

Port wine salad

2 packages of strawberry Jell-O

1 can of crushed pineapple (20 ounces)

1 cup of port wine

1 can of whole cranberry sauce

1 half cup of walnuts

3 cups of boiling water

Dash of Tabasco sauce

Put everything together in a large glass dish; refrigerate overnight.

Dorothea Z. Lack, San Francisco

My family came to America from Eastern Europe more than 100 years ago. The various branches came from Russia, Poland and Lithuania, depending where the boundaries were when they left. They brought treasured family recipes. Every holiday had its signature recipe. On Chanukah, the Festival of Lights for Jewish people, my family ate potato pancakes, known as latkes. These were not the cake pancakes that belong to breakfast with syrup and butter. Potato pancakes are dinner food, warm, soft and comforting.The basic recipe was pretty much the same, no matter which region one came from, but the method of preparation - ah, there was the difference. My grandmother made hers by frying first, and then finishing in a casserole in the oven. They were soft and delicious.

Her daughter (my mother), on the other hand, had her own style of preparation, copied from her mother-in-law. No casserole! She fried, crispy, light brown and crunchy.

Not real latkes, said Grandma.

Every December we kids waited and ate all the latkes we could get; we liked them both ways. And so the tradition continued.
Source