Holiday Goodies

My first taste of goat’s cheese was at a tapas restaurant in Chicago many years ago. The soft, creamy cheese with a fairly mild, salty taste was topped with pine nuts. At the time, the flavors were so different from what I was accustomed to eating. During the years since that first introduction, I’ve become quite fond of the full, rich flavor of goat cheese.

One of my favorite ways to serve goat cheese is to spread the room-temperature cheese on a platter and top it with sliced sundried tomatoes in oil, smashed kalamata olives and slivers of fresh basil. I drizzle some of the oil from the jar of sundried tomatoes over the whole platter and serve it with baguette slices. Guests cover the bread with oil-soaked cheese and then top it with the tomatoes, olives and basil. The whole thing can be assembled right before guests arrive. It’s not a concoction I developed myself. Mary Risley, of Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco served it at the first class I ever took from her.

This holiday season I’ve combined those same ingredients and baked them in tiny little cream cheese tart shells. The rich custard holds all the ingredients together in a flaky cream cheese cup.

Homemade, doughnuts and fritters are the absolute best. They far surpass any "donut" shop doughnuts. When I'm in the mood for doughnuts but don't have the patience to wait for dough to rise, I like to make fritters. They fulfill my craving as fast as I can fry them. Their crispy fried exterior and fluffy interior are what make them a favorite sweet treat for many people. A batch of fritters is very easy to put together and they are great for any occasion. But they make a special treat for Hanukkah, which is celebrated with fried foods like latkes and fritters.

The interesting thing about fritters is that you can find versions of them in many cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. Greeks have Loukoumades, which are balls of fried dough doused in honey syrup. The French have beignets. Italians have zeppole. In Spain and Latin America there are buñuelos. In India there are gulab jamun, balls soaked in spiced sugar syrup. In the United States you can find apple fritter rings, which look just like doughnuts. I'd like to think it possible that the original recipe for fritters made its way through all the different cultures, who then adapted it to their liking.

From the L.A. Times

Considering everybody on your holiday gift list – friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, your kids' teachers – you might be needing a stimulus package before you even get to the big-ticket items this year. So why not take a page from your grandmother's playbook and make the smaller gifts yourself?

Not only are homemade gifts less expensive, they also capture the spirit of holiday giving in a way that purchased gifts simply can't. And if you consider the ubiquitous traffic and holiday crowds, a leisurely morning spent baking breadsticks or whipping up a batch of homemade marshmallows seems positively Zen-like by comparison.

Read article...