Cooking a Winter Holiday Feast

Yes, well, this is probably a little late for most people, but I never know what I'm going to make until after the fact. If you're planning a New Year's feast, a holiday menu might still be relevant. The vast majority of ingredients below can be found locally, here in the Northeast, in the middle of winter.

If you're new to cooking for a crowd, one suggestion is do as much in advance in possible -- make a list, wash and cut veggies, bake a dessert, and set the table the night before. You could even measure out spices in advance so that you could just throw them in while cooking.

Winter Holiday Feast Menu

Appetizers

Cracker plate with pate, cheeses, olives, and proscuitto

Main Course

Ham with mustard and brown sugar

Butternut squash and apple bake

Roasted carrots, rutabagas, and onions

Brussels Sprouts with bacon ends

Winter squash biscuits

Dessert

Mixed berry pie

***Recipes***

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of recipes that are not really recipes. So here's the gist:

Ham with mustard and brown sugar

We followed a recipe from epicurious.com that included apple cider, mustard, brown sugar, and honey (but we omitted the honey just for simplicity's sake).

Butternut squash and apple bake

Basically, I followed a recipe from fellow Ithaca food blogger, Amy from Eggs on Sunday, which calls for cutting up squash and apples, then pouring a melted concoction of butter, brown sugar, and spices over them, and then baking. Her recipe called for mace, which I didn't have, so I threw in some allspice and ground cloves instead.

Roasted carrots, rutabagas, and onions

I didn't follow a recipe - just cut up carrots, rutabagas, and onions, tossed in a mix of salt, pepper, olive oil, and vegetable oil and roasted for about an hour.

Brussels sprouts with bacon ends

I didn't follow a recipe for this one either - just take sprouts off the stalk, remove blemished leaves, wash, and throw in boiling water for about 6 minutes (depending on the size of the sprouts - I take them out of the pot as soon as they appear bright green). Then, saute bacon ends in a pan and toss with sprouts.

Winter squash biscuits

For this one, I sort of followed a recipe by Mark Bittman for sweet potato biscuits, from his book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I'm not going to retype the whole thing here, but the gist is to use yogurt (instead of conventional buttermilk) and put about a cup of cooked and drained squash in the dough. I also substituted some whole wheat flour for the white flour. Oh yeah, and I made these several days in advance, froze them once they had cooled down, then thawed them and reheated in the oven the day of the feast. Still very yummy.

Mixed berry pie

I followed a basic pastry dough recipe for the crust and vaguely used a Gourmet cookbook recipe for blueberry pie filling. I had picked and frozen berries last summer -- when using frozen berries for a pie, you must thaw and drain them, otherwise the pie will be complete mush. I mixed lots of blueberries with a handful of black raspberries, but when I thawed the black raspberries, they were complete mush. I was afraid that if I drained them, there would be nothing left. So instead, I doubled the thickening agents, which were cornstarch and quick-cooking tapioca, and cooked the whole pie about 15 minutes extra. The berries, tossed with sugar, go straight into a raw crust. The filling gelled nicely (perhaps too much, in fact!), and tasted great. After baking, I topped the pie with whipped cream (I skipped the double crust).