2020 Holiday Cooking And Eating.

By Erica and Karen

It’s that time. Time for another gaudy holiday meal.

For Thanksgiving we had turkey, wild rice from Bineshi, Brussels sprouts, yams and raw cranberries crushed with mandarins. We made latkes and applesauce for Hanukkah, with sour cream and smoked salmon. Now we need festive food for Christmas.

We think maybe we have had enough turkey. So what about creamy pasta with truffles? Eataly has the truffles and a recipe. Of course we might want to save the truffles for New Year’s Eve—what a celebration we will have this year as we bid good riddance to 2020! So we perhaps we will try one of the recipes for the Feast of the Seven Fishes—the seafood stew looks enticing—on Christmas Eve, and relax with leftovers on Christmas Day.

We’ll bake something sweet to end the meal. These are our special holiday favorites:

• Pumpkin and brown butter loaf, made with bourbon, is so redolent of the season. We use Maker’s Mark. Rich and heavenly.

• Cranberry curd tart—unusual, and bright pink. What could be better?

• Apple pie. We love cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice, but we have recently experimented with spice-free apple recipes. Revelatory.

• Fruitcake. Yes, fruitcake. Here is the recipe we nod towards, at least for proportions. It requires about a thousand pounds of dried fruit and nuts for each ounce of batter. We are pretty liberal about what fruit to include—though absolutely no glaced cherries, red or green, or little squares of neon stuff. We are very liberal with the port or rum in which we marinate the fruit, and when the cakes are done, we douse them in whatever we used for the marinade . They need about a month to come into their own—but if you have not made one yet just marinate the fruit a little longer—the fruitcake will be fine!

All of this seasonal food should be set off to perfection by elegant plates. We were enchanted with these, created for the Coalition for the Homeless by world class artists. We will get a couple, and maybe give a couple.

Pink champagne goes with anything and everything. We don’t believe in spending excessively for the bubbly. Chandon Brut Rose is a good one.

What are you eating? And drinking?