Guest of The Kitchn

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us here at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts. The topics range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: Germaine Leece of Some Home Truths, an always thoughtful and inspiring blog. (We’ve peeked inside her own home kitchen in Sydney, too!) Welcome Germaine!

Here in Portugal we have many traditions of holiday food, but from North to South, at the Christmas Eve table, there’s something that you can’t miss: King Cake and Codfish Boiled With Potatoes, Eggs and Cabbage (dried and salted codfish). When I was a child I just hated both! I still don’t eat the King’s Cake candied fruits.

Living 3,000 miles away from home can be hard on your heart. Not to mention your stomach. Do you ever crave something that you can only get in one place? In my case, I miss the Italian Sub from the White House Sub Shop on Arctic Avenue in Atlantic City. In New Jersey subs are a way of life. There is something about the combination of Italian meats, Provolone cheese, Jersey tomatoes, onions, oregano, oil and vinegar, and the bread. Oh, the bread.

It’s Christmas time in Burgundy and I am surrounded by all the reasons I moved to France: friends, family and a life rich in simplicity. It’s hard to believe that we have just a couple more days until Christmas and then in a flash, 2009 will be over. To add to the Christmas spirit, we’ve been blessed with several days of snow and Beaune is festively lit with garland and twinkle lights that illuminate the cobblestone streets.

It’s Escapes Month, so we asked a few of our friends to share inspiration from their travels. Here is a delicious piece of sun, sand, and bottarga from the Côte d’Azur and Lucy of Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook.On the Côte d’Azur, we escape to our secret beach before the cicadas begin to hum. Morning shadows still long, cedars on the hill protect the little harbor from the sun. The sun is piercing through in spots along the shore and we settle down.

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us here at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts. The topics range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: Ilke of the lovely blog Ilke’s Kitchen, writing about her family’s New Year’s Eve traditions of bingo, red underwear (indeed! read on and it will all become clear!) and a scrumptious rice pilaf. Welcome, Ilke!

During this month of Escapes we asked a few friends to share their own cooking inspiration from travel and faraway places. It seems fitting we close this month with a piece from Anne Zimmerman and the Mediterranean inspiration she found just blocks away from home.One of the things I knew I was giving up when I moved to San Francisco was al fresco dining. The summers here are cold — sometimes unnaturally so — and even when a warm day occurs it usually dissolves into a misty night.

Marion and her sister over at “She said, she said” have been writing about nostalgic/comfort food such as tuna casserole and meat loaf. Well, that got me to hankering after meatloaf, so, what’s a gal to do but whip up a little “pain de viande” (everything sounds tres chic in French, doesn’t it?). I leapt in with gusto, completely disorganized but chomping at the bit to have meatloaf for the dinner hour.Warning!

Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a brief summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. Pickling is surprisingly easy — take a look at this first post to see just how simple it can be.Oh snap! Summer is here and you want something snappy to ward off the heat?

Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. Last week she showed us quick pickled roots — this week, it’s pickled mushrooms!Welcome to the second installment of my quick pickling guest post series!

Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. She has showed us quick picked mushrooms and quick pickled roots — and today, in her last installment, it’s pickled berries!

It’s funny that when I look back on life, from the cupcakes I’d bring into school for birthdays to the ice cream my family ate on that summer vacation to the time where my parents and my brother ate lobster while wearing giant plastic bibs, I often seen things in terms of food. Like Christmas.

We asked some of our favorite food bloggers to share a holiday treat with us during our holiday break. I really appreciate the multi-generational focus of Yvette’s blog, Muy Bueno Cookbook, and her loving recreation of authentic Mexican cooking, family-style. And when she sent along this bright, festive take on the margarita, I was sold! Here, complete with swizzle stick, is drink number one for your New Year’s festivities.Move over cranberry sauce and, H-E-L-L-O Cranberry Margarita!

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us here at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts. The topics range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: We’re bringing you one more post from Melanie Widmann of Coffee Tea Gastronomy. Melanie is a true tea aficionado, and I loved this unique pudding — a delicious and gluten-free holiday dessert.

In addition to decorating mountains of gingerbread and sugar cookies, a beloved Christmas tradition in my family was eating lefse on Christmas Eve. My Norwegian Great Grandmother would cook the thin potato pancakes every year in her tiny apartment on a piping hot griddle. As soon as the pancake was golden and toasted, we would slather on some salty butter and sprinkle a bit of crunchy sugar.

We asked some of our favorite food bloggers to share a favorite holiday treat with us over our holiday break. I have long admired Tara Austen Weaver’s writing at her blog Tea & Cookies, and I’m so pleased she was able to join us. Here is her own favorite Christmas breakfast: spicy, warm gingerbread waffles. While kids may go to bed on Christmas Eve dreaming of presents, the grownups in my family are thinking about gingerbread waffles—our traditional Christmas morning breakfast.

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us here at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts. The topics range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: Jess Thomson of Hogwash. Jess is a friend and terrific writer and recipe developer. She recently published a book on doughnuts, and she brings us this recipe for sufganiyot, those fried, jelly-filled pastries so beloved at Hanukkah.

One of my favorite parts about the holiday season is making homemade gifts for friends. Ninth grade marked the beginning of this tradition, when I handed out clear bags of my simple chocolate-covered toffee to classmates. Doing this made me realize that giving handcrafted gifts with a personal touch felt more unique and heartfelt than anything I could buy at the store. I know my friends agreed.

We asked some of our favorite food bloggers to share a holiday treat with us over our holiday break. I am so pleased to welcome Sarah and Romy, two talented Australian cooks who work with their friend Lauren Bamford to produce Trotski & Ash, a lush food blog full of comfort food and rich photography. Here’s their own take on an Australian Christmas cake, looking to the bounty of fresh fruit.

We asked some of our favorite food bloggers to share a holiday treat with us over our holiday break. I have enjoyed Ele Busing’s blogs so much this past year. She actually writes three: Kitchenisms, Kitchlit, and Kitchenist. Each focuses on a different part of the cooking experience and they’re a delight to read. Here’s a post from her on her own favorite Christmas cookie.

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us here at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts. The topics range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: Domenica Marchetti. Domenica is a widely-published food writer and columnist, and she has published some wonderful books on Italian cooking, including this year’s favorite, The Glorious Pasta of Italy. Welcome Domenica! Fried dough.

I was raised to always be a polite guest, but I’m going to start this guest post out on a note that could ruffle some feathers. I’m a mug of spiked hot mulled cider in and I’m feeling a little daring, so here goes nothing: I don’t much like Christmas cookies. Blasphemous, I know. Especially for a food blogger. Writing a holiday guest post. Mere days before Christmas. In my defense, I do love the ritual of making Christmas cookies.

I asked some of my own personal favorite food bloggers to share a holiday treat with us over our holiday break. I am especially glad to have this post from Madalene, who lives in England and writes the lovely blog the British Larder. It’s a treat, and always worth a visit.Wow…I had so much fun making these perfectly pretty but rustic festive ginger Christmas cookies.

Quick: close your eyes, and picture your favorite Jewish foods. What do you see? Brisket, latkes, matzoh ball soup, kugel… What, no cakes or tarts? No scones, pies, or brownies? But take heart. Paula Shoyer, a lawyer-turned-pastry chef trained in Europe, recently came out with a new cookbook, The Kosher Baker (Brandeis University Press, 2010), just in time for Rosh Hashanah.

We asked some of our favorite food bloggers to share a holiday treat with us during our holiday break. Kristina writes one of my favorite daily reads: Lovely Morning. Her wedding site, 100 Layer Cake, is also a treat. Her daily blog of life, food, and home is a great read, and here is a recipe she has been making for the holidays with persimmons from her own tree.Persimmons are divine, and easily one of my favorite parts of fall.

In the past few years, our family has ‘modernized’ our Christmas feast. The whole turkey, potatoes and pie menu seems tired following on the coattails of Thanksgiving, so we try to make it more fun. This year we’re doing grilled pizzas (I realize this is a blessing that comes with living on the Southern West Coast) and I’m experimenting with a few different treats.

There’s a restaurant near my husband’s office called Rice that makes—you guessed it—really good rice. There’s one thing that I always get and it comes with this amazing black rice with edamame. It’s the kind of dish that didn’t sound like a big deal, but then I tried it and was a happy, happy lady. After having it a few times and thinking about it many more, I decided that it was time to recreate it at home.

Every holiday season we ask a few friends to join us at The Kitchn for a series of guest posts that range from favorite holiday recipes to family memories and traditions. Today’s guest: Erin Scott of Yummy Supper, a blog I have really admired this year. Welcome Erin! Our holidays have gotten more and more simple, and I couldn’t be happier.

When we read this article on sweetened condensed milk and Jell-O, featuring the Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn, we were captivated! We asked Victoria, the Jello Mold Mistress herself, if she would contribute a recipe for Dessert Week, and she kindly obliged. Here is a fresh return to that old-fashioned dessert: the Jell-O mold! Once celebrated as “America’s Most Famous Dessert”, Jell-O has fallen from favor since its heyday in the 1950’s.

It’s so lovely to be here at The Kitchn today, featuring one of my all time favorite recipes. When I plan weekend snacks, I think about something easy going and simple, yet something chic and absolutely delicious, and of course something that goes well with a few drinks and laughs. Bruschetta two ways is a guaranteed hit in get-togethers and parties, or even when it’s a night for just the two of you.