Good morning! Today we have for you:
Dreamy gingerbread cookies for real life
Hello, friends. It’s another holiday Sunday, all twinkling lights and cheer. If you celebrate Hanukkah, I hope you have a wonderful one frying latkes and braising brisket in your kitchen or going to a gathering in someone else’s home. (If you need a host gift, you can whip up these savory spiced nuts.) Today’s a big cookie baking day for me and maybe for you, too. This is the week to package treats for neighbors, postal carriers and teachers and ship some off to faraway loves. As much as I enjoy decorated Christmas cookies, I often find them wanting in taste, so I created this citrus shortbread, fragrant with orange zest in the dough and fresh with lemon juice in the icing, as well as these matcha sugar cookies, earthy with the green tea. And because I know rolling and cutting dough can be intimidating (or a pain), I shared tips for making the process easier.
I also know that the dream of rolling dough all day can be all too easily crushed by unexpected errands and traffic and exhaustion. For that somewhat inevitable moment when I have neither the time nor the energy for decorating cookies, I have these incredibly simple chewy chai gingerbread cookies. They make the whole house smell cozy and are ready in a little over an hour. Featured Recipe Chewy Chai Gingerbread CookiesAfter testing nine different versions of gingerbread, I landed on this one, which my colleagues at The Times’s Los Angeles Bureau deemed the best. It also happens to be the quickest. Using oil in the dough not only saves time, it also keeps the cookies moist for days and allows the complexity of the spices to shine. You can start with a store-bought blend (this is my favorite) or mix your own (the proportions are in the recipe tip). I could probably run on cookies alone, but here are more savory dishes for today and the rest of the week: Mock chopped liver with green beans and walnuts: Over the past few years, Joan Nathan noticed vegetarian dips taking the place of traditional chopped liver on Hanukkah tables. After digging deeper, she found a history of mock chopped liver in Jewish kitchens and details them in this lovely article. For this Hanukkah, she created her own version with caramelized onions, green beans and zucchini. Toasted walnuts lend a tannic edge that mimics liver, and dill makes this fresh dip taste even fresher. Chicken and chickpea tray bake: A sheet pan dinner by any other name, this tray bake from Yotam Ottolenghi intentionally crowds the pan with potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, chicken thighs and chickpeas. The effect is brilliant: crispy chicken skin on top, a melting mélange of vegetables below. Yotam writes beautifully about the romance of ras el hanout, the Moroccan spice mix that seasons the meat and seeps into the vegetables. The red Romano peppers in this dish may be hard to find this time of year, but mini bell peppers or Cubanelles would work in their place. Olive-oil baked salmon: Ali Slagle offers a surefire formula for silky fish by baking it at the relatively low temperature of 350 degrees in a pool of olive oil and lemon juice. In addition to lemon peel already in the oil, she suggests tossing in garlic, dried chiles and herbs like rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and oregano. I’m going to swirl a fresh Thai chile, makrut lime leaves and shallot into my pan. Pear and radicchio salad with blue cheese: This is the kind of salad that would cost, well, a lot in a restaurant, but comes together easily at home. As with all David Tanis recipes, the details are what make this salad sing. He suggests looking for fruit that’s ripe but still firm, and dresses them separately from the radicchio. Although he offers the helpful substitution of olive oil for walnut oil, I’m going for the walnut oil. A drizzle completely transforms fall and winter salads and lentil dishes any time of year. Eintopf (braised short ribs with fennel, squash and sweet potato): Eintopf translates to “one pot” in German, and this pot has everything you could want on a chilly December night. Yewande Komolafe slow cooks short ribs in a tomato-coconut broth with a zing of ginger until they fall off the bone. At that point, hearty greens wilt into the braise, softening alongside the other vegetables. Last winter, this stew sustained me for a week. I can’t wait to make it again.
Thanks for reading!
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