This goes out to LindaI am embarrassingly behind on Christmas shopping, but I did get you a little something. Ahead of the holiday next week, I’m answering a couple timely reader questions for a mini Recipe Matchmaker.
Linda! Of course, there is hope. And how lucky are your siblings to have a sister who cares for them so deeply? A dairy-free casserole may seem a little tricky, but rest assured, Melissa Clark has you covered with her wild rice and mushroom casserole. It can be assembled, sans topping, entirely in advance, so you can bake it off once you arrive at your destination. The steps are straightforward, but there are admittedly a number of them, so if that feels like an undertaking, don’t you worry. Martha Rose Shulman’s slow-baked beans with kale is another dairy-free casserole with fewer components and a lot of hands-off time, and it can also be prepared ahead. “You can make this recipe through Step 3 and store it in the refrigerator up to four days ahead of serving,” she writes. You can similarly finish the topping just before popping it in the oven before you’re ready to eat. Some lactose-intolerant folks will eat low-lactose hard cheeses and butter. If that’s your sibling, you might also consider Colu Henry’s five-star baked mushrooms and white beans with buttery bread crumbs. I think this might be best suited to you, as it’s a quicker, minimal-prep cousin of Melissa’s and Martha’s recipes, but with a little bit of crumbly feta strewed throughout. Commenters say it reheats well, and I think it’d be really great with some hearty greens mixed in, too.
Do not overlook the giant roasted vegetable platter, with a colorful assortment of cauliflower, squash, broccolini, carrots, fennel and red onion. Melissa’s is especially festive, with a sprinkling of jewel-toned pomegranate seeds to finish things off. “You can roast them a few hours before serving,” she writes of the vegetables, “and reheat them for 7 to 15 minutes at 350 to 400 degrees (they are very forgiving) or serve them at room temperature.” Or commit to one vegetable, like Ashley Lonsdale’s roasted butternut squash salad with spicy scallion dressing, which improves as it sits and is great at room temperature, so it won’t just survive the journey, it’ll thrive on it. But your options abound. Cybelle Tondu’s celery and pecan gratin needs 30 minutes to rest after it’s baked so that the filling can firm up slightly. Prepare the dish to near entirety the day before, put it in the oven 20 minutes before you need to leave, and let it do its necessary settling on your perfectly timed ride over. “This is incredible,” a reader wrote. “First of all, it is easy and uses cheap ingredients mostly. It tastes like potpie filling but with none of the gloop or heaviness. I have made over a thousand NYT recipes and this is one of the best!” I also like Alison Roman’s decadent brussels sprouts gratin for the task. Follow my colleague Margaux Laskey’s advice: “You can complete the recipe through the first sentence of Step 4 (pour cream and scatter Gruyere over sprouts and toss to coat. DO NOT return to the oven). Refrigerate. The day of, allow the dish to sit at room temperature for about a half-hour, then finish the dish.”
Slow-Baked Beans With Kale
Roasted Butternut Squash Salad With Spicy Scallion Dressing
Celery and Pecan GratinFor a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. One More Thing!I received the following email last week, from readers Zella and Deeya, and while I often try to condense these for length, this one is too funny not to print in its entirety: Dear Veggie People,“’Tis the season to be holly jolly, however, we find ourselves not so jolly. We are in the predicament of being in the period between the end of Thanksgiving break and the beginning of Christmas break, for we are but high school seniors who decided it was a great idea to take four A.P. classes on top of applying to colleges and our rigorous athletic schedule (the sport of running around the hospital as a unpaid intern and the sport of yelling at people to row faster). Now, as the window closes on our final stretch before the blessed break, and the window in our calculus classroom opens because our ancient — excuse us, vintage — school’s heating makes classrooms either boiling hot or freezing, and the calc classroom is the former, we find ourselves in need of some semblance of a vegetable to balance out the copious Red Bull and watermelon chewing gum currently being consumed. Unfortunately, we have dietary restrictions that prevent us from consuming said vegetables. We are gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, fish-free, cow-free, chicken-free, tofu-free, peanut-free, almond-free, cashew-free, soy-free, pig-free, cucumber-free, oil-free, sugar-free, glucose-free (because while glucose is sugar not all sugar is glucose), tomato-free, apricot-free, apple-free, grape-free, grade-AAA free-ranging humans. Also, this is all a joke, but consider this your Holiday Challenge: We humbly request that you procure a tasty recipe that could hypothetically match all these hypothetical allergens for these hypothetical grade-AAA free-ranging humans. We invite all at New York Times Cooking to participate in this challenge, if they dare, and if this email doesn’t get sent immediately to your trash folder. As an incentive, we will send a custom T-shirt to the winner of the NYT Holiday Challenge with their name and the words ‘WINNER OF THE 2025 NYT HOLIDAY COOKING CHALLENGE, AS DECLARED BY TWO TEENAGERS IN SEATTLE’ engraved on it. No, this part is not a joke. Yes, we will actually send the T-shirt. To ONE person. Let the games begin, and may the odds be ever in your favor. P.S.: Tap water in a glass doesn’t count as a recipe.” Zella and Deeya, I am obsessed with you. While my gut tells me there’s definitely some sugar in your Red Bull and watermelon gum, the closest I could get is … Ali Slagle’s avocado and onion salad, dressed with red-wine vinegar (no sugar), skip the olive oil. OK, fine, I know there is fructose and glucose in white onion, but barely! And avocados are (virtually) sugar-free! Come on. I want that T-shirt. Thanks for reading, and see you next week. Email us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have questions about your account.
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