Last year, I was a Christmas orphan in New York and although I missed seeing my family, my first New York City Christmas was absolutely magical.

 

I’ve always felt that New York does Christmas like nowhere else in the world – you just can’t help but get in the spirit of things. The lighting of the trees on Park Avenue, the spectacular windows on 5th  and that special smell as you walk through the rows of trees being sold on the streets always puts an extra little bounce in my step.

 

Now back to my magical Christmas. Not one, but two parties on Christmas Eve and my very first taste of eggnog out of a huge silver cauldron! Then Christmas day itself seemed like one long meal (no complaints from me). A delicious 3 course lunch with my fairy godmother and her husband and then onto another amazing meal in the evening with the Butler family.

 

I dined on caviar, juicy crown roast of pork with potato gratin followed by homemade Christmas cookies and an enormous chocolate layer cake. But the best part of the evening was getting my very own stocking from Leigh with each gift wrapped individually. I may have told her that my childhood stockings were a little more Dickensian than they actually were although I do remember an actual sock being used. So thank you Leigh for falling for my sob story and putting the icing on the cake of my first New York Christmas.

 

So as as you start to think of what to put in your family’s stockings this year whether they’ve been naughty or nice, here’s a few suggestions.

 

Nice Boys and Girls:

Christmas Morning Marmalade, Mr. Great Almonds and Sea Salt Bark, or Honey and Maple Syrup Gift Set

Naughty Girls and Boys:

Jerk Sauce, Breakfast of Anarchists, or Bitchin’ BBQ Sauce

hahg same’akh (חג שמח)

This Hanukkah I can celebrate for the first time as a Jew. I have come to love the religion and the traditions that tie me to generations of Jewish families. I know as I’m slowly cooking my brisket, frying latkes, or lighting my menorah there are families all around the world doing the same thing. And for a religion in which every ritual has an ingrained meaning, I’ve come to relish these times, even when I’m forced to laugh at the oddities that I encounter along the way (gefilte fish is most definitely an acquired taste).

 

My love of Hanukkah predates my conversion by quite a few years. The liberal grade school I attended in Seattle liked to give kids a taste of each of the religious holidays and for my first taste of Hannukah I actually got to fry up my own latkes during class. Not a bad introduction. I remember thinking these are the most delicious fried potatoes EVER! Since that first taste I was hooked, to the point where my Jewish friend’s mothers would send along extra latkes to school or in one case an awesome mom shipped a package of latkes to my college, not for her son, but just for me — she was a true mensch.

 

Even a convert like me knows that the holiday does not revolve solely around these wondrous fried potatoes. As I eat, I’m aware of the symbolism behind the oil they are fried in representing the single vessel of oil lasting a miraculous eight days needed until the ancient Jews could refuel.

 

Along with the latkes the menorah is a source of much joy and laughter in my new family. From my first experiments with my boyfriend, now husband, where we used plastic shot glasses, cotton balls, and embedded birthday candles as a completely improvised menorah. To my brother-in-law using a bodega style coffee filter as a yamulke as my Catholic cousin cooked away at matzo ball soup and kugel in the kitchen.

 

As the years progressed we moved on to a true menorah. I bought a beautiful small silver menorah and we ceremoniously added our candles and watched as wax coated any surface the menorah sat on. The year of our engagement, as we were shuttling back and forth between each other’s apartments, and I was dead set on doing the blessings each night, we had to improvise once more. I used real shot glasses and we jumped off the sofa when we heard the first one explode from the heat of the candle. Fire leaning against a thin glass wall–shocking!

 

And now in our new home we are graced with our first electrical menorah. An electric menorah is pretty much on par with a plastic Christmas tree. No fuss but lets say slightly less magical. My mother in law was greeted on her first visit to meet her new relatives by a similar menorah. As she watched her mother in law light the menorah in reverse by screwing out the electrical bulbs and then screwing them back on throughout the eight days of the holiday I can only imagine her expression. What at first was an aesthetic shock, became a wonderful tradition that has now been passed on to us. I will proudly display our electrical menorah with some mirth as I imagine my mother-in-law meeting her new family for the first time.

 

I wish you a very Happy Hanukkah!

Get the recipe: Potato Latkes

 

The first time I heard him, he scared the living daylights out of me. There have been burglaries in recent years in Tuscany so when I was woken at 5:30 AM by heavy footsteps under my bedroom window, I was terrified. I peered out of my window and saw a man in old blue trousers held up by a rope and a weather beaten leathery face which was not exactly axe murderer material but still a little unsettling since our house is in the middle of nowhere.

 

My English upbringing winning out over my decade in New York, I politely asked him if I could help rather than asking him what he thought he was doing at 5:30 in the morning outside my window.

 

It turns out our small patch of land is laden with truffles and he maintains he sells them directly to Alice Waters among others; a story I found rather unlikely except for the fact that he had heard of Alice Waters.

 

We got to chatting and he seemed rather indignant that I wouldn’t fence off the property from wild boars as they were affecting his business. Given that he had no right to be there in the first place and I in no way benefited from his findings, I thought it was more than a little cheeky that he should be demanding an electrified fence. Off he and his dogs went and I returned to bed.

 

When I got up later that morning, I found 2 rather large truffles, waiting for me in the courtyard – an offering of peace and the main ingredient for that evening’s simple but delicious Tagliolini al Tartufo. Every year since then, I find little offerings left for me.

 

This year, it hadn’t rained in over 3 months and the heat had been so extreme that there were virtually no truffles to be found. By now, the truffle man and I have become friendly and he’s Giorgio even though I will always refer to him as The Truffle Man. This year, with no truffles to give me, he turned up with a different kind of gift! Little did he know it was actually my birthday and Mary, the 2 year old Eurasian Eagle Owl made my day!

 

 

Get the Recipe: Tagliolini al Tartufo

 

Three years ago this week, I lost my recipe book. Coming apart at the seams from overuse, it was held together with elastic bands and love. A yellow cab drove off with my suitcase in its trunk never to be seen again. Going through all my belongings in my head, I realized with horror that after 15 years of writing and annotating, my recipe book was gone.

 

Good fact for fellow New Yorkers, if you have the time and exact location of your cab ride, 311 can locate your car by GPS and help you find the owner. Bad fact, this only works Monday to Friday during business hours. Naturally, I lost my suitcase on a Friday night.

 

I eventually found the owner of the cab and offered a ridiculous reward just for the book. I imagined his wife swathed in my cashmere and assured him that I only cared about the book but he swore blind that nothing had been found over the weekend and I had no choice but to believe him. I know I sound ridiculously dramatic about a recipe book but I took it everywhere with me and it was full to the brim of handwritten, edited recipes.

 

One recipe I was particularly sad to lose was my paternal grandmother’s recipe for marrow. I’ve never been able to find marrow in the US – it looks like an oversized zucchini but tastes more like a squash. When we were younger, my brother and I would see my wonderful Hungarian grandmother on the weekends and she would make us the same meal every time. We started with a clear chicken soup, which was followed by Wiener Schnitzel, mushrooms fried in breadcrumbs, and marrow with dill and sour cream.

 

My mother, knowing how much we loved the marrow, would ask my grandmother for the recipe, getting a slightly different version from her each time. Eventually she asked her why she wouldn’t give her the real recipe and my otherwise overly generous grandmother replied that it was the one thing she offered that we couldn’t get anywhere else and she wanted to keep it that way.

 

When she died (at the impressive age of 97), I somehow thought the closely guarded recipe would appear in her will but sadly it was just gone. Years later, my father and I spent a wonderful afternoon trying to recreate it by searching through old Hungarian cookbooks. We did a pretty good job of simulating it and I faithfully transcribed it into my (now lost) recipe book.

 

Recently, I decided that if this recipe could be lost and recreated, as it had once before, then there was hope for all the others. So after mourning my loss for about 2 years (pathetic, I know), I started again. I bought the exact same Il Papiro notebook and began the long process of remembering, testing, and rewriting my many recipes.

 

On my next trip to London, my father and I set about recreating the marrow. Once again, we were pretty successful. I know I should have the instructions to these dishes all typed up and digitally stored but there’s something comforting about taking out my old fashioned blue book. I also love the idea that it will one day be passed on to be enjoyed by another eager cook. And when I think back to my former book, I begrudgingly hope it is being used. I still imagine a taxi driver’s wife wearing my favorite green cardigan and cooking my grandmother’s recipes – better that than it languishing in the lost and found department of some taxi depot in Queens.

 

Get the Recipe: Spaghetti Squash with Sour Cream and Dill

 

As we say goodbye to summer, I find myself missing Italy and especially my morning visits to our local town, Gaiole in Chianti. It is my favorite part of every day there. There’s one long piazza that has everything you could ever need including a shop that sells everything, which we have imaginatively dubbed “The shop that sells everything”. I love working my way from the butcher at the top, past the bizarrely restored Mussolini quote, to the green grocers at the bottom.

 

 

“Who is not ready to die for his faith is not worthy to profess it” – Mussolini

 

 

Bistecca alla fiorentina from Macelleria Chini, needs nothing but a hot grill and some salt and pepper.

 

They all ask after my father and brother and how long I’ll be staying but I’m ashamed to admit I knew very little about them until this year. I should know more about these wonderful men who have hacked enormous Florentine steaks and carefully selected plums for me and my family for over 40 years. Finally, this year, I got a little further than the basic “your peaches are excellent this year” and “last night’s porchetta was incredible!”.

 

This year, I found out Gaiole is made up of brothers; the butchers are brothers, the green grocers are brothers and even the baristas at Bar Centrale (that make the most delicious coffees that I have to allow myself one a year even though I never drink coffee) – are brothers. There are sisters too at the restaurant Lo Sfizio Bianchi – their parents used to make my birthday cakes every year. The bakery on the outskirts of town, which has no name, but you can smell your way to, is also made up of a mother, father and son. There is something so reassuring about seeing the same faces year after year and I pray that the next generation continue to keep it in the family. There’s a reason Gaiole in Chianti was voted No. 1 on Forbes list of Europe’s Most Idyllic Places To Live.

 

 

The butchers: Vincenzo (left) and Cesare Chini. Their family have been raising pigs since 1682!

 

 

The greengrocers: Angiolo (left) and Mario del Lungo

 

 

The bakers: The Alpi family

 

At Many Kitchens, we are thrilled to keep the family tradition alive!  We are working with two brother and sister teams.  Jen and Jeff Martin of Pipsnacks and Ken and Toan Huynh of The Saucey Sauce Company.

 

 

Jeff and Jen Martin of Pipsnacks

 

 

Toan and Ken Huynh of The Saucey Sauce Company

 

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I was spoiled. I was hand-fed Dungeness crab as a baby and got to pick my own sun-ripened blackberries near our favorite swimming lake each weekend. It seemed as if nature was there just for me to eat.

 

I remember one particular instance of tasting the most tantalizing beach grilled, wild caught salmon. This meal will forever live in infamy. See the thing is when you love food it is not just the bites you take; it is the entire sensory experience of eating. That’s why so much of food is linked to sense memory.  We all have these meals in us that resonate and bring us back to a specific moment with our closest friends or family where life seemed better. Like in the movie Ratatouille where the harsh critic is transported back to his youth in the French countryside and his expression changes from a grimace to a radiation of joy. Food has the power to move us well beyond the confines we adhere to in our day to day.

 

So, back to that beach off the cooler side of the Pacific. It wasn’t a perfectly cloudless day- it was the Pacific Northwest. It was overcast and a bit blustery and us kids had been flying kites on the cliffs and racing about all day. Lucky for us, my father had caught a magnificent chinook salmon and was grilling it on one of the charcoal grills dotting the beach. His adornments were simple: fresh lemon and dill along with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper. I swear in over ten years I have never tasted a salmon as delicious or as perfectly cooked. So here is to the joy of simplicity.

 

The Perfect Beach Grilled Salmon

Ingredients

1 whole side of wild sockeye salmon (deboned but with skin)– King, Coho, and Chinook are also quite lovely

2 tablespoons of butter

Fresh dill sprig

1 lemon

Salt and freshly cracked pepper

 

Method

1. Heat up grill to a medium heat.  To increase flavor, you can add in aromatic wood like cedar or alder to coals.

2. Rub Salmon with butter then place skin down on the grill with the thickest side towards the inside of the grill.  This will allow for even cooking.

3. Cook entirely on the skin side.

4. Place the dill sprig across the salmon and cook until the flesh turns opaque (it will be a delicate pink color with a slight bit of translucence in the center).  The perfect moment to remove is just as the flesh starts to flake.

5. Once you remove the salmon squeeze fresh lemon juice over top and season with salt and pepper.

The perfect sides are grilled asparagus, an herbed cous cous salad, a crusty loaf of french bread and assorted cheeses, and a big bold red wine.  Or you can go for a crisp rueda if you feel strongly that fish must be served with white wine.  I personally don’t.

Then sit back with friends and family and dig in!

(Pictured above: Aurora and her fly fishing Uncle Bill– infamous for his skills in catching magnificent salmon)