Don’t miss our personally curated gift guides, part 1 (by budget) and part 2 (by recipient)! These are things I truly love cooking with, drinking, and eating OR are things I truly am asking for this Christmas. And many are affiliate links, which means that by shopping great gifts for your loved ones, you’d also be supporting To Taste! Win. Win.
The excitement I once reserved for planning a trip—the research, that anticipation—is currently focused on menus. Of course, I have always loved to plan a menu but where my efforts were once slightly more spread out, they’re now laser focused. As are my hopes and dreams. On menus. If I plan the perfect holiday dinner, will tidings of good cheer take over? If I stock my pantry and sneak special treats into the freezer, will it feel like the hap-happiest time of the year? (Ok, yes, I’m amping it up for dramatic effect, but is it working?) Anyway, we may as well give this whole will-cook-for-joy thing a shot.
Let’s celebrate, even in small ways: A special menu for your safe and sick-of-each-other household, complete with candles and a dress code. A small get together with the few people you’re already sharing coodies with. A homemade cookie box for the friends and family you can’t see this year…
Here are a handful of menus and by that I, of course, mean playlists and recipes and wine pairings and fun bonuses like games to play or things to watch.
Home for the Holidays
(Like, your own home. You’re not going anywhere.)
It can be difficult to make this feel special. After all, you’re traveling only from your bedroom to the kitchen to the living room. How do you take that familiar landscape and the same cozy socks from yesterday, and actually make it feel festive?
Playlist Cooking Vol. 7, in which jazzy oldies get cozy with A$AP Rocky and Run the Jewels
Menu Dorie’s ricotta spoonable with a crusty baguette, Japanese pot roast (which gets five star rave reviews from everyone who makes it), and a spiced pumpkin pie
Wine A bold Brunello or a Chianti Classico
Bonus Watch The Philadelphia Story with a little amaro or Cognac
What You’ll Need Porter Road’s excellent round roast or whole brisket
Veggie Tales
(So, you married a vegetarian)
Forget the Christmas goose, this menu is for the plant-lovers. This is hearty, spiced, indulgent, delicious food in which there just happens to be an absence of meat.
Playlist Cooking Vol. 3, in which I love Van Halen and Sam Smith and Boyz II Men and Sade, and you will too.
Menu Spiced nuts, carrot salad with harissa, feta, and mint, whole roasted pumpkin with wild mushrooms, and the dessert I’m fully addicted to: a vegan chocolate mousse
Wine Albariño, Prosecco, or a Chardonnay
Bonus Play a game of Monikers or We’re Not Really Strangers instead of scrolling Instagram and talking about the coronavirus vaccine/politics some more
What You’ll Need Really good cocoa powder
So Extra
(Some of us really need this, ok?)
If you’re, like me, already planning menus for Dec 22, 23, 24, and 25 (maybe even 26?), this is for you. We want to go a little luxe, a little indulgent, a little extra this year and who could blame us?
Playlist Cooking Vol. 1, which I listen to all the time for the Aretha and the Lauryn Hill and the Black Uhuru
Menu Start with oven-baked oysters with Truff hot sauce (a take on this from NYT and this from Hog Island Oysters), followed by Chrissy Teigen’s seared steak with spicy garlic miso butter, and marinated white bean salad or roasted radishes, and an affogato for a sweet pick-me-up at the end
Wine Brunello, Grenache, or Cabernet Franc. And lots of it. Followed by champagne!
Bonus Take your nightcap to the couch to binge of one of the latest / greatest: Ted Lasso, Queen’s Gambit, The Undoing, or…oh my god did you just turn on The Office again?
What You’ll Need Proper champagne coupes for fancier couch sipping
Just Desserts
(Homemade treats that would make an excellent gift)
Step one, clean the kitchen completely. Step two, set aside an afternoon to absolutely destroy it with a bake-stravaganza. The end result will be treat boxes to give as gifts and sweet, sweet rewards for your hard work.
Playlist The To Taste wine party playlist, which will have you saying “omg, I looove that song” all afternoon. Plus, it goes well with whatever you’re drinking while you bake.
Cookies White chocolate drizzled shortbread cookies, butterscotch potato chip cookies, the trendy addition: tahini cookies with pistachios, vanilla almond biscotti, Mexican wedding cookies
Brownies & bars Katharine Hepburn’s brownies, chocolate chip saltine blondies, oat and date bars,
Chocolate Homemade chocolate truffles, peppermint bark, dark chocolate pecan toffee, chocolate dipped honeycomb or dried apricots
What You’ll Need The best baking chocolate (and a flask for sneaking sips while preheating the oven)
Cheers!
Love you guys,