Another reason I need to stop letting half-finished posts sit in my drafts folder forever?  My terrible memory.

I was trying to get into the habit of posting recipes more frequently, especially since we’ve been trying a lot of new ones lately. But when it started getting to be mid-December and our Thanksgiving meal post was still sitting in my drafts folder I decided to just wait until after the holidays and do one long post.

Except that by “sitting in my drafts folder” I mean it was maybe a third of the way written in my head.  Which means that it just took me and Jerrad about 20 minutes to remember what we even had for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner because I didn’t keep the links to any of the recipes.  Or even write down what we had.

Thanksgiving

Pancetta-Sage Turkey This recipe was about a 7.5 out of 10 on the pain in the ass scale.  Also, the ingredients were fairly expensive.  But for a special occasion holiday meal it was totally worth it.  Hands down the best turkey I’ve ever had.

Crispy Potato Roast

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 4 pounds russet potatoes, peeled
• 4 shallots, thickly sliced lengthwise
• coarse salt
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 8 sprigs thyme

1. Preheat oven to 375.  In a small bowl, combine butter and oil.  Brush bottom of a round 9 inch baking dish with some butter mixture. With a sharp knife or mandoline, slice potatoes very thinly crosswise.

2. Arrange potato slices vertically in a dish.  Wedge shallots throughout.  Sprinkle with salt and red-pepper flakes; brush with remaining butter mixture. Bake 1 1/4 hours.  Add thyme and bake until potatoes are cooked through with a crisp top, about 35 minutes more.

This recipe is from the December 2009 issue of Everyday Food.  It was pretty tasty, and fairly easy because we have a mandoline so the slicing wasn’t very time-consuming.

We also had Italian Wedding Soup, which is a family recipe.  So umm yeah you guys are on your own there.  Not because I don’t want to share.  But because recipes from both of my grandmothers tend to be filled with directions like “to taste” and “until it looks right” or “about a handful” and not so much with the specific measurements or even cooking times.  If you want to know how to make this, you’d pretty much just have to hang out in the kitchen with me and mom.  Or google it and use the recipe of someone who has the patience to write it all down.

We also had Mulled Wine and probably some sort of vegetable.

Christmas

Beef Tenderloin with Roasted Shallots This is another recipe that scores high on both the pain in the ass and the expense scale, but is totally worth it.

Homemade Pierogies (see Italian Wedding Soup above)

Once again, I’m sure some sort of vegetable was involved, but I can’t remember what it was.

New Year’s Day

So here I’m going to break one of my rules and pimp some recipes we haven’t tried yet.  My mom always works holidays so our actual celebrations are usually a few days off.  We’re having New Year’s Dinner tomorrow evening.  We’re going traditional with pork and black eyed peas, but no sauerkraut.  Blech.  I need good luck but not enough to eat sour pickled ass.

Spicy Black-Eyed Peas

I really wanted to make Cabbage Rolls, but I’m looking for something a little easier.  After some online searching, I found two recipes for Cabbage Roll Soup. They are kind of similar to each other and both have ingredients I like, so I plan to sort of combine them.  I’ll let you know how it goes…

Tags: beef tenderloin with roasted shallots, cabbage roll soup, crispy potato roast, italian wedding soup, mulled wine, pancetta-sage turkey, spicy black-eyed peas

This entry was posted by Cathy on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.