Good morning. Gaily wrapped packages are starting to accrue next to the Charlie Brown tree in the corner of the living room. String lights twinkle around the window frames. Christmas music plays, and the children make mulled cider again. Seasonal joy: On Flatbush Avenue, down by the Marine Parkway Bridge in Brooklyn, I saw a Jeep with a menorah affixed to its roof. We’re at peak season, almost. Next week this time, you may be eating a feast, or noshing an egg roll. NYT Cooking can help, either way.
We’ll show you how to roast a turkey, or cook a ham. We’ve got recipes for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. And recipes for Hanukkah. And recipes for Kwanzaa too.
Some are making holiday cookies. Others, like Alison Roman, are tacking away from them in favor of larger statement pieces, toward confectionary hams. Consider this amazing salted chocolate pudding with whipped sour cream (above). It’s like a hat that’s delicious, an edible Mrs. Maisel costume, something beautiful and rare.
You may prefer this golden ginger cake, or this citrusy cheesecake. Definitely think about this boozy cherry walnut tart that among many other things may turn you on to the joys of frozen cherries. (Try those in a smoothie with apple cider and oat milk: a no-recipe recipe for a drinkable breakfast pie.)
Our columnist J. Kenji López-Alt is on the holiday breakfast beat, with a terrific new recipe for biscuits — simultaneously flaky, soft and light — that arose from his reporting on cooking with high-fat butter and whether it’s better than cooking with “regular” butter. (It is.)
Did you want to make beef Wellington for the holiday? A standing rib roast? Some moo shu pork or pork-and-chive dumplings? We’re here for you. Come browse our virtual aisles. Yes, you need a subscription to do that — subscriptions support our work, and allow it to continue. (And we sell gift subscriptions!)
You can visit us on Facebook, of course. You ought to join our NYT Cooking Community while you’re there. We are on Instagram, naturally. On Twitter as well. And we’re on YouTube, where you can watch Alison make her Internet-famous salted chocolate chunk shortbread cookies.
Please write if anything goes wrong along the way, either with your cooking or our technology: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you.
Now, it’s nothing to do with holidays much less with cooking, but I blew through Mark Burnell’s thriller “The Rhythm Section” the other day. It’s very Jason Bourne-ish, though with a female protagonist, and if the plot seemed to me a little derivative of 9/11, that was only until I discovered it was published in 1999. Blake Lively stars in the movie version, out next year.
