New Holiday Dishes To Try

It’s that time of year to dust off the turkey baking pan and bring out the fancy flatware. We all love the traditional dishes: turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. If you’re looking to try something new, to spruce up your holiday spread, here are a few new recipes that tie in your favorites.

Spicy Cranberry Drunken Pasta

This is a tangy, sweet, and slightly spicy dish! In one sauce pan, saute some spicy italian sausage until it’s nice and crispy. Remove from the pan and save the oil. Add chopped onions (one large, two small) to the pan and saute until starting to caramelize. Add chopped garlic (2-3 cloves) and saute for another minute or two. Add a nice portion of dried cranberries (¼ cup or more) and cranberry juice (not cocktail juice) until everything is covered with juice. Put the sausage back into the pan and boil down the juice until it looks like a nice glaze. Season with Italian or Provencal Herbs, salt, and pepper. Then add red wine (your favorite will suffice) and boil down until it looks like there’s a nice sauce in the pan with all the goodies. Add chopped swiss chard atop the red wine cranberry reduction, cover the pan and turn off the heat. Let the swiss chard steam until bright. Serve atop pasta cooked with wine water (add 2-4 cups of wine to your water to add flavor and color to the pasta). Overall, this takes just about 45 minutes to cook, but has taken me up to an hour and a half with larger portions. Cooking down the onions can take a minute.

Savory Cornbread Stuffing

This is a surprisingly delightful spin on the typical stuffing and it’s easy. Make up some cornbread, any recipe will do. Slice the cornbread like normal white bread and toast to remove extra moisture. Break up the cornbread into little pieces and toss into a big bowl. In a saute pan, caramelize onions and garlic, then add celery and seasonings. A nice Italian seasoning and some sage is delicious. In the bowl, add the onion mix and stir in ¼ to ½ a cup of chicken broth or bone broth for added flavor. Bake until the top of the cornbread stuffing begins to crisp up. Serve with honey if you like, but it goes deliciously with salty turkey and ham.

Tahini Herb Covered Roasted Cauliflower

This is an easy dish to make. The first thing to do is find a nice Tahini sauce or cream paste. With this, add your favorite seasoning mix. We recommend sticking with roasted peppers or an Italian flavor palette. Take a full head of cauliflower and core out the bottom. Make sure to not separate the stems/branches from the body. Steam the cauliflower for 10-15 minutes (depending on how big the head is). Remove carefully and put in a baking pan, deep enough for some liquid. Bake the cauliflower at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Pull the cauliflower out and bast the with the seasoned tahini. Put back in the oven for 30-40 minutes. This should make the cauliflower nice and soft, savory and sweet, ready for the entire family!

Spiced Chai Pumpkin Pie

This recipe puts a delicious, creamy, rich spin on the classic pumpkin pie. Start like you always would: pie dough and a can of pumpkin. Take the spice blend recipe and double it. That’s right, DOUBLE the spices. Now add 2 teaspoons of cardamom and ½ teaspoon of allspice. At this point, continue following the recipe on the can of  pumpkin pie filling: add your wet ingredients (egg, evaporated milk) and sugar and stir until nice and creamy. Add to your pie and bake as normal. If you want to make it extra creamy and rich, replace the evaporated or condensed milk with eggnog and remove one egg from the recipe.

These are just a few of our favorite new recipes. Tell us some of yours, or link the recipe in the comments below! We would LOVE to try your favorites.