Recipes for when Christmastime makes you a little sad
We are manifesting easy, warm, buttery things this winter.
Hello, chefs.
No matter how you slice it, Christmastime loses its sparkle as we grow up. Creating magic for your kids, deepening relationships with your friends, making new traditions—it’s all special and worth celebrating, but for most of us, it’s also tempered with the realities of adulthood. We’re all collectively tasked with bringing a Hallmark movie to life for ourselves and our people for an entire month. That’s a lot of pressure.
After 29 years of an extraordinarily normal family dynamic, I’m also two years into navigating Christmas with an estranged parent. If that’s true for you, too, I’m so sorry. It’s hard. This podcast episode helped this week but there’s really no way around it: families can be shitty.
For me, the elevated emotional charge of the holiday season makes the usual swings between sadness, guilt, anger, and resentment come faster. That’s a lot for my little brain to process and she is tired. So this week, we’re cooking things that are warm and easy and require just a few brain cells so the rest can take a well-deserved nap, ok?
This week:
We had sheet pan salmon with broccoli and ginger, roast chicken with mustard-glazed cabbage, kale and pancetta quiche, the best freakin’ sausage ragu of my life, and gochujang caramel cookies with ice cream. It was all delicious and I’ll share the recipes in a later edition. But it required too many brain cells and that is not our journey this week.
Instead, we’re making a quick bread that’ll change your life. I recommend also ordering this acupuncture mat and laying on it while your bread rises for an extra treat.
-Faith
English Muffin Bread
My mom got this recipe from some edition of the Taste of Home cookbook when we were kids (remember those?) and made it every Christmas. Now, I pump out dozens of loaves all through December for my friends. Even if you’ve never had it, it somehow tastes nostalgic. Your house will smell amazing and you’ll struggle not to eat the whole thing in one sitting. Do me a favor, though: the recipe makes two loaves. Keep one for you and give one to a neighbor.
Microwave 2 cups of whole milk for 90 seconds and let your hot water run to heat it up. While that’s going…
In the bowl of a standing mixer (or a large bowl, if you’re using a hand mixer), combine:
2 cups flour (make sure it’s light and fluffy, not compacted in the bag)
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 packets active dry yeast
Add the milk and 1/2 cup warm water. Mix until combined, then cover the mixer with a towel so it doesn’t splash and turn to med/high for 3 minutes.
While that’s going, prep your pans: grease 2 loaf pans and tap some corn meal around the bottom and edges until it’s covered.
Add 3 more cups of flour to your dough and mix just until combined. Divide between your two loaf pans, cover with a towel, and let rise for 45 minutes, ideally on top of your stove as your oven preheats to 375.
Sprinkle your loaves with more corn meal and pop in the oven for 35 minutes, rotating halfway through.
MOST IMPORTANT RULE: To eat: slice, toast, and cover in butter, jam, or an egg.
Fast fluffy eggs
When did scrambled eggs become so political? Look, I’ve met a lot of scrambled eggs I love, and a lot that I hate. There’s a seat for every ass as they say.
My ideal scrambled egg is fluffy, creamy, and just barely cooked. I learned how to do it from Lucas Sin and make them every morning:
Scramble your eggs with a tiny drizzle of olive oil in a bowl.
Heat a nonstick frying pan with another drizzle of olive oil in it on HIGH until you see a bit of smoke lifting off of it—on my gas stove, it takes about 2.5 minutes.
Turn off the heat. Pour your eggs into the hot oil and quickly push them around with a rubber spatula. They’ll puff up and cook pretty quickly—don’t over cook them! This step takes me about 15 seconds.
Turn the eggs out onto plates, salt and pepper generously, and scoop up with a slice of buttery toast.
Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce (ish)
There is a 90% chance you’ve made this before, but sometimes we have to be reminded of what to cook. I add extra butter because it saves the step of measuring and no one ever complained about too much butter, you know?
Combine in a saucepan:
1 28oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1 stick (8 tbsp) butter (I use salted, sue me)
1 whole white onion, peeled and sliced in half
Bring to a simmer and salt as needed. Let it cook down (and crush your tomatoes with the back of a spoon) for about 45 minutes.
To eat: remove the onion and spoon the sauce over big bowl of pasta. Top with some parm and wash down with a nice glass of wine. Best served on the couch while watching White Christmas.