Honey, It's The Holidays!

The holidays are certainly a legendary time for Chefs. For many reasons, from the thrill we get from cooking massive amounts of food in a short amount of time and serving it to make people happy to the food we cook at home to share with those closest to us in our own kitchen. This year, although it looked a lot different for most of us, there's always a few things that makes this Chef feel like it's the holidays: a good meal, the secret-family-recipe-takes-all-day-to-prepare-and-burn-yourself-while-making-the-honey-sauce-but-totally-worth-it-honey-rolls, and a full belly with my family in our home that smells delicious for hours after.

Of course, given my background in pastry, I decided on a mashup dessert for the holidays this year. This little beauty is a mashup of a pumpkin pie, a cobbler, and an ice cream sundae. With the holidays being smaller this year, I just used a 4" springform pan to make the pumpkin pie. For the cobbler component, I used a traditional streusel topping recipe and baked it off on a sheet pan, then crunched it up into large chunks for some texture. A little chocolate chunk ice cream to seal the deal, and the perfect hybrid fall dessert for two was born!

Limiting the menu with less people this year has been a little bit of a struggle for me. I think most of you are feeling the same way, it is definitely a struggle to make everything you enjoy without having a ton of leftovers! I try to land somewhere in the middle, making small portions, prioritizing my favorites, and of course, giving those leftovers all the love they deserve afterwards.

When we're talking about vegetables, there's a must-have as far as I'm concerned: fried Brussel's sprouts. They're simple, delicious, quick, and versatile when it comes to the finishing flavors. It's so simple and easy, I'm going to give the recipe right here!

3- Step Fried Brussel's Sprouts:

Step 1: Trim up the sprouts (no set amount, whatever you have will do). Cut off the bottom woody stem, cut them in half or quarters depending on size keeping them all about the same size, and peel off any excess outer leaves that fall off while doing this. If you want to get fancy, you can blanch those leaves and top the dish with a brighter green pop of color.

Step 2: Fry them (vegetable or canola oil works well here) at 350 degrees until golden brown and delicious, (if you're frying in a smaller vessel, let the oil get up to 400, it will cool off a decent amount as soon as the sprouts are added).

Step 3: Finish them off with the flavors you love. Starting with salt while they're still wet with oil.

In culinary school from Chef Thompson I learned to top them with sweet chili sauce (there's a couple good brands out there, sweet/spicy/vinegary flavor is what you're looking for) and parmesan cheese. They're also great with other spices and toppings, literally no wrong answers here.

With a recipe that is actually as easy as 1-2-3 (and who doesn't love to eat fried things...?), there's plenty of room on the holiday dinner table this year for these yummy green veggies!

Every great holiday meal needs a unique mashup dessert and a tasty green vegetable, no doubt. But, dare I say the most important thing on the dinner plate is the gravy.

I've talked about making stocks before (also very similar to the methods in the Steps to a Braise post from a few weeks ago), you can even fortify a store bought stock with roasted bones and mire poix to make it a little simpler. For this, I used the turkey bones I had leftover, mire poix and aromatics to make a sauce. Since this year is already untraditional, I decided to go untraditional with the gravy and make a rustic, veggie-heavy French based sauce instead. No roux this year, that's right, I said it! Strictly reducing, straining, reducing, mounting in butter, and finishing with lemon. It turned out pretty and shiny, just look at it!

Then, of course, it was time to address that turkey. With hot oil already on the stove, it just made sense to fry the turkey this year. In the photo just above, you can see the ideal layout for a proper three stage breading station. The key is a wire rack to let the chicken drip onto in between each breading stage. Removing excess flour and egg will help the final layer of breading adhere to the turkey properly. Thank you Chef Bucci for teaching me this, such a simple but extremely important lesson!

Once they're beautifully breaded, into the hot oil they go! Then onto a sheet tray with a rack to get a generous amount of salt and finish cooking in the oven.

Last component of dinner had to be stuffing, or dressing, or whatever your family likes to call it! I defy the rules and call mine stuffing, even though I don't stuff it anywhere. Just my personal preference. :)

And behold, everything comes together on one plate for the most majestic holiday meal you can imagine. At least to us. What's great about the holidays is that everyone has certain things they love from their family traditions that they want to share. A plate of food says a lot about the person that put their heart into it.

But, a holiday wouldn't be a holiday without these honey rolls. It's an absolute secret family recipe, and I cherish it because it's the only one I have. I've been making them since I was a little girl, and the process has refined over the years of adapting and learning.

Although I can't share the recipe, I can share the beautiful process. Making the sweet dough, shaping it into a ball, letting it rise, and smelling the yeast is an amazing experience. Then cooking the honey sauce, although a long, tedious, labor-intensive, and semi-dangerous process, is one of my favorite things to do in the world.

Flopping the beautiful dough out onto a floured surface to roll it super thin...

Adding the honey sauce and rolling it into a massively-delicious log of dough...

and slicing them into portions to create this sticky, sweet, deliciously-southern, light and fluffy, slightly salted, honey rolls.

As far as this Chef is concerned, honey rolls are the holidays. The bulk buying of flour, honey, yeast, and foil cupcake pans, the yeasty smell that fills the kitchen as the dough is rising, the bubbling of the honey sauce in the largest pot that I own, and the joy on all the faces of every person that gets to enjoy the secret family recipe once a year.

Honey, it's the Holidays.