Name: Jane Zimmy
Class Year: 1974
Country of Residence: United States
I was looking to create an easy Lobster Casserole recipe that could be good for a “solo” celebratory dinner in the holiday season. This recipe is very versatile and it can be made with other seafood or even thick white fish. I used what I had on hand (heavy cream) but milk is also a good option and I replaced the sherry with wine.
Name: Lauren Leese
Class Year: 2023
Country of Residence: United States
My dad has been practicing his cooking during quarantine, and he showed me this amazing apple pie recipe that I decided to bake for our Christmas dinner. My family was split across two continents this holiday season due to pandemic travel restrictions, but we were still able to meet over Zoom to have dinner together, and we tried to outdo each other in terms of food. Personally, I think my dad and I easily won the dessert round with this recipe!
Name: Ellie Shulman Bartolozzi
Class Year: 1975
Country of Residence: Italy
Chanukah isn’t Chanukah without this dish! This COVID-19 year, due to the fact that we couldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving with the grandchildren, we actually served what would have been the Thanksgiving turkey at our Chanukah get-together—with Latkes as a side dish, instead of mash!!
Name: Georgia Regnault
Class Year: 1964
Country of Residence: The Netherlands
Recipe is compliments of the Fanny Farmer Boston School of Cooking, first published in 1896. Since I have been making this eggnog every Christmas since 1968, I must have used the recipe in the edition from the 1965 edition! But it is still offered in my ‘newest’ edition from 1990. This cookbook remains for me the “go to” for basic recipes and cooking hints, even though this 1200+ page paperback is falling apart.
Name: Elizabeth Taeed
Class Year: 2009
Country of Residence: Portugal
My husband and I had lived in Madrid for two years, and during that time ate a lot of Cocido madrileño, a traditional stew made with vegetables, chickpeas, and about a thousand types of meat. When we moved to Portugal, we were delighted to discover Cozido à portuguesa, a distinctly Portuguese take on our beloved cocido. There are also regional variations, so the recipe below is typical of the Alentejo region, where we live.
The joy of both types of Cozido is that you can have it as one course, or you can turn it into a few, with soup and fideo pasta. The Portuguese cozido uses rice and red beans, versus Spain’s emphasis on just chickpeas, and also adds in turnips or pears, bread sausage and pig ears. It also has a much shorter cooking time than Spanish cocido, but we’ve found that the longer you cook it, the better it is. So while a typical Portuguese cozido may only technically require an hour and a half, we’ve found that stewing it for 4-5 makes for a much tastier, tender-er dish! Whatever method and ingredients you use, there is one guarantee: you won’t be going home hungry, and your belt will definitely need loosening. Enjoy my slightly Spanish take on Cozido à portuguesa!
Continue reading Cozido à portuguesa (meat and vegetable stew)
Name: Leslie Ferrell Kauffmann
Class Year: 1970
Country of Residence: Spain
This recipe is for the typical Epiphany cake, served with thick hot chocolate, that is served on or around January 6 – Día de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day) in Spain. They begin to appear in pastry shops at the beginning of December, but they are often dry and not that appealing. That is why I like to make them myself. They are a lot of work, but fun to make and well worth the effort. The person who gets the piece with the prize inside is king/queen for a day. Some people add a bean as well; the one who gets the bean must pay for the cake!
Name: Méryem Puill-Châtillon
Class Year: 1980
Country of Residence: France
I was invited to a very good restaurant, and they served this hors d’œuvre to start. I loved it so much that I decided to try to make it by myself and found this nice recipe on Internet. And the result was perfect !
I even used it in my cuisine workshop, and they all agreed it was a great idea, so easy to cook and so yummy !
Name: Lane Rosenthal
Class Year: 1974
Country of Residence: United States
This is an easy no-bake recipe that presents as fabulous as it is tasty. It’s also terrific to make with children. I first learned about saucisson au chocolat from friends in Bordeaux. We collaborate with trips in France. During the pandemic, when no one could travel, we decided to make some fun videos together to post on our respective social media and YouTube channels. Saucisson au chocolat was the first cooking video. The recipe can easily be doubled to make several smaller sausages, which can then be dinner table favors (à la Christmas crackers) or stocking stuffers. For those who don’t get a lump of coal, of course!
Name: Eleanor Chang
Class Year: 1978
Country of Residence: United States
In Hong Kong where I grew up, Hachiya persimmons are almost always eaten raw. There is nothing like the superb delicate taste of a sweet persimmon. Often, we have to wait weeks for them to perfectly ripen to almost mushy for eating as the unripe fruit would make your mouth pucker. To help hasten the ripening process, the persimmons would be stored in the container along with the rice. Around Lunar New Year, persimmons are particularly popular as they are considered auspicious for the new year and dried persimmons are offered to guests or as gifts.
After coming to in the U.S., persimmons did not appear on my radar until I moved to San Francisco. The local Chinatown grocery markets not only carry the Hachiya persimmons, they also have the Fuyu variety which I had not come across before. It was then that I found out that persimmon trees grow in America, but most of the time, the fruits are left hanging on the trees to look like ornaments for the holidays.
I bought the “Beard on Bread” cookbook to learn how to bake and found that it included a recipe for persimmon bread. The ingredients made it sound like it is for a fruitcake until I baked it for the first time. That was the start of a very beautiful relationship! For the last 20 years, I would start baking persimmon bread around Thanksgiving to serve at parties and to give as holiday gifts to friends and family. Everyone seems to want more of this “fruitcake.”
Name: Jacqueline den Hollander
Class Year: FF 1984
Country of Residence: Netherlands
A long time ago (I was barely a teenager), our family vacationed in the Dordogne, one of the most beautiful regions of France. And a heaven for food-lovers! Think foie gras, confit de canard, pommes à la sarladaise, truffels and more… One restaurant served a walnut-chocolate cake to die for. It took quite some persuasion but we succeeded in securing the recipe. What did the trick was the fact we too had some walnut trees on our property… Over the years, we have adapted it to our taste. Foremost by reducing the amount of sugar (and it is still very sweet…) and letting go of the chocolate topping (there is a limit to the amount of calories one wants to gobble on one serving…). But go right ahead and indulge if you feel like it!
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