Baked Brie – A Primer

Baked Brie en Croute with Fig Jam
Baked Brie en Croute with Fig Jam

A Baked Brie can turn the standard cheese board into a highlight of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food.

A party without cheese is like Valentine’s Day without chocolate, and, while a well-curated cheese plate will likely do the job for any occasion, a wheel of baked Brie will deliver maximum impact with a minimum of effort. Especially at a winter party, it can turn the standard cheese board into a highlight of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food.

Making a baked Brie (or a baked Camembert, Brie’s soft-rind cousin) can be as simple as tossing the cheese in the oven with some kind of drizzled topping, or you can go all out by serving it en croûte—wrapping it up in puff pastry with any number of store-bought or homemade sweet condiments.

Note: This Baked Brie series is also available on Serious Eats!

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Creamy Chicken and Potato Chowder

Chicken And Potato Chowder

Chicken And Potato ChowderThis comforting chicken chowder is packed with vegetables including potatoes, chard and corn. It’s guaranteed to warm you up even on the coldest of days.

There are few terms more accurately descriptive than “Polar Vortex”. It does just what it says on the tin (i.e., freeze your goddamn buns off). We are in the middle of one right now and it’s freaking cold outside. And because we have an old house, it’s pretty cold inside too.

And since Matt and I mostly work from home, you can see why we’re desperate for a hot, nourishing, tasty lunch. Luckily this soup is exactly what the doctor (and freezing film editor) ordered. We were inspired by a version of this soup from Bob’s Mountain Deli around the corner from us in Beacon. We look forward to them making this soup for our lunch orders every winter, but some days you just don’t want to leave the house. So this is our version.

Chicken And Potato Chowder
Loads of vegetables make this creamy chicken chowder special.

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Roasted Miso-butter and Maple Sweet Potatoes

We’ve taken a classic fall sweet potato recipe and shaken it up a bit. Ginger and miso flavors add depth and spice to the baked dish, and even Thanksgiving purists will be impressed.

Cranberry Sauce Whisky Cocktail

Cranberry Sauce Whisky Cocktail

A delicious, festive cocktail that makes excellent use of leftover cranberry sauce. A shot of bourbon adds spicy depth, along with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a splash of ginger beer. 

We all know that one of the very best parts of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. In fact, after cooking for days, cleaning the house for guests and finding a place for sixteen people to sit in our tiny living room, I’m usually so tired that I barely eat on Thursday night (except for dessert because I’d have to be fully dead to refuse a slice of Maple Cheesecake).

Luckily we always have enough of most everything for a repeat Friday night, made even more special by the fact that we can stay in our pajamas and be as messy as we please. But even after leftover night and multiple sandwiches, we often still have at least one tupperware filled with homemade cranberry sauce left.

What to do? As is the answer to so many of life’s questions: drink it.

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Red Cabbage Salad with Roasted Cipollini Onions

Red Cabbage Salad with Roasted Cipollini Onions

When the weather turns cold, you want a salad that brightens your table and can stand up to all those stews and roasts you’ll be serving. 

Note: This recipe is part of our series for Serious Eats. You can also find the recipe and many others on their site.

Once the weather turns cold it becomes harder and harder to keep salads interesting. Most of our favorite add-ins are a distant memory (I’m looking at you, glorious heirloom tomato).  A trip down the produce aisle, or even the farmer’s market, can feel more like a challenge than an inspiration. But this is when, with a little creative thinking, great combinations are born.

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Warm Kale and Caramelized Wild Mushroom Salad

Mushrooms are incredibly versatile. Here, we sauté them until deeply golden brown, then pair their savory flavor with hearty kale leaves and a nutty sherry vinegar dressing. It’s an easy vegetarian meal in a bowl.