All of us at Cookthink want to wish you a spirited end to 2008, with good food and company to match. We’re taking a break until after the New Year to recharge and look forward to seeing you in 2009.

In the meantime, remember that Cookthink.com is here to help you satisfy your cravings 24/7 — just tap your favorite ingredients, cuisine, dish type — or even mood — into our unique search tool to find last-minute Christmas recipes, cocktail ideas for New Years Eve and plenty of suggestions for every meal in between.

Happy Holidays!

When my husband and I host Thanksgiving or Christmas for friends or relatives (something rarer than we’d like it to be) we dedicate the whole day to food.

We begin with a breakfast of cured meat and sausages, fruits and cheeses. Lunch is a hearty soup and salad course. Dinner, when it finally arrives, is a 6-dish treat.

Guests have at first thought we’re a little crazy, but by the end of the day we’ve often made converts of them. After all, a holiday — a word that traces back to Old English halig meaning “holy” and daeg meaning “day” — is supposed to be accompanied by a feast.

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Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here. 

The basic Champagne Cocktail is a simple mixture of Champagne and a sugar cube soaked in Angostura bitters.

Dating back to the Civil War era, when it appeared in Jerry Thomas’s 1887 Bartender’s Guide, it seemed to reach its peak in popularity by 1934 when Esquire magazine selected it as one of the top 10 cocktails. This hardly comes as a surprise since that was barely a year after the end of prohibition, and congenial topers had no doubt experimented with ways of making inferior bubbly palatable.

The integral sugar cube aside, the Champagne Cocktail and its progeny have taken some serious lumps over time. Although some detractors would tell you to look for a recipe under the word “travesty” in the dictionary, it has unflagging adherents who deem it the perfect sophisticated cocktail to launch a social occasion. The inherent beauty of the Champagne Cocktail goes beyond its suave appearance and silken palate: it can also be 4 to 20 times cheaper than Champagne.
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A collaboration between Andrew Schloss and Cookthink, the Sunday Dinners project is designed to help those of us who love to cook but have trouble finding the time. Each week, we bring you recipes for a leisurely weekend meal — and show you how to spin the leftovers into easy weeknight dinners. (For more on this, read Andy’s introduction to the project.) 

A good curry can seduce the senses to the point of overload.

Starting with a floral fragrance of coriander and cardamom, it fast reveals an earthy heart of turmeric and the honest musk of asafoetida.

There’s the sweetness of onion and a numbing scent of clove. Black pepper perks along the tongue, as pin pricks of cayenne stab at the back of the throat, waiting for a balm of yogurt to bring relief.

Even after you swallow, flavors continue to spark and jostle: an afterglow of chili is fanned by a cool breeze of mint. An acid-sweet glint of lemon cuts through the salty fat crunch of toasted cashews.

The cacophony of curry is the inspiration for this week’s Sunday Dinners.

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Don’t wait until you need one. Have a Bloody Mary because you just want one. Seventy-five years after its creation, the Bloody Mary continues to evolve; as Rob wrote in a recent Hair of the Dog, “everyone who makes a Bloody Mary claims to make the best Bloody Mary.”

Do you have a best Bloody Mary recipe? A secret ingredient? Let us know. In the meantime, consider these:

1. A friend who once worked as a bartender in Hong Kong taught Nigella Lawson this trick: add a splash of dry sherry to your Bloody Mary mix.

2. Given Mario Batali’s fabled excesses, you’d think the man would know a killer Bloody Mary recipe. His secret ingredient? Balsamic vinegar.

3. At Married with Dinner, Cameron and Anita come by their base juice by pureeing a 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes.

4. Your favorite neighborhood bar serves it in its Bloody Mary. What’s to stop you from making bacon-infused vodka at home?

5. If you can tolerate a little heat, the Hungry Cat’s Bloody Mary may be for you. The Hollywood seafood/brunch restaurant adds jalapeño and Fresno peppers to its mix.

A sexy alternative to plain old broccoli, raab is a dark and leafy green with a pungent bite. Raab’s bitterness can be tempered by blanching and shocking the greens before using them; a nice slow braise sweetens the stalks.

Want to know more? Read this week’s Root Source: Broccoli Raab. (If you’re not yet signed up for the Root Source, subscribe today — it’s free!)

This is the last Root Source of 2008. Look for it again on January 8!

A weekly column about the psychology of food and cooking.

Google “Christmas cookies” this time of year and you will get around 15 million hits. The web is alive with ideas for that great holiday tradition that compels us into the kitchen to bake tray after tray of aromatic sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, rum balls, spice drops, biscotti and more to offer loved ones and colleagues or indulge in ourselves during this wintry and emotionally fraught time of year.

Some people bake Christmas cookies as part of a frenzied holiday ritual, attacking it like a chore and even stressing out about the results, despite the fact that baking cookies is so fool-proof that children can master them, with their precise measurements and methodical steps.

Others find that baking cookies is a good way to channel the free-floating anxiety that swirls like snow in the season of enforced holiday cheer.

Is there a better remedy for stress than creaming butter and sugar by hand with a wooden spoon? Even those with short attention spans can be assured of near-instant gratification watching cookies bake in minutes. And the sugar rush of eating or sharing them does wonders for a case of holiday blues.

Do you bake to destress or does baking stress you out?

Domenica Marchetti is a food writer, recipe developer and cooking teacher who specializes in seasonal Italian home cooking and the author of The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy (Chronicle Books, 2006). Visit her web site at www.domenicacooks.com. You can find more of her recipes here.

This Thanksgiving I tried a new recipe for pumpkin pie, one that I had saved from an old copy of the New York Times. It was a recipe for pumpkin-chestnut pie and called for spreading a layer of sweet chestnut purée mixed with cream on the bottom of the pie crust and pouring the pumpkin custard over it.

I loved the combination of the two flavors and immediately thought of soup, so I got to work. I was looking for a first course to dress up a holiday dinner party, and a creamy, earthy chestnut and pumpkin soup seemed like a nice way to go.

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Carol Fenster is the author of several books, including Gluten-Free Quick & Easy, and her latest book, 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes. Read more about Carol at her website.

Sweet or salty?

Usually sweet (as in chocolate), but nothing beats the salty crunch on a properly-seasoned tortilla chip or a quick lick of salt from the rim of Margarita glass to balance the drink’s sweet kick.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Since I am a gluten-free cook, I use gluten-free flours the most (such as sorghum, potato starch and tapioca).

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The oven beep, signaling that another decadent treat is ready.

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Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here.

David Embury in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks calls the Brandy Alexander a “pernicious recipe” and a waste of good liquor. William Grimes in Straight Up or On the Rocks describes the original Alexander, made with gin, as “a repulsive mixture,” “one that can curdle the blood even at a distance of seventy-five years.”

But what is a blight upon the cocktail world to some is an enduring favorite to others. The Alexander is essentially a fortified dessert drink, favored by those who want the “buzz without the bite.” Because of its silken, refreshing creaminess, the Alexander is also known as a Milk Shake.

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