Turkey-Cranberry-Brie Grilled Cheese

Christmas is our second-favorite occasion for a good turkey dinner, and this decadent grilled sandwich oozing with melted brie is just about the best way to finish off the holiday leftovers.

This year we were doing a whirlwind Midwestern family tour, starting in Iowa, then celebrating with the Dueas in Minnesota. We were home for a day and a half and are now packing to spend Christmas with my family in Ohio.

Since everyone else planned something different for holiday meals, I got my turkey fix when Joe roasted a turkey breast and made his light garlic mashed potatoes. Since we'll be on the road all afternoon, I grilled up a few of these sandwiches to keep us company on the drive. Yum!

Ingredients

4 slices Italian bread
2 tbsp butter
4 oz brie
4 oz thinly sliced turkey
1/4 cup cranberry relish

Instructions

Spread the butter on one side of each slice of bread. Slice the brie (you can peel off the white outer covering if you want - Joe likes the way it tastes, but I take it off of my slices). Arrange the brie on the bread and then spread the relish over it. Top with the turkey slices and the other slice of bread.

Grill or toast the sandwiches on a hot skillet until browned and heated through.

Makes 2 sandwiches.

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Kathleen's Light Fruitcake with Grand Marnier Icing

I like to scoop up the moist little crumbles at the bottom of the pan and eat them like a bit of butterscotch brownies.

I've heard all the jokes about fruitcake, but could never really understand them. My mom's fruitcake was always so buttery, crumbly, and nutty, full of all the fruits I loved and none of that bitter fruit rind I've heard some people put into theirs. I looked forward to it every year.

This year, my mom made it especially for me. Yeah, other people got to eat it too, but I'm certain she made it just for me. Try this, and you might become a fruitcake evangelist, too.

Ingredients

4 cups pecan halves
2 cups walnut halves
2 cups candied cherries (we use both green and red)
2 cups candied pineapple
1 cup golden raisins
1 tsp orange zest
1 1/2 cups butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp lemon extract
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp Grand Marnier or 2 tsp orange extract and 2 tsp milk
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine, add top 6 ingredients, toss. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar with mixer. Add eggs, orange juice, and lemon, mix. Add flour and baking powder in thirds and mix after each third. Add batter to fruit bowl and coat well. Put in well-greased tube pan. Cover top in foil. Bake at 300 degrees for 2 1/2 hrs. Uncover top for last 5 minutes.

Place on a rack until nearly cool. Stir together the Grand Marnier and powdered sugar, and drizzle over the cake.

Makes 1 large fruit cake.

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Vegetable Tamale Pie with Green Salsa

The origin of this recipe is a funny, if slightly embarrassing story. A couple of my friends came over once for a tamale-making party. We also decided to make some roasted pepper salsa and cranberry-apple chutney, and I was teaching them how to can the extra sauce.

There was also a bottle of tequila, fresh limes, and some Grand Marnier that we shook into some very strong Margaritas. And a mason jar of cranberry-soaked moonshine.

Cranberry moonshine. Lord help me.

By sunset, we'd canned eight pints of salsa and seven half-pints of cranberry chutney, the chicken mixture had stewed all day into a luscious shredded filling, and the portobello and corn filling smelled fantastic. The limes were all gone, and one or all of us might or might not have done a shot of tequila.

And man, those cranberries had soaked up a powerful amount of moonshine. They were little Molotov cocktails bursting in our mouths.

We were working diligently on spreading homemade masa dough into corn wrappers and these tamales - oh, they were the most beautiful ones I've ever made. I was feeling wonderful about my recipe-teaching skills.

But I unwrapped the first ones and they were dry and crumbly...make that powdery, actually. The filling was out of this world, but the corn dough was dry as dust. I read back over my recipe and realized, somewhere in the midst of joking and sipping and stirring and filling, I'd forgotten to add the broth to the dough. Gah!

The next day, after I asked my friends if anyone remembered what happened to the beaters for my mixer, we decided that the remaining tamales could be saved by unwrapping them, mixing the dough with some broth and salsa, and layering them in a casserole dish.

It turned out so well that this may become a staple in our home. You don't have to wrap a casserole in leaves, after all, and this is the hardest part.

Ingredients

2 cups shortening
4 cups masa flour or tamale flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 cups vegetable broth
2 tsp oil
1 pound portobello, button, or other mushroom mixture, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup onion, sliced
1 1/2 cups frozen corn
2 cups salsa verde
Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

Put the shortening in a mixer or food processor and mix until soft and creamy. Stir together the flour, baking powder, and garlic, then slowly add it to the shortening. Pour the broth in a little at a time while mixing until the dough is thoroughly mixed. It should be similar to a very sticky bread dough or a very firm muffin batter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 11 casserole dish. Spread half the dough into the dish.

In a large frying pan, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the mushrooms and onions and saute until tender, about 10 minutes. Add the corn and 1 cup of salsa. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer with a lid on for 10 minutes.

Spread the vegetable mixture over the dough in the casserole pan, then spread the rest of the dough over the top. Drizzle the remaining salsa over the top. If you are not a strict vegan, this is an excellent time to top the pie with a mixture of shredded chihuahua and cotija cheeses.

Cover the dish with foil, set it in the middle rack, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking until the pie is cooked through and the tamale dough is crumbly.

Serve with chopped cilantro and additional salsa verde, if desired.

Serves 4-6.

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Norwegian Potato-Ham Dumplings (Kumla, Kumle)

Joe's Norwegian ancestors came from the Bergen area of Norway in the 1800s. As they moved across the U.S. to establish the town of Roland, Iowa, they kept their heritage fairly intact. Today that whole area is settled with very tall fair complected people, and the name "Duea" is often seen in the town records.

My first Christmas with the family, I was introduced to these hearty, dense potato dumplings in ham broth. I think you might remember that ham and potatoes are two of my most favorite foods ever. The next day my future sister-in-law Chris sliced them and fried them in butter for breakfast. Yes, I love butter so much. It was love at first bite with kumla, obviously.

Thankfully, his family is not big on lutefisk, a powerfully-flavored dish of cod preserved in lye. I understand this is a meal for the strong-hearted and the brave, and I'm glad they didn't want to test my courage before allowing me into the family.

So back to kumla (KOOM-lah). I have since learned that people also call these potato balls klimpor, klubb, kompe, kumpe, potetball and raspeball - I guess these must be regional differences. Clearly this is not lean and light food, but it's a big satisfying meal in your belly during a midwestern winter, when the wind can tear across an entire state without hitting much that would slow it down.

On old farms, here and in snowy Scandinavia, settlers would often tie ropes from the house to the barn so that they wouldn't get lost in a blizzard while tending the animals a couple times a day. For weather like that, you need food that will fortify you.

If you make this for a holiday meal, I'd suggest a good snowball fight or a long walk in the woods to work it off afterwards. For me, food like this makes me appreciate the exuberance of a people who find winter life-affirming with the joy of an ample meal and a warm home filled with family and friends. I truly felt this warmth a few Christmases ago when Joe's brother Alan and sister Carolyn finally shared their family recipe with me. It's their wonderfully talented hands that are cooking in these photos.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I hardly ever cook without listening to music. When I was making this recipe last time, and writing it yesterday, I was listening to the movie soundtrack "We Bought a Zoo" on Spotify. The music is from Scandinavian singer Jonsi, frontman for the group Sigur Ros. It's wonderfully upbeat.

Ingredients

1 4-5 pound ham
10-12 cups water
5 lbs potatoes, peeled and quartered
About 4 cups white flour (some people use a mix of white, whole wheat, ground oatmeal, and/or rye flour)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp baking powder
6 tbsp butter, melted

Instructions

Place the ham in a large stock pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer into a rich broth, about 1 1/2- 2 hours. Remove the meat, slice it, cover it, and refrigerate until just about to serve.

Shred the raw potatoes by hand, or grind them in a food processor until crumbly. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the potatoes, flour, salt, pepper, and baking powder. The dough should be thick like bread dough, but still sticky.

Bring the remaining ham stock to a boil. Scoop out dough about the size of an egg or a plum, form it into a 2-inch ball, and drop it into the boiling stock. If you'd like, you can press a bit of the ham into the center of each dumpling.  Stir the broth often while dropping in the dumplings, so that they don't stick to each other or the bottom of the pot.

When all the dumplings are in the pot, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 1 hour, then remove from the broth. Pile them on a platter, drizzle them with the melted butter, and serve with the hot ham on the side.

Makes 25-35 dumplings.

Hungry for more? Find more of these great recipes at Sons of Norway. 

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Holiday Cocktails and Chocolates

Spiked Egg Nog, Cinnamon Toast Hot Toddy, Cranberry-Pomegranate Cosmos, and Carrot Cake Cocktail - 'tis the season to be merry! These cocktails are fun for a party, or sipping while you're wrapping presents, assembling kids' toys, or playing a holiday game. Warms you all over.

Talea's Spiked Egg Nog

One of our family Christmas traditions is to set out a smorgasbord of meats, cheeses, olives, dips, pate, fruits, and a pitcher of egg nog while we slowly decorate the Christmas tree. Trimming the tree takes quite a while, because so many of the ornaments have a memory or some special significance that we talk about before placing them one-by-one on the tree. Our Christmas tree is really a family record.

In the end, Jessie puts the star on top of the tree and lights it. Jenn sets up the manger scene with all the animals and kings in different positions each year, and then the cats crouch under the tree, knocking over baby Jesus and pretending they live in a forest.

Egg nog is essential to the tradition, but it's never been spiked until the girls were old enough to indulge. My friend Talea's hard eggnog is superb, but she likes it strong - drink it slowly and savor every bit.

Recipe

64 oz. egg nog
1 cup Frangelico liqueur
1 cup dark rum
1/2 cup Grand Marnier
1/2 cup Malibu rum
1 tbsp freshly grated nutmeg
3 tbsp orange zest
2 tsp cinnamon

Stir together all ingredients, and keep chilled between servings.

Serves a crowd!

The Walnut Room's Cinnamon Toast Hot Cocktail

Generations of Chicagoans have traveled to the Walnut Room in Chicago's downtown Marshall Field's shopping emporium for Christmas gifts and a very special meal. Even though Macy's took over the Marshall Field's property some years ago, if you go down to State Street and Randolph today you'll still find the luxurious service, Frango mints, and the stunning two-story Christmas tree in the walnut-paneled dining room.

I'm a relative newcomer to the Walnut Room; my first trip there I was interested in the handsome and elusive Joseph Duea who eventually asked me to marry him a few blocks away at the Art Institute. That year, the first Harry Potter book had blasted away all sales records, Marshall Fields' was still Marshall Fields', and the Walnut Room tree was decorated with hundreds of snowy owls from the novel.

This year I went for lunch with a few of my friends, and the menu has retained some classics while updating for today's tastes. The restaurant still serves a dish called "Mrs. Hering's 1890 chicken pot pie". It also offers "Field's special salad" which is similar to a club sandwich in a bowl, and is all that my friend Robin really remembers from holiday trips downtown with her Grandma.

I'm guessing a more recent touch is the "fairy princesses" who travel the dining room offering you sparkling magic dust to help you when you close your eyes and make a wish. Their satin tip bags, with dollars dangling suggestively from the openings, were the only tacky touch of the entire experience, and I assure you my tack-o-meter has been finely honed over time.

Still, we all made our quiet wishes. My friends and I spent the rest of the day distracted by the glitter on our noses and eyelids, rather joyful from warming up with a signature cocktail they called "Cinnamon Toast".

Recipe

48 ounces apple cider
2 cups Amaretto
1 cup whipped cream
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp sugar
4 cinnamon sticks, to garnish


Heat the cider until near boiling, then stir in the amaretto.

Stir together the cinnamon and sugar on a plate. Wet the rim of a large mug, then swirl the rim in the cinnamon mixture. Pour the cider mixture into the mug, stir in the whipped cream, then garnish with a cinnamon stick.

Makes 4 cocktails.

Cranberry-Pomegranate Cosmopolitans

Last Christmas I held a candy-making party at my home, and served these delectable cosmos while we made chocolate truffles, chocolate-covered pretzel rods, and salted caramel dreamboats.

These cocktails go down easy - very easy. Joe made a second pitcher and left it cooling on the balcony before going to another holiday party. Around eleven, our platters of homemade candies were full and both pitchers were empty. Our bellies hurt from laughing together. What a jolly, funny, loving group of friends I have!

Cranberry-Pomegranate Cosmo recipe

Chocolate Truffle Recipe

Gourmet Chocolate-Dipped Pretzel Rods

Salted Caramel Dreamboats

Carrot Cake Cocktail

At the very end of 1999, I had been working feverishly as a business systems analyst at a corporation that was redesigning its financial systems, in part to solve those Year 2000 problems. New Years Eve came, and I was part of the calm group of people who knew how little we had to worry about a global computer shutdown and a resulting apocalypse, because I knew how much rework had been done.

Remember when that was the crisis of the year?

My parents came to celebrate New Year's Eve with us, straight after a visit with my grandma in Minnesota. They brought a recipe from Grandma Tarr for a 'carrot cake cocktail'.

All day long, my mom tantalized me by saying how delicious it was and how I was going to love it, but every time I suggested she make it, she insisted that she would only make us one and it would be at midnight, and then she was going straight to bed.

This is the exact opposite of the way I'd plan a cocktail party for New Year's Eve, but if you know my mom, you know that she's always the boss.

Midnight arrived, we sipped this lusciously rich drink, then bundled up the girls, and my friend Michael and I took them outside to light off fireworks and sparklers in the snow. Mom went right to sleep, since midnight is about four hours past her bedtime.

This drink is really a liquid dessert, and it's just the sort of thing you might want in your hand if you think the world is going to end in a few minutes.

Recipe

1/2 cup Irish cream
1/2 cup cinnamon schnapps
1/2 cup butterscotch schnapps
Ground cinnamon for sprinkling

Shake together the liqueurs, then pour into 4 small glasses. Garnish with ground cinnamon before serving.

Makes 4 3-oz cocktails.

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Butter Bean - Butternut Squash Soup

Thanks to Talea Bloom for this beautiful photo.

Butter beans and butternut squash are well-named - they both taste especially creamy. This savory winter soup, which is a combination of Midwest winter staples and southeast Asian flavors, was a hit at a friend's holiday party. Luckily, she shared the recipe with all of us. We hope you love it as much as we did!

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion - diced
1/2 cup chopped orange bell pepper
3 tbsp Fresh ginger - peeled and diced
4 cloves Garlic- finely chopped
1 large Butternut squash- peel, seed, chop into 1 inch cubes
28-oz can butter beans – drained and rinsed
6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
½ cup chopped fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste (a pepper medley is preferred, as black pepper on its own has very little flavor, but red, green and white peppercorns add a lot of pizzazz.)
3 cups garlic croutons

Directions

Heat your soup pot for 90 seconds or until hot, turn down heat to medium, add olive oil then diced onion and bell pepper. Sauté  until translucent, 3-5 minutes but not until browned.

Next add ginger, garlic, squash, beans, stock, and basil. Simmer about 45 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Turn down heat to warm. Use an immersion blender or food processor to puree the soup so it becomes completely creamy. Season with salt and pepper, to taste (note: beans and butternut squash need a healthy dose of salt to shine - don't be stingy!). Serve hot with garlic croutons sprinkled on top.

Serves 8-10.

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Pork and Tangerine Stir-Fry

I don't know why pork tastes so good in fruit-based sauces and dishes, but it certainly does. Ripe tangerines or those clementine "cuties", along with aromatic Chinese five-spice powder, make a luscious Christmas-tinged meal.

Ingredients

1 lb pork tenderloin, but into 1-inch cubes

1 tsp canola or grapeseed oil

1/3 cup red bell pepper, cut into thin strips

1 tbsp fresh grated ginger

 3 tangerines or clementines, peeled and pulled into sections

1 tsp cornstarch whisked into 1 tsp warm water

2 tbsp Asian sesame oil, divided

1/4 cup Asian sweet chili sauce (we like Mae Ploy brand)

2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

6 baby bok choy, hard bases removed, and cut into 1" diagonal strips

5 green onions, thinly sliced on a diagonal, divided

White or brown rice for serving

Directions

Heat the oil  in a wok or large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Toss in the pork and stir-fry until browned on all sides, 3-5 minutes. Remove the meat.

Add the pepper, ginger, and clementines to the wok and stir-fry until slightly tender, about 3-5 minutes. Return the meat to the pan. Stir together the cornstarch, sesame oil, chili sauce, soy, and five-spice powder and pour into the pan. Add the bok choy and half the green onions and toss and cook until the bok choy is slightly wilted. Transfer to a serving dish, sprinkle with the rest of the green onions, and serve with rice on the side.

Serves 4-6.

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