Red and green being the go-to colors of Christmas, bringing them to the dinner table for the holiday is a no-brainer. Colorizing your turkey with them can be an interesting exercise. It’s not hard to dress a dead bird in edible flora and call it a day. We’re not all about easy, though. At least, not when it comes to food. This holiday, try out this Southwestern Roasted Turkey with Green Chile Pinon Dressing and some of these other red and green recipes at your table.
Green Chile-Cilantro Pesto
Of course we have our own New Mexican version of pesto! It’s a topping for pasta but also can be added to soups, stews, and rice. Although we have specified cilantro in this recipes, you can use the traditional basil or even Italian parsley. Pecans, another New Mexican crop, can be substituted for the piñon nuts.
Oven-roasted Potatoes Sprinkled with Rosemary, Garlic, and Peperoncino Powder
Potatoes are an industry standard when it comes to holiday cooking. They’re the bricks for building comfort food. Whipping up good mashed spuds isn’t exactly quantum physics. Transforming them into something special to be remembered, though, well, there’s a touch of art to that. Or you can use this Italian oven-roasted version from our Italian holiday feast feature.
The Great Montezuma Hot Chocolate Drink
“Everybody wants some… I want some too…” Van Halen wasn’t talking about hot chocolate when they wrote that but they might as well have been. Chocolate gets associate with sex more often than Craigslist. This hot chocolate is about as close as you can get to what they were singing about without getting buck nekkid and arguing over who gets to go downstairs for sandwiches and cigarettes afterward. We have Richard Sterling to thank for this wonderful libation. You’ll find it and more in this holiday spicy beverage guide at our sister site.
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Red Chile Ganache
Happy holidays, everybody. As we pull into the home stretch for 2015’s finish line, foodies like us find ourselves busier than the North Pole elves. Over the next few weeks, I’ll grill, smoke, bake, and post a storm of different recipes. One of them is this Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Red Chile Ganache from this spicy holiday dessert piece at Fiery Foods and Barbecue Central.
Panpepato (Spicy Chocolate-flavored Christmas Bread)
The turkey’s gone, the stupidity that is Black Friday is behind us, and now we’re on to Christmas. Your food options are a little more freestyle than Thanksgiving’s now. If you’re looking to get away from ham, geese, and mashed potatoes, how about going Italian? Dave DeWitt ran a whole Italy-style holiday feast in this feature story, and this Panpepato (Spicy Chocolate-flavored Christmas Bread) recipe was just one of the wonderful options from which to choose.
Barbecue Thanksgiving: The Ultimate Turkey from Ray Lampe
You can (and should) do an entire Thanksgiving spread via barbecue grill. We know because we did so; just read the whole story. One of the items in that tale was what Dr BBQ himself termed The Ultimate Turkey. That’s a real bold claim, even coming from one of the foremost experts in the world on barbecue. Here’s the recipe so you can try it and tell us if he’s right.
