Easy Authentic Recipes Fully Tested

A white plate sitting on a folded napkin on a wooden table, with a pile of cheese crisps on top and one leaning against the plate.StartersSliced skirt steak topped with salsa with a bowl of salsa and charred lime halves on the side.MainsA whole roast chicken on a platter with a bowl.ChickenA citrus fennel salad assembled on a white and blue serving platter, topped with fresh herbs.SaladSeveral Swedish cardamom buns cooling on a wire rack.BreadsSticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream on a white plate with a fork, beside a small bowl of extra toffee sauce.Desserts

My Christmas Favorites

8 Showstopping Christmas Entrées

This list highlights some of our favorite sophisticated and splendid entrées. Get ready to pull out all the stops and win the holidays!

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Gratin

Ooooh baby! Broccoli blanketed with a creamy rich white sauce that takes its oomph from blue cheese and its hint of heat from cayenne.

1 hr 25 mins

Peppermint Brownies

They’re rich, a little fudgy, and bursting with peppermint flavor. Say hello to your new favorite holiday brownie.

1 hr 20 mins

Hanukkah Dishes

More Hanukkah Recipes

Nach Waxman’s Beef Brisket

Like a chorus line of Rockettes, tender slices of brisket lean on each other in perfect symmetry and perfect doneness. Here’s how to replicate this performance at home.

4 hrs 10 mins

Potato Latkes with Apple-Date Chutney

All fancied up for the holidays, these boast all the perfectly-crisp-on-the-outside-tender-on-the-inside awesomeness of traditional potato latkes as well as a few surprises.

1 hr 30 mins

Challah

As buttery and airy as brioche but with a far weightier responsibility than its breakfast chum, challah ensures a sweet new year in Jewish tradition. We’ll break bread to that.

3 hrs 15 mins

Hamantaschen

Our testers are singing the praises of these sweet cookies that are stuffed with poppy seed and apricot filling. We’re quite certain you will be, too.

2 hrs 15 mins

Quick Dinner Tonite

Pasta Alla Norcina

Bowls of creamy pasta laden with homemade sausage and sautéed mushrooms that will have everyone applauding. (Get used to the attention.)

45 mins

Winter Ingredients

A caramelized onion and Gruyère galette with a rye crust and sprigs of thyme.onion+Five small tarts filled with orange curd and topped with candied orange slices on a cooling rack.CitrusNine colorful braised carrots on a white platter.Root VegA ceramic bowl filled with mashed kabocha with a spoon resting in it.SquashStuffed mushrooms with chives and black pepper on a white plate, garnished with chopped cashews.MushroomA bowl of white beans and Tuscan kale, sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese, with a spoon.Beans+
David Leite

Hey, I’m David Leite

I’m a three-time James Beard Award-winning food writer, cookbook author, memoirist, podcast host, and publisher. I created this site in 1999 to help you find simple, quick, and wicked flavorful recipes. For the past 24 years, I’ve been cooking, teaching, and writing about all types of food, including those from my Portuguese heritage. Let’s eat! Vamos comer!

Read More About Me

Portuguese Recipes

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Christmas Eve Cod ~ Bacalhau da Consoada

A traditional recipe on Christmas Eve in Portugal, this dish of salt cod, potatoes, and cabbage is drizzled with a garlic oil and topped with hard-boiled eggs.

1 hr

Portuguese Fennel Soup

Fennel soup, or sopa de funcho in Portuguese, is a staple in Madeira and the Azores Islands. This recipe is full of fennel, pork, sausage, cabbage, and beans.

2 hrs

Most Beloved Recipes

These are the most popular, most loved, and most made dishes over the past 25 years.

Find a New Recipe

Roast Pork Butt in the Oven 

This roast pork butt, coated in a simple rub of brown sugar, paprika, cumin, and red pepper flakes, is an incredibly easy recipe to make and yields enough pulled pork to feed a small army.

10 hrs

Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese Sauce

Is anything more soothing than standing before a burbling pot of Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese sauce? (Hint: Our answer is absolutely not.)

6 hrs

Batter-Fried Chicken

Proof that it doesn’t take buttermilk or an insufferably long overnight brine to make insanely tender, crazily crisp, gosh darn perfect fried chicken.

1 hr 30 mins