Chef Alex Guarnaschelli shares some of her favorite holiday recipes.
(Courtesy Thomas Krakowiak)
Like many avid food lovers, the holidays provide fond memories of good food. Guarnaschelli's favorite memories from the holidays center on her parents.
"My father makes Thanksgiving stuffing with pepperoni and mozzarella," Guarnaschelli said. "He says that when they were coming over on the Mayflower, those were the essentials that they stocked on the ship -- mozzarella and pepperoni. And he said it so many times and so seriously that I almost believe him."
She also finds Christmas nostalgic. "[My] mother always made a minimum of 14 kinds of cookies, and she made pates and other things. But come on, the smell of butter wafting from the oven, I mean, can you focus on anything else?"
Guarnaschelli has been the executive chef, since 2003, at Butter Restaurant, where she created an eclectic American and green-market-inspired menu.
"That idea that we're connected to our ingredients, I absolutely love," she said. "And when I go to the market and I see potatoes that are covered in soil and they smell more like soil than anything else … I love when I roast … potatoes in the oven and I can smell -- even though they've been scrubbed -- that underhint of soil and earth that connects it to that farmer that grew them. And knowing that farmer, I mean, could I get anymore corny?"
Even though the green market is one of her favorite places, Guarnaschelli admits it isn't just organic onions and foie gras in her fridge. "I like that drive-by Dorito moment, you know? I do occasionally. A couple of Cool Ranch [chips] really does me right."
"But my favorite indulgence is definitely ice cream. Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip. The chocolate -- they're not chips, they're like little squares of the most gloriously waxy chocolate, it's almost like candle wax. And so when you eat that bite and you get that chocolate ice cream and then you get that little crunch in your molars … I wouldn't trade that moment for anything."
