Newsletter: 🥂 Loving those leftovers + cocktails to bring in the New Year 🍸

30 December 2024 · ckbk newsletter

Our favorite parsnip recipes

Leftovers are the best bit

What is better than a delicious home-cooked feast? All that wonderful food, when you haven’t only just finished slaving for hours creating it. Leftovers are the cook’s joy, a day-after-the-party treat. So, enjoy, and with a little extra love—no more slaving, we promise—you can make even more of them.

A hash is always a good idea, creating some magic out of crushed up potatoes and any leftover vegetables with a little pan heat and sizzling butter—try this Kale Hash with chorizo.

Most everything tastes better slathered in mayonnaise and put between two slices of good bread. How about The Turkey Club, or here’s Another Equally Epic Boxing Day Monster.

Explore a host of recipes for Transforming Festive Leftovers for some more ideas. With very little cooking, but a whole lot of flavor, try Leftover Chicken, Pasta, Oak Leaf, Bean and Chèvre Salad with Tomato Ginger Dressing—just substitute the chicken for turkey, depending on your fridge haul. Turn leftover veg and poultry into a tasty snack with these Chicken & Vegetable Hand Pies. Craving comfort? These simple Irish Potato Cakes are hard to beat.

The sweet stuff gets a look-in too, this Leftover Cake Tiffin is a great way to bring together any bits of cake or mince pies that have been overlooked.

Or try Christmas Pudding French Toast, for a Boxing Day treat.

Pictured above: The Turkey Club from From Scratch by Michael Ruhlman

It’s a cocktail party at yours

Once you’ve cleared away the wrapping paper, finished up all those leftovers, and feel ready to look 2025 in the eye, it’s time to start planning for New Year’s Eve.

For a New Year’s party Finger Food is the order of the day, or a few well-placed bowls of Crackers & Dips.

But beyond that, it’s time to get excited about the drinks. Explore our collection of party drinks, and say Cheers to the New Year with a glass of something special. Make a bowl of classic Gin Punch, or spice things up with a Lemongrass and Ginger Rum Cocktail.

Whisky Cocktails are in a category all their own, the peaty warmth of the spirit underpinning the other flavors.

Few things beat a Whisky Sour, but if you want to feel like royalty see in the New Year with a Prince of Wales Cocktail, apparently invented by Prince Albert Edward himself.

Booze is not an essential ingredient, and we’ve got Mocktails and Non Alcoholic Party Drinks for you too. Try a zingy Kimmy Gimlet, or a warming Spiced Winter Kvass.

And for those of you who are serious about your cocktail creation, newly added to our bookshelves, we have The Modern Cocktail, a stunning compendium of more than a hundred innovative and exciting drinks from mixologist and drinks consultant Matt Whiley. Here’s raising a Perfect Martini to you. Happy New Year!

Find more party cocktail recipes in our drinks bookshelf

Ingredient focus: parsnips

Cultivated in Europe since ancient times, the parsnip remains a popular root vegetable, especially served with a roast dinner.

Historically parsnips were even more important, a staple food in some parts of the world, prior to the widespread arrival of potatoes and other starches and sugars.

Tender fresh parsnips can be eaten raw, julienned into a salad with a citrussy vinaigrette. But their nutty, sweet flavor, which benefits from more earthiness than the carrot, really comes into its own when cooked. The browned edges of roast parsnip are a real treat

Try Baked Parsnip Chips with Spiced Bean Relish, this aromatic Parsnip, Cauliflower and Chickpea Korma, or any of the recipes in our collection of 16 Ways with Parsnips. Much like with carrots, parsnip’s sweetness also works well in a cake. Try this Parsnip, Apple & Hazelnut Cake.

6 of the best champagne cocktails

Is there anything more celebratory than a cocktail? A champagne cocktail! We’ve a whole collection of them here, and here are another half dozen of the best.

Newsletter: 🥂 Loving those leftovers + cocktails to bring in the New Year 🍸

Leftovers are the best bit

It’s a cocktail party at yours

Ingredient focus: parsnips

6 of the best champagne cocktails

Champagne Cobbler

Champagne & Citrus Punch

Strawberry Champagne Punch

Bellini, the Peachy

Baltic Bellini

‘Bellini’ with Fizzy Grapes