Seduce me with...

HALLIE EPHRON: ... fish.

Smoked fish to be precise.
I'm not a sweets person, though dark chocolate is nice, and I always have room for a really good macaron. But my favorite treat in the world is a great piece of smoked fish -- smoked salmon or trout or whitefish -- preferably with cream cheese on a piece of pumpernickel bread from Russ and Daughters in Manhattan.

For desert, a piece of chocolate babka please, like the ones my mother-in-law used to get in Flatbush -- there's a close match available at Arcade Bakery in lower Manhattan. Find an insider's guide to NYC babkas: The Best Chocolate Babka in NYC, 2015 Edition.

So what's your weakness? A creamy chocolate truffle? A glass of aged Zin? Icy fresh oysters? Seduce you with... what?

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Oooh, I liked smoked fish, too, Hallie -- whitefish salad or smoked salmon, especially on a good New York bagel. Also love pate. And olives. And good cheese with fruit. (I'd rather have a cheese plate at a restaurant than dessert....) And a nice glass of wine and the occasional martini.

LUCY BURDETTE: Since I'm on a low-sodium, no alcohol diet right now (sigh), a lot of things look delicious! I love smoked trout, used to make an easy, elegant hors d'oeuvres by mixing dill and lemon zest into cream cheese, and then putting about a teaspoon of that on an endive leaf with a piece of smoked trout on top. Sadly, smoked trout packs 670 to 680 milligrams of sodium into a 2-ounce portion. Another favorite, hot pepper jelly cheese puffs.

But I did make a delicious low-sodium almond cake for Easter, and found some yummy homemade caramels at the Key West Artisan Market yesterday. For now, that will make me happy:).

RHYS BOWEN:  If you want to seduce me offer me a spread of oysters, crab claws, cold lobster and a glass of prosecco and I'm yours. I'm also not big on sweets. I do love Creme brûlée , and Cadburys chocolate before it was bought by Hersheys.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, what a lovely question. Pizza. (Completely. Extra cheese and pepperoni.) Bluefish pate.  Steak with blue cheese. Prosecco, absolutely. Really great red wine.  If you offer me something sweet, it;s easy for me to pass. But guacamole on a  salty chip? Yes, indeedy.  How about a yummy crusty baguette with unsalted butter? AND red wine. Oh. I swoon. (And toast with peanut butter.)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Add me to the Prosecco-lovers' list. For me, the seduction factor is the combination of food and place.

Fish and chips is a tasty meal anywhere, but batter-fried haddock and hand-cut fries sitting on the deck of a seafood joint on the Maine coast - that's heaven. Ditto a traditional ploughman's lunch with sharp cheddar, crusty bread, softened butter and pickle chutney served in a dark London pub with a half cider on the side.

In New York City, it would be something cool and new in the Village, like Cuban-Carribbean fusion or authentic Korean, followed by a cab trip to midtown to catch a show. In the Bahamas, it would be conch, conch and more conch, served at a shady table planted in white sand, chased down by ridiculously fruity drinks. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Funny, there are no big sweet eaters here. And we all are very much on the same page. I love smoked fish. (I had the most fabulous smoked whitefish dip at a funky little restaurant in central Florida when I was touring with the Todds. We ate it at every meal.)

I love pate. (I dream of chicken liver pate from Carluccio's in London). Love English sharp cheddar cheese and pickle (chutney) sandwiches. Oh! Oysters and Prosecco! Yum. Crisp white wines and maybe, very occasionally, a small glass of really, really good red wine. Maybe with a good French baguette and Stilton. Charcuterie, with salami and prosciutto and olives.

And one last seduce-me-with-- fried oysters from Pappadeux (a family-owned Texas based chain) with their creole coleslaw and hot French baguettes. Yum...

HALLIE: It's very hard to put this blog to bed and go into my kitchen where I am making noodle pudding for dinner when now all I want is a dozen oysters, a glass of Prosecco, and an enormous white fish chub. 

What are you lusting after?

On Christmas sweets

JAN BROGAN: This is a repost of my favorite of our Christmas Candy blogs: The years may pass, but the recipes stay the same.

JAN: Every Christmas, I make home-made candy and give it to friends and neighbors. I start with caramels. Do not do this. It's completely insane. Caramels TAKE FOREVER. You actually have to stand at the stove about an hour, slowly stirring hot sugary liquid, remembering not to use your finger to wipe the side of the pot or sneak a taste. You will burn. I've got scars.

Not only that, but if you screw up and let the caramel cook too long, your Christmas gift to the neigbors will break their teeth.

And do they really need all those extra holiday calories anyway? I always wonder.

But maybe because cookies and cakes seem like so much unnecessary flour -- when anyone really needs is the straight sugar and chocolate, I stick with candies. And holiday rituals in our house are set in stone. My daughter, who loves rituals, makes the caramel part less onerous by putting on the holiday CD and keeping me company while I embark on the marathon stir. She also buys the cute little candy boxes at A.C. Moore and handles all the necessary ribbon tying.

But forget about caramels. If you go in for making Christmas candies, you want my English toffee recipe.Actually, it's my Aunt Clare's Engish toffee recipe -- she's the one who got me started on this candy making business. (although even she was not insane enough to do caramels)

It takes about fifteen minutes, and its absolutely delicious. Just be careful about the pan

Aunt Clare's English Toffee recipe

24 unsalted saltines1 cup butter1 cup packed light brown sugar1/2 tsp. vanilla6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 13 by 19 inch pan (or thereabouts) and arrange saltines right side up in a single layer. On stovetop, melt butter and brown sugar. Bring to boil, boil for three minutes, stir at least twice.Remove from heat, add vanilla and pour over the saltines. Spread evenly with a spatula. Bake five minutes. Remove from oven, add chocolate chips, spread as they melt.Let cool ten minutes on a rack. Remove and cut in triangles. BEWARE: If you let the toffee cool too long, it can stick to the pan and be difficult to remove. If that happens, put the pan in a larger pan filled 1/4 inch with hot water and it will loosen the candy on the bottom. Don't overfill.Enjoy!

HANK: Ah, you've been literally burned by candy? When the food fights back, you've gotta watch it. I battled our pop-up timer on this year's turkey (I won. Eventually). And I'm planning a ranting letter to a certain food editor about a fabulous recipe in the paper that was billed as "easy" which took me THREE HOURS on Thanksgiving eve and used every pan in my kitchen. It was, indeed, delicious. But regular sweet potatoes might have been just as good. And take only 15 minutes. (If you want the recipe, just ask. I'll post it. But I'd advise--run away run away.)

Still, family and friends. It makes going all out worth it. And Jan, you think of Aunt Clare every time you make the toffee. That's what its all about.

ROBERTA: I was thinking the same thing Hank. My mother was not much of a cook. She didn't like it and yet she didn't want anyone in the kitchen helping either. She cooked 50's style--everything overdone except for the chow mein out of a can. But when it came to Christmas cookies, she became a machine. We had one of those little screw top presses where you could change the disk so different shapes would be squeezed out--wreaths, candy canes, mini-Christmas trees, etc. And she dyed the dough different colors. Then we put on pounds and pounds of glitter and those teeth-cracking silver balls.

All that to say, it's neat that your daughter's into this ritual Jan--I'm sure she'll always remember it!

RO: All that unnecessary flour? I'm crushed. I'm more like Roberta's mom...a cookie machine. I didn't do it this year (some book thing keeps interrupting me..) but most years I start making my cookie dough in November. Then I pop something like I, Claudius or The Sopranos into the dvd player (for 10 hours of straight video)and make cookies from morning until nighttime - while reciting favorite lines. I've never used the little silver balls though, can you really eat them?

HALLIE: Here it's not a cookie Christmas -- it's dark chocolate covered orange rind. It's completely exhausting and completely worth the effort. I mean, the stuff costs a fortune and what you can make yourself tastes better...provided you've got a half day to kill. Step 1: go to that candy-making Zen place. It's the same as the pate-making and bread-making Zen place. Then, peel lots of oranges, boil the peels, scrap away the white part so it's just the 'zest,' cut in strips, simmer zest strips in sugar(enter candy thermoneter), cool, dip one end of each piece in melted dark chocolate and the other end in sugar (keeps them from all sticking together). Yum.

JAN: Yes, my mother, actually a good cook, made no Christmas candies or cookies, established no holiday rituals, and put up a fake tree. To compensate, I went with the caramels....an insanity, I lovingly pass on to my daughter.

On Christmas Candy

I'm busy making the caramels today, so this is a repost from Xmas 2007, (although I added Hallie's chocolate covered orange rind recipe to the bottom) but we figure you just can't publish candy recipes too often!

JAN: Every Christmas, I make home-made candy and give it to friends and neighbors. I start with caramels. Do not do this. It's completely insane. Caramels TAKE FOREVER. You actually have to stand at the stove about an hour, slowly stirring hot sugary liquid, remembering not to use your finger to wipe the side of the pot or sneak a taste. You will burn. I've got scars.

Not only that, but if you screw up and let the caramel cook too long, your Christmas gift to the neigbors will break their teeth.

And do they really need all those extra holiday calories anyway? I always wonder.

But maybe because cookies and cakes seem like so much unnecessary flour -- when anyone really needs is the straight sugar and chocolate, I stick with candies. And holiday rituals in our house are set in stone. My daughter, who loves rituals, makes the caramel part less onerous by putting on the holiday CD and keeping me company while I embark on the marathon stir. She also buys the cute little candy boxes at A.C. Moore and handles all the necessary ribbon tying.

But forget about caramels. If you go in for making Christmas candies, you want my English toffee recipe.Actually, it's my Aunt Clare's English toffee recipe -- she's the one who got me started on this candy making business. (although even she was not insane enough to do caramels)

It takes about fifteen minutes, and its absolutely delicious. Just be careful about the pan

Aunt Clare's English Toffee recipe

24 unsalted saltines1 cup butter1 cup packed light brown sugar1/2 tsp. vanilla6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 13 by 19 inch pan (or thereabouts) and arrange saltines right side up in a single layer. On stovetop, melt butter and brown sugar. Bring to boil, boil for three minutes, stir at least twice.Remove from heat, add vanilla and pour over the saltines. Spread evenly with a spatula. Bake five minutes. Remove from oven, add chocolate chips, spread as they melt.Let cool ten minutes on a rack. Remove and cut in triangles. BEWARE: If you let the toffee cool too long, it can stick to the pan and be difficult to remove. If that happens, put the pan in a larger pan filled 1/4 inch with hot water and it will loosen the candy on the bottom. Don't overfill.Enjoy!

HANK: Ah, you've been literally burned by candy? When the food fights back, you've gotta watch it. I battled our pop-up timer on this year's turkey (I won. Eventually). And I'm planning a ranting letter to a certain food editor about a fabulous recipe in the paper that was billed as "easy" which took me THREE HOURS on Thanksgiving eve and used every pan in my kitchen. It was, indeed, delicious. But regular sweet potatoes might have been just as good. And take only 15 minutes. (If you want the recipe, just ask. I'll post it. But I'd advise--run away run away.)

Still, family and friends. It makes going all out worth it. And Jan, you think of Aunt Clare every time you make the toffee. That's what its all about.

ROBERTA: I was thinking the same thing Hank. My mother was not much of a cook. She didn't like it and yet she didn't want anyone in the kitchen helping either. She cooked 50's style--everything overdone except for the chow mein out of a can. But when it came to Christmas cookies, she became a machine. We had one of those little screw top presses where you could change the disk so different shapes would be squeezed out--wreaths, candy canes, mini-Christmas trees, etc. And she dyed the dough different colors. Then we put on pounds and pounds of glitter and those teeth-cracking silver balls.

All that to say, it's neat that your daughter's into this ritual Jan--I'm sure she'll always remember it!

RO: All that unnecessary flour? I'm crushed. I'm more like Roberta's mom...a cookie machine. I didn't do it this year (some book thing keeps interrupting me..) but most years I start making my cookie dough in November. Then I pop something like I, Claudius or The Sopranos into the dvd player (for 10 hours of straight video)and make cookies from morning until nighttime - while reciting favorite lines. I've never used the little silver balls though, can you really eat them?

HALLIE: Here it's not a cookie Christmas -- it's dark chocolate covered orange rind. It's completely exhausting and completely worth the effort. I mean, the stuff costs a fortune and what you can make yourself tastes better...provided you've got a half day to kill. Step 1: go to that candy-making Zen place. It's the same as the pate-making and bread-making Zen place. Then, peel lots of oranges, boil the peels, scrap away the white part so it's just the 'zest,' cut in strips, simmer zest strips in sugar(enter candy thermoneter), cool, dip one end of each piece in melted dark chocolate and the other end in sugar (keeps them from all sticking together). Yum.

JAN: Yes, my mother, actually a good cook, made no Christmas candies or cookies, established no holiday rituals, and put up a fake tree. To compensate, I went with the caramels....an insanity, I lovingly pass on to my daughter.

Here's Hallie's candy recipe:

Chocolate dipped candied orange peel a la Hallie Ephron

- Remove the peel from 4 oranges in lengthwise sections
- Put peel in saucepan covered with cold water; bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer until peel is soft
- Drain peel and scrape off inner white part with a spoon (I use a grapefruit spoon w/a serrated edge)
- cut peel into thin strips with a scissor
- Place in saucepan:
* 1 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup water
* 2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
* strips of peel
- Cook slowly until clear (230 on the candy thermometer)
- Drain in coarse sieve
- Cool peel on wax paper
- Melt dark dipping chocolate in a little frying pan 
- Spill out a little mound of granulated sugar on a plate
- Dip 1 end of each strip of candied peel in melted chocolate, dip the other end in granulated sugar (so its not so sticky and hard to handle), and let sit on wax paper until chocolate hardens