Jerry Di Vecchio was Sunset’s food editor for more than four decades. Here she has handpicked her favorite festive recipes—and helped us update them for today’s tastes
As Told to Elaine Johnson and Margo True
1 /14Eva Kolenko
Praline Eggnog
“This creamy nog that Sunset first published in 1984 was part of a story on nonalcoholic punches, and the praline (actually just caramelized sugar, without the usual pecans) was such a wonderful addition,” says Jerry Di Vecchio, Sunset’s long-time food editor. It was made with raw eggs before they were a cause for concern, so this time around we’ve gone for a cooked custard—and added the option of rye or bourbon. “I would never object to a little booze,” Di Vecchio says.
“During my years at Sunset, we were deep into all things Scandinavian,” says Sunset former food editor Jerry Di Vecchio. “The Seattle area had an intense Nordic heritage, and the magazine bore the imprint of Proctor Mellquist, who was Swedish and ran the magazine in the 1960s and ’70s, and Beatrice ‘Peaches’ Ojakangas, who was Finnish and on the food staff in the 1960s.” This delightful appetizer from 1986 works as part of a buffet or on its own (although it's runny, so have little plates and forks on hand). The original cream sauce was demurely seasoned with a smidge of curry powder. We’ve boosted the spices and laid the herring on toasts so you can see their shapes.
“I like a really creamy cheese, and you can’t get much creamier than baked brie,” says Sunset former food editor Jerry Di Vecchio. “It’s the equivalent of fondue, but with no work, and it’s great for parties.” In 1987, while Di Vecchio was overseeing the food pages, Sunset shared a filled brie recipe from reader Danielle Lavery of Honolulu. For this update, we opted for a smaller cheese and more brightly colored dried fruits.
“Another Sunset editor and I first tasted this beautiful salad in Paris at the Place Vendôme and thought it was amusing to be served something so Californian,” says Jerry Di Vecchio, Sunset’s long-time food editor. Her 1986 version called for salad oil (the term back then for vegetable oil). We swapped in extra-virgin olive oil, since there are so many West Coast producers now.
Spinach is so ingrained as a companion to a holiday roast, and this 1999 recipe, from the Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas, California, is a good one. Our new version is more textured than the original (half the leaves were puréed; here they’re chopped). Yet it retains its panache, derived from a touch of anise flavor.
“Helen Evans Brown started me on fennel,” says Jerry Di Vecchio, Sunset’s long-time food editor. A West Coast cookbook author and consultant at Sunset in the 1950s and ’60s, Brown served fennel braised or raw with blue cheese. “One thing led to another, and I came up with this surprisingly addictive, meltingly tender dish in 1993. It’s still one of my favorites—and I make it year-round,” Di Vecchio says. This time we used Japanese panko instead of the original plain bread crumbs (for a bit of crunch) and bumped up the blue cheese topping.
In celebration of Hanukkah, Sunset has run many a recipe for fried potato latkes—everything from “potato pancakes” paired with crisp green apple and fresh goat cheese to a giant “pizza latke” involving sourdough bread crumbs. Santa Barbara reader David Teton-Landis gives them a modern, Western twist by grilling them at his Hanukkah party every year. The genius of this method is that it doesn’t smell up the house, and the cooking becomes part of the night’s entertainment. Teton-Landis uses a batter recipe from his mother-in-law, Roz Teton, and a giant Alessi Todo grater to create long, thin potato shreds that, he says, produce a refined texture.
Sunset was founded in 1898, and we inherited the culinary culture. Over the years we published a number of moles, but they were weeknight versions. Then in the early 1990s, Sunset writer Betsy Reynolds Bateson went to Puebla, Mexico, in search of something really authentic. She came back with the Morales family’s prized recipe, one with layers of flavor and subtlety—medium-hot, roasty, smoky, and sweet. It makes a grand change of pace from, say, a roast turkey for the holidays. The sauce takes time, but you can make it several days ahead. For the balanced complexity of the original, you need the right kind of dried chiles (mulato, ancho, and pasilla)—so much easier these days with online shopping.
Health fads come and go, and the 1990s were the era of low-fat everything, and no added salt. Thank goodness we no longer have to do that. In this spirit, we gave our 1993 vegetarian casserole a deluxe makeover, replacing nonfat cottage cheese with mascarpone, adding loads of herbs, a crisp, company-worthy filo topping, and yes, salt.
Because of Sunset’s proximity to the Pacific Rim, our pages have always been full of recipes from Asia, and one of our longtime food editors, Linda Lau Anusasananan, brought in scores of them. She came back from Seattle’s Wild Ginger Asian Restaurant & Satay Bar in 1994 with this recipe for Dungeness crab, which then-chef Jeem Han Lock insisted be kicking when pulled from the tanks. (Indeed: Fresh-cooked crab is the sweetest. To learn how to tackle it, see Dungeness 101: How to Cook Crab.) We often feature crab for the holidays, and this classic recipe ranks right up there with boiled crab and cioppino.
The West is a big producer of nuts, and in 1982, Sunset food writer Linda Lau Anusasananan created a big, shallow tart to show them off. It’s like a Southern pecan pie, grown up. This time we opted for mini versions, good when you have multiple desserts to try. You’ll need nonstick tart pans, like Gobel nonstick 4-in. tartlets.
“This is my very favorite bread dough—tender, light, eggy, and buttery—and I love the orange flavor,” says Jerry Di Vecchio, Sunset’s long-time food editor, who developed the original dough for a story in 1968. We’ve reshaped it to create a more contemporary design, but it is otherwise unchanged. While the bread is rich (maybe that’s why it reheats so well), Di Vecchio still likes to serve it with butter. To make it, you’ll need a large rimless baking sheet.
Since 1929, many versions of this pavlova-like dessert have appeared in Sunset: orange, lemon-pineapple, chocolate, apricot. “My favorite,” says Jerry Di Vecchio, Sunset’s long-time food editor, “is filled with lemon curd, but the original was quite sweet, so we amped up the citrus. It’s like eating a cloud.”