For the best recipes, visit Epicurious (add your recipe reviews and ratings, too!) and Gourmet.com. Also at Gourmet.com, you’ll find frequent article and recipe updates, Gourmet publications and products, and more. And for up-to-the-minute holiday guides, comprehensive how-tos and videos, chef profiles, travel and restaurants, and more, explore Epicurious. See you there!

Bake or sauté, roast or fry, frizzle or grill: leeks can take the heat. We’re rounding up a few of our favorite ways to make leeks the star of your next meal, including flaky turnovers, tasty tarts, and cozy casseroles.

• Enjoy a meal on-the-go with Chicken Vegetable Turnovers (above) from Nourished Kitchen.
• Butternut Squash Leek Casserole by The Blooming Glen Beet marries two of the season’s standouts in one hearty dish.
• DenieBernier.com’s Crevettes aux Poivrons features bell peppers stuffed with a wintery mix of creamy leeks and shrimp.
• Switch up your breakfast routine with Deux Maisons’s Ham, Leek and Gouda Soufflé.
• Creamy Grits with Crispy Leeks from Herbivoracious are an explosion of flavors and textures.
• Leek, Goat Cheese and Bacon Tart starts with a store-bought crust for easy entertaining any night of the week.

What’s better than a biscuit? Not much. They’re best when still warm, steaming, presented in a dish towel-draped basket—when you split them and a butter pat just glides over the inside. Of course they’re good packed in a lunchbox or frozen then toasted, too. An indulgence to be sure, one biscuit always leaves me wanting more. Here are some fresh takes on biscuits for your next meal:

• Food Swoon’s Cheddar-Jalapeno Sour Cream Biscuits (above) will have you weak in the knees.
• Thyme-flavored Savory Molasses Biscuits from the Tolerant Vegan are a savory experience.
• The View from Great Island’s brilliant Roasted Beet Biscuits stimulate all five senses.
• Sky-High Buttermilk Biscuits by Mom Makes… offer that classic biscuit bite.
• From whisked., these Maple Pumpkin Bacon Biscuits combine our favorite cold-weather flavors.
• Nutella Drop Biscuits by Two Peas and Their Pod make a sweet snack.

Instead of hitting the restaurant scene on New Year’s Eve, I host an intimate candle-lit  dinner party. With my closest friends in attendance, we start our celebration by toasting to the new year with fresh and festive Champagne Punch, which pairs perfectly with an iced tray of Oysters with Champagne-Vinegar Mignonette. And for the fancy food lovers in my life, I turn to Foie Gras Toasts with Sauternes Gelée for the ultimate finger-friendly appetizer.

A few hours before the clock strikes twelve, I gather my guests for a four-course treat. We start with a luscious Mushroom Consommé with Morels and Pastry “Hats” served alongside glasses of celebratory Champagne. Clinking glasses and numerous toasts soon make way for delicate portions of Asparagus Salad with Celery Leaves, Quail Eggs, and Tarragon Vinaigrette. The light and refreshing dish is followed by the crowd-pleasing casserole for the evening, classic Macaroni and Cheese, which is served alongside Lobster in Crazy Water. For dessert we shove forkfuls of Mile-High Chocolate Cake into our mouths just in time to catch the final New Year’s Eve countdown with a final sip of bubbly.

How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve?

Have you ever tried making pasta or dumplings from scratch? It’s a fun project to tackle over the holidays (hint: New Year’s Eve appetizers!) and it’s one that yields delicious and often Instagram-worthy results. This week, we’re rounding up our favorite handmade pasta recipes from across the Web.

• Chicken soup enthusiasts can warm up with a bowl of Chicken Dumpling Soup (above) from Eat, Little Bird.
• Spinach Gnudi with Sage Burnt Butter from Cook Republic marries fresh spinach leaves and ricotta cheese into one mouth-pleasing bite.
• Head over to Mr. Brussel Sprouts for a classic, all-around Homemade Pasta Dough.
• Take a bite of Beet Raviolis with Homemade Ricotta and Sherried Leeks from July Moon.
• Edible Green Mountains’ Duck Elderberry Dumplings includes a unique recipe for orange zest-infused dough.
• If you have a sweet tooth, opt for Chocolate Pasta from The Brooklyn Ragazza.
• Inspired to make more pasta? Manu’s Menu has a handmade Pasta and Gnocchi archive with picture tutorials.

Photo: Kemp Minifie

These slices of bread look fresh, right? They certainly felt fresh to me when I snapped the photograph on Friday, December 21, 2012. The crusts curled—no breakage—as I pulled the slices from the bag.

But guess how old this loaf of bread is? I bought it nine weeks ago when I was testing the Turkish Spiced Meatballs for our New Year’s Eve Party Modern Menu.  I knew it was a while ago, but I was shocked when I checked my receipts to discover I’d bought it on October 12, 2012.

Here’s the kicker: the loaf has been sitting at room temperature on my kitchen counter the whole time. I never refrigerated it or froze it. The loaf got lost amidst the clutter of a small New York City apartment kitchen heavily used by someone who loves to cook.

It’s not natural for bread to last that long at room temperature. When I was a kid, bread barely lasted four or five days without showing signs of mold. I shudder to think what a green furry mess a loaf from the days of my childhood would have become in only two weeks at room temperature. That’s why my mother insisted we store our bread in the fridge to help it last longer.

Does this remind you of Morgan Spurlock’s experiment with MacDonald’s French fries in Super Size Me? I just reviewed that section of the movie and the French fries lasted ten weeks without a hint of rot before they were accidentally thrown out by an intern.  Who knows how long they would have lasted?

To further the cause of food science—and my own curiosity—in an informal experiment, I’m returning this loaf to its spot on top of the dishwasher to see just how long it takes to turn green. I’ll report back to you. But the idea of eating bread that’s so full of preservatives it lasts over two months gives me the heebie-jeebies.

When I shop for bread, I go to a bakery stand at my farmers market to purchase loaves of preservative-free, whole-grain bread. And when I see the first sign of mold, I cut it out and turn the rest of the loaf into my favorite toasted breadcrumbs for pasta. You won’t believe how delicious they are!

Photo: Lara Ferroni

New Year’s Eve is a night for champagne, toasts, songs, celebrating, and hors d’oeuvres. With bite-sized delights like pigs in blankets, spanitkopita, mini quiche, crostini, deviled eggs, arancini, crab cakes, gougères, chicken satay, meatballs, bacon wrapped dates, shrimp cocktail, blinis with caviar, and empanandas, there is plenty of finger-friendly fare to choose from. But, we want you to tell us:

What’s your favorite hors d’oeuvre?

Photo: Mikkel Vang

Good morning and Merry Christmas! Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, a holiday morning is an ideal time to indulge in the pleasures of a homemade hearty breakfast. Christmas traditions in our household begin with a big breakfast, and potatoes, eggs, and bacon still reign as the top choices. Even though our girls have become quite proficient with their hash browns, the real family favorite when it comes to potatoes is what is affectionately known as potato gratin, but titled Crispy Oven-Browned Potatoes on gourmet.com.

Think of it as a lazy person’s Pommes Anna, the French buttery potato cake. Instead of carefully layering thin slices of potato with melted butter, you quickly toss the slices with butter in a large bowl, then slide them into a shallow baking dish, and cook the gratin in a hot oven until the potatoes are, indeed, browned and crisp on top. Former Gourmet magazine food editor Melissa Roberts developed this winner of a recipe for the Christmas breakfast menu in the December 2008 issue of Gourmet. In fact, all her recipes for that menu are winners. Thanks to Roberts, we’ll also be making her Maple and Black-Pepper Bacon, as well as her Baked Egg Custard with Gruyere and Chives.

Fortified by the potatoes, eggs, and bacon in our bellies, we have the energy for unwrapping presents, as well as the cleanup afterwards, which is then followed by a long nap before dinner. That means there are only two meals to cook on Christmas Day. Now that’s what I call a gift!

Location: Portland, Oregon

What is the first meal you ever cooked?
See, I grew up in rural Appalachia, with well water that turned the white laundry rusty-colored, so every couple of weeks we had to go to the laundromat to wash the light-colored clothes. One day when I was 14 or so I ripped out a ridiculously complicated carbonara recipe from Family Circle, and I spent approximately two hours and twelve pans to make it. And even if it wasn’t actually carbonara, it was pretty stellar.

If you had to blog about one ingredient every day for a year, what would it be?
Onions.

I will never eat:
Blue cheese (yuck), foie gras (unless it comes from that one guy in Spain who raises his happy animals), and probably not the still-beating heart of a cobra. I also find jackfruit revolting.

Who would you love to have over for dinner?
If “dinner” is a euphemism, Nathan Fillion. If it’s not, then I like making food for people who treat it like a cooking lesson. If Nathan Fillion wants a cooking lesson, I mean, that’s cool too.

What is your all-time favorite recipe from your blog?
There are so many, but the Garlic Chive Pesto was probably one of the better surprises I made, and every time I eat it I’m ecstatic that it’s there. The entry I wrote above it is one of the more personal ones, too, and it carries the satisfaction of saying just what I needed to say.