4 Secret Chef Recipes for the Holidays

Bella La Crema’s Shauna Lee Strecker’s French Bath

By Deborah Cameron

Butter is hard to escape during the holidays. It’s in mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and pie crusts. It’s on carrots and under your turkey skin. But there’s a byproduct of butter creation — buttermilk — which makes an unexpected holiday preparation. Shauna Lee Strecker, the self-trained churn master and owner of Longmont’s Bella la Crema Butter Shoppe and Dairy Market, uses it for her days-long holiday turkey presoak.

True buttermilk is the result of the chemical reaction that happens when liquids left over from the butter-making process are left to ferment. After fermentation, Strecker seasons her buttermilk for several more days with herbes de Provence, garlic, and peppercorn and then allows the turkey to soak in it for 24 hours or longer. She’s nicknamed this preparation a French bath, and it results in a more tender and flavorful turkey. She’s planning to serve it to guests this year.

A large part of the soak’s result is using traditional or cultured buttermilk, not those derived from powders or the acidified varieties that transform milk by using vinegar, lemon juice, or another acid. The traditional version is best at pulling impurities out of the meat and contains lactic acid which tenderizes the protein while imparting flavor from the herbs.

The technique has long been used to prepare fried chicken, but pork, lamb, and beef filets also work well, making it ideal for a Christmas Eve roast. Strecker had smaller portions of the French bath available at Bella La Crema’s storefront but was considering offering 5-gallon buckets of the preparation, with room for the turkey. In either case, the protein should rest in the herbed buttermilk for at least a day, extending another day or two if possible.

Strecker has been around the Boulder County area for a while. She came to her current location after working in Lyons, where she churned in the space that currently houses Theo Adley’s Marigold restaurant. It was there that diners first engaged with her cultured butters, melded with both sweet and savory herbs. Now she makes butter weekly in a larger stainless steel churn or, alternately, an oversized proudly pink mixer, the type that bakeries often use to make dough.

She offers as many as 21 butters at a time. I tasted herbes de Provence butter and a sea salt variety that I preferred for its creaminess and the nuances of the salt. Another butter contained rose petals, lavender, vanilla, and nutmeg, and a fourth had chocolate, coffee, cinnamon, and cayenne. If guests visit Bella La Crema, they can get a tasting of them as a butter flight, sampling them at a counter lovingly called a butter bar. If they’re able to have all 21 flavors, Strecker calls it a “21-butter salute.”

Guests of the shop can taste the butter in the same way connoisseurs taste a wine, craft beer, or spirit — as an experience. The tastings are popular and can take some time. “People will start pulling out every single ingredient in the butter. Sometimes they’re surprised by the finish, which isn’t what they expected. It’s an experience. It’s a slow, wonderful process where people can think about what’s in their mouth. Sometimes we’ve even seen people cry,” Strecker remarked.

Artisan butters can elevate holiday dinners. Using Bella La Crema’s Song of India (blended with cardamom, cinnamon, honey, and spiced orange) as a sauté for pie apples inherently changes the character of the dessert. Serving a butter flight as an appetizer, almost like a cheese board, is an unexpected treat that can get guests talking about something other than politics, religion, or football. There’s a bourbon-forward butter called Hollidays Bourbon (named after Doc Holliday and containing molasses, maple, cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, and Bourbon) that could be dropped into after-dinner coffee or hot buttered rum. “Think about butter as in rather than on. It’s a great delivery system for flavor,” suggests Strecker.

In the end, it’s worth considering that Strecker’s holiday secret chef recipe is less about a culinary technique and more about something else — prioritizing slowing down and taking time. Time to churn for the richest butter. Time to consider how to impart flavor in new ways. Time to soak a turkey in buttermilk. Time to enjoy a meal with those we care about, talk, and connect. Perhaps her recipe and other suggestions she has for using butter during the holidays speak to this more than anything else.

Lemon Olive Oil Cake with Blueberry Sauce

By Charlotte Piper

Frasca Food and Wine’s chef de partie, Rachel Garcia, wants to help you make new holiday memories with her delicious cake recipe.

Recently, Yellow Scene sat down with Garcia to sample her traditional lemon olive oil cake with blueberry sauce. During the conversation, we covered her life working as a chef de partie and how traditional holiday cuisine varies by culture and tradition.

Garcia expressed a love for food from a young age. Her first affinity was for baking and pastry but she found herself in culinary school, working to gain experience while she was attending school. Her initial foray into the culinary world began with working an externship in Beaver Creek. Gaining experience in both fast casual and fine dining restaurants in her formative chef years led Garcia to develop a specific love for fine dining. She now works as chef de partie at Frasca Food and Wine, which is currently celebrating its own milestone: twenty years serving the community of Boulder. Garcia is in charge of making pasta for Frasca Food and Wine, but still loves a good dessert.

The chef says that the best holiday traditions are those that you create with your loved ones, and many of them involve food, albeit not every holiday recipe may be typical. While each holiday commonly involves the gathering of loved ones around the table to eat, the food can definitely vary from culture to culture. “I have always enjoyed the combination of lemon and blueberries,” says Garcia, when reflecting on this recipe. Lemon, blueberries, and almond, which are the primary flavor profiles of the cake, are such a classic combination of flavors which tend to be a hit, no matter the holiday function.

“This cake is very easy to make, which is why I like it alot. It is super simple and straightforward,” says Garcia.

Thanksgiving Bar Desserts by Stacy’s Kitchen

By Deborah Cameron

Some people look forward to their Thanksgiving pies all year long. Maybe it’s an old family recipe that brings back cherished memories. Maybe it’s the only time of the year pumpkin pie crosses their table. Maybe they’re just a creature of habit.

However, for every person who looks forward to their annual pie slice (or slices), there may be someone else who is too full to indulge but feels obligated. Or a reluctant pie baker with a packed schedule who would have appreciated permission to not pull out their rolling pin this year. For all of those people, Stacy Gustafson of Stacy’s Kitchen in Old Town Erie has another option: the bar dessert. “They’re just good. And pecan bars have plenty of pecan pie filling and shortbread. It’s that simple and perfect for the holidays.”

Gustafson opened Stacy’s Kitchen a little more than two years ago and, since then, has been keeping the community fed with baked goods (including New York-style bagels), thick Italian sandwiches, and soups. During the holidays, she does bake her fair share of pies for customers’ tables, but she also loves her bar cookies. The three she suggests for Thanksgiving are her pecan pie bars, cranberry bars, and seven layer bars.

Both the pecan pie bars and cranberry bars are made with a shortbread crust. “It’s so simple — just flour, powdered sugar, and butter. I taught it to someone one time, and when I explained it to them, they couldn’t believe that’s all there was to it.”

The beloved seven layer bars are full of graham cracker, toasted coconut, and sweetened condensed milk. “I make those every year at Christmas. I’ve been making them forever. It was my grandmother’s recipe. I make it the same way as the traditional recipe, but I don’t put nuts in mine. I like it without better.”

Whether she is creating pies or assembling layers of bar desserts, Stacy’s Kitchen comes alive during the holidays. “We do hundreds of pies, and everyone looks forward to making them the week before Thanksgiving. We’re not open for regular business. Last year, we had a good time. It was insane and busy and a lot of work. But someone said to me, “I can’t wait to do all of the apples this year.”

Overall, the holidays are special to Gustafson: “I love spending time with family and having that quiet time at home. And on Thanksgiving, I cook all of it — for everyone. I won’t go anywhere else.”

Chef Kyle Brate’s Cranberry Buttermilk Pie

By Ryan Sullivan

Desserts are unquestionably the best part of a Thanksgiving meal, and for those who doubt it, here’s the evidence: they still inspire a ravenous appetite even after everyone has had a heaping plate of dinner.

Pies like pumpkin and pecan usually take center stage, but occasionally, someone will go out on a limb and make a unique pie—salted honey, caramel pear, orange meringue, goat cheese and fig. Sometimes they work; sometimes not so much. But Chef Kyle Brate from Piripi brings generational knowledge to his cranberry buttermilk pie, which combines fresh, tart cranberries with the creamy tang of buttermilk. 

Brate drew inspiration from his grandmother, who used to make buttermilk pies for special occasions. “My favorite pie is buttermilk,” he explained, “and I adapted that for Thanksgiving.” The pie is an homage to tradition with a seasonal twist.

Starring in the dish is perhaps the most controversial of Thanksgiving ingredients: the cranberry. While opinions are often divided on the contrast of flavors it brings to the dinner plate, Chef Brate satisfies everyone by featuring it in a dessert. Fresh cranberries—never canned—bring an undeniable tartness and sweetness within milliseconds of the pie hitting your tongue. Real buttermilk is essential for the pie’s texture and tangy flavor, honoring the pies Brate’s grandmother made during his childhood. To bring these elements together, he carefully layers the flavors and adjusts the sweetness to complement the cranberries’ natural tartness.

Another thing Brate learned from his grandmother is that buttermilk pie is versatile. He experiments with different variations throughout the year, such as strawberry rhubarb buttermilk pie in the summer. The flexibility of the recipe allows for creativity, building on the buttermilk base to showcase different seasonal ingredients. This experimentation is in Chef Brate’s nature: “I like to experiment with ingredients and flavor profiles I’m not accustomed to,” he said.

When the pies are brought out and uncovered after the Thanksgiving feast, oohs and aahs can usually be heard around the room, and kids start emerging from wherever they were hiding. Everyone chooses big slices or small slices of one type—or two, or three. Brate suggests accompaniments for his pie: either a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The cranberry buttermilk pie embodies both tradition and innovation. It reminds us of an important truth this holiday season: we can give thanks for everything that came before us while embracing what the future holds, together.