Cherry-Persimmon Pie (+ Bonus Holiday Party Food Porn)

Now. Normally I pride myself on making absolutely everything from scratch when I entertain. But there are exceptions.

Look, gentle readers, the holiday party I had on Sunday turned out to be quite the freaking production, let me tell you. I made like 6 trips to the Key Foods, formed and froze dozens of meatballs and phyllo triangles, shoehorned some compound butter into a star-shaped cookie cutter … and on and on and on. No rest for the wicked—you might say I was trying to stave off the prospect of getting coal in my stocking.

The menu, which yielded shockingly few leftovers, was as follows:

An 8-pound ham glazed with molasses and studded with pineapples, with sriracha mayo and horseradish sour cream accoutrements.

Two roast chickens, stuffed with orange wedges and leeks for flavor and (dubious) presentation.

An embarrassment of quiches (mushroom-leek, tomato-arugula, and bacon-arugula, all with Swiss cheese).

A tricolor penne salad with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and olives.

Now That’s a Spicy Meatball!

Meatballs are one of those comfort foods that have lately resurfaced as a NYC foodie trend. But as with meatloaf, there is no earthly reason you should go to a restaurant and pay a 900% markup on something that is incredibly simple and quick to make with cheap ingredients at home.

I recently made a big batch of marinara sauce and a big batch of meatballs and froze both so as to have weeknight meals ready to go. The marinara, I decanted into plastic containers. And for the meatballs, I did this genius trick nicked from Everyday Food: Line a baking sheet with wax paper, form the balls and put them on the sheet like you were making cookies (pictured); freeze the cookie sheet; and once the balls are frozen, roll up the wax paper and stick it in a Ziploc bag. This way they retain their shape in the freezer—and they can be put directly into the oven without any prior thawing.

You can use ground beef, pork, or lamb for meatballs, but this time I had actually bought a pound of ground dark-meat turkey from the DiPaola farmstand at the Prospect Park greenmarket, where I usually just troll for free samples (the dark is actually cheaper than the ground white-meat turkey, which makes absolutely no sense to me because it’s more flavorful). Start by dumping this into a mixing bowl.