31 feel recipes

Orange butter cakes are petite tartlet-tin cakes perfumed with Grand Marnier and candied orange peel, then dipped in orange liqueur glaze. Elegant 36-cake batch for gifts or a holiday tray.

Old-fashioned chicken soup simmers a whole chicken with chicken feet, garlic, carrots, celery, and herbs for three hours to extract maximum flavor and collagen. Grandma-style cure-all served over pastina or rice.

Timing Tip: Can be frozen for up to 2 weeks. Decorate up to 8 hours ahead. Calorie Trimmer: Use reduced-calorie margarine, vanilla nonfat frozen dessert instead of the ice cream and 2 cups thawed frozen reduced-calorie whipped topping for garnish.

Greek-style baked eel with a tomato, red wine, onion, and oregano sauce inspired by Salonika. A traditional Mediterranean seafood dish served with crusty bread.

A lighter, golden fruitcake with apricots, golden raisins, candied orange peel, and walnuts in a buttery brandy batter. Baked in decorative molds for a gorgeous holiday centerpiece.

Flaky phyllo spirals filled with walnuts, pistachios, candied orange peel, and orange blossom water, baked golden and soaked in lemon syrup. A baklava-style treat that makes about 42 pieces.

This holiday fruitcake recipe may change your mind about fruitcakes. Golden, buttery, and chock full of fruits and nuts make this delicious from the first bite to the last.

Mazurka cookie bars with an almond shortbread base topped with a fruity filling of apricots, figs, raisins, walnuts, and candied orange peel, finished with powdered sugar icing.

Sauced shrimp with poached shrimp in pickling-spice broth, then simmered in white wine and tomato sauce with grated onion. The Mediterranean-style shrimp dinner served over rice.

Greek eel baked Spetses-style in a tomato, honey, and feta sauce with thyme, mint, and lemon. A rustic island dish where the rich fish meets briny cheese and sweet sun-dried tomato.

A chunky vegetarian minestrone loaded with cannellini beans, tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and spinach, thickened with rice instead of pasta. A hearty, one-pot Italian soup finished with Parmesan.

Mother's fruit cake is a brandy-soaked holiday classic with cherries, apricots, pineapple, peel, raisins, and currants bound in a spiced chocolate-scented batter. Baked slow and aged for two months.

Cucidati, the traditional Sicilian Christmas fig cookies, with a rich filling of figs, raisins, nuts, chocolate and rum wrapped in tender pastry, shaped into slashed horseshoes and dusted with sugar.

Pan-seared bay bugs on wok-fried egg noodles with speck, smoked eel, peas, and capsicum, finished with a turmeric-chilli oil drizzle. Australian seafood meets Asian flair.

From McCall's Great American recipe card collection, Our Italian Heritage 5e, a baked meatball lasagna.