Here we are again, the holidays… gastronomy’s ultimate do over time of the year. Everyone’s getting fired up about brining birds, smoking hogs, roasting vegetables, buttering breads and sampling sweets. But it’s the same old tired stuff as last year… and the year before that. Maybe a few culinary twists but for the most part the menu doesn’t change. We’re creatures of habit, and you know what? I’m okay with that. In the past I used to fight it, but that got me nowhere. I was thrilled when two years ago my friend made goat stew for a pot luck holiday get-together. And I told everyone “See see, isn’t that great! Something different and interesting.” Some of my guests liked it but most vetoed the notion! The holiday menu will never budge, so why bother.

So you might be asking the question “What can I do to change it up a bit...add some sass to the meal without everyone screaming foul?”

How about making a few changes to your side dishes. After all, it is really the sides that steals the show on the holiday table -- the supporting cast that props up the celebrity bird, robust ham, crab or vegetarian main-- the unsung heroes. Here are two easy-to-make dishes that will add unique yet familiar flavors to the holiday meal.

The first one is a beet salad with pear and Mandarin oranges. The pear adds a wonderfully unique texture to the salad while the floral acidity of the orange helps to complement the fatty quality of the mains. It’s a great dish for people that SWEAR that they don’t like beets.

Roasted Beet and Pear Salad with Satsuma Mandarin Orange

Serves: 6

The beets can be cooked one or two days in advance.

Ingredients:
3 lbs medium to large sized Chioggia beets. Conventional is fine
1 ripe pear, cut into to thick match sticks
5 mandarin oranges, 4 for salad and 2 for juice
½ red onion, thinly sliced
2 heaping tablespoons, champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon, extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

2. Cut off beet stems and wash really well. Place beets in a baking pan and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.

3. Cover dish with aluminum foil and bake for 1-1 1/2 hrs. At the hour mark take out and pierce with the tip of a paring knife or toothpick to check if finished. Some larger beets might need an additional 15-25 minutes depending on how stubborn they are. When cooked, remove and let cool.

4. When cool, simply take an old kitchen towel and rub off the skin. Cut off both ends and then cut beets into 4, 6 or 8 piece wedges, depending on desired size. Place into bowl.

5. Juice the 2 oranges and set aside. Peel and rough chop the other 4.

6. Slice the pear and then cut into thick match sticks.

7. To finish, place all the ingredients into a bowl and toss.

Notes:
* It’s very important to not over mix the salad as it will look distressed.
* Try to mix the salad while the beets are still warm as it will absorb the juices better.
* The salad should be made and consumed on the same day as the pear will start to get mushy and discolor.

The next recipe is a breath of fresh air to the good old classic, green bean casserole. Most of us remember this dish as overcooked green beans and fried onions saturated in canned mushroom soup.

I wanted to give this dish a unique flavor without altering it too much. I found that fennel, leeks and a shot of Pernod did just that. The sweet leeks and slight liquorice flavor paired nicely with the earthy mushroom cream and fresh green beans. I also removed the tired old onions and replaced them with toasted pecans and buttery breadcrumbs. The last thing to note is that it’s not as rich and creamy as you might remember. I purposely made it so that the beans are coated in the cream but not drenched. It makes for a more vibrant textured dish.

Green Bean Casserole with Fennel, Leeks, Pernod and Toasted Stuffing

Serves: 6

Ingredients:
2 lbs. blue lake green beans
1 lb. button or cremini mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 bunch leeks, chopped and washed
½ fennel bulb, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
Teaspoon, fresh picked thyme
Shot of dry white wine
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup vegetable stock
3 heaping tablespoons, Pernod
½ cup, chopped and toasted pecans
2 cups stuffing mix (cubes of bread)
Olive oil
Butter
Salt and pepper

Preparation:
1. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees

2. Cook beans in salted boiling water, roughly 4 minutes. Remove and shock in ice water. Cut the beans in half.

3. Place a sauce pot on high heat and add a teaspoon of cooking oil. Get it super hot and then add the mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms quickly and then remove from pan. You want them to be brown, crispy and somewhat dry.

4. Turn down heat to medium low; add another teaspoon of oil and a small amount of butter. Add leeks and fennel. And cook until soft. At that point add garlic and thyme and cook for a couple minutes more.

5. Deglaze the pan with wine. Stir and let cook for 30 seconds. Add heavy cream and turn down to low. Stir mixture and let the cream reduce by almost ¾. This will make the mixture thick and sweet! Add vegetable stock and reduce by half.

6. Season mixture with salt and pepper.

7. In another pan melt a tablespoon of butter. Cook until it starts to turn brown. Add bread/stuffing mixture and stir. Remove from heat.

8. In a large bowl toss the beans, mushrooms, fennel cream and pecans together. Add a titch more salt.

9. Place in a casserole dish and cover with stuffing mixture. Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Then crank up broiler and crisp up stuffing. Depending on your broiler I would think that 30 seconds would do the trick.

10. Remove and serve hot!

Notes:
* The salt in the bean cooking liquid is twofold. It flavors but also helps retain the green color.
* Make sure not to overcook the beans! A little under done is better than over cooked.
* Taste the mixture before you add stuffing and bake. You might want more Pernod or seasoning.
* You can also use stale bread and make your own topping.

Liquid lunch! That's what we used to call the Bloody Marys at certain favorite hangouts, places that served their tall, spicy-red drinks bristling with an RDA's-worth of tasty edibles, from green olives and celery sticks to shrimp on a stick. But nothing's better in a Bloody Mary than garlicky, dill-y pickled green beans.

The Cafe overlooking Castro and Market used to load up their Sunday morning rations with handfuls of dilly beans; so did Prune in Manhattan and Frankie's 457 Spuntino in Brooklyn, to name just a few.

(Among Lower East Side brunchers, Prune was notorious for chef Gabrielle Hamilton's willingness to stick just about anything grabable--pickled eggs, white anchovies, beef jerky--into her Bloody Marys. But my favorite was always the salad-esque Chicago Matchbox, garnished with caperberries, pickled Brussels sprouts, baby turnips, radishes, and yes, green beans. The house-infused lemon vodka may have helped, too.)

At a recent all-day outdoor barbecue, a jar of these beans disappeared even faster than the Stoli did. I like to use a combination of yellow wax bean and green beans, purely for stripey effect in the jar. Purple beans might seem even cooler, but alas! The color disappears when the beans are heated. Garlic, dill seeds, and a hot pepper or two is the standard combination, but you can go as crazy as you want with additional aromatic flavorings. Coriander, fennel, and celery seed all work well, either by themselves or in combination.

If you'd like to can these for later use, you'll have an easier time getting the beans in (and out) if you use wide-mouth pint or quart jars. Most hardware stores carry a good range of canning jars, but if you're really stocking up, I've found that Smart & Final often has the best prices on cases. You can also train your friends and neighbors to return their empty jars to you once they've finished the delicious jam & pickles that you've gifted to them. Remember, you can wash and reuse jars and rings, but you'll need to buy a new package of flat lids for each canning go-round.

Now, if you're going to go to the (small) trouble of making these excellent beans, why waste them on some nasty corn-syrupy cocktail mix? As I headed to the supermarket to provision the barbecue mentioned above, one of my guests emphatically recommended a popular brand of Bloody Mary mix. Too much hassle to provision all the separate ingredients, she opined, and this stuff was good.

But you know what two of the four main ingredients were? Water and high-fructose corn syrup, neither of which is high on my list of Things to Pay For at Safeway. Instead, I bought a jug of tomato juice, raided the condiments stashed inside the door of the fridge and doctored up the red stuff with the classics: horseradish, Tabasco, lemon juice, and a few jiggers of Worcestershire sauce, no HFCS needed. Or, if you've got too many tomatoes in the garden, or a squishy bag of oozing, end-of-the-day lovelies from the farmers' market, you can whip up a pitcherful from scratch, using the Bloody Mary recipe of hotshot British food star Tamasin Day-Lewis, sister of Daniel.

So, bottoms up, darlings, and here's to starting Sunday right.

Bloody Mary Beans
Depending on the size of your beans, and how firmly you stuff them in, you might fill five jars, or you might fill four. But I'd have five jars on hand anyway, just in case.

Makes 5 jars

Ingredients
2 lbs green beans, trimmed to fit jars
10 garlic cloves, peeled and split
10 small hot pepper pods, optional
1 cup dill fronds, loosely packed, or 2 tbsp dried dill weed
2 tbsp dill seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp celery seeds, optional
2 tbsp black peppercorns
4 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
2 tbsp sugar, optional
2 tbsp kosher or sea salt (iodized salt can make the pickles cloudy)

Preparation
1. Place 5 wide-mouth pint jars in a large, deep pot. Fill pot with water to cover jars by at least 2 inches. Bring to a boil, and let jars simmer for 10 minutes. Remove jars and place on a clean towel until cool enough to handle.

2. Divide garlic cloves, hot pepper pods, dill weed, seeds, and peppercorns between jars. Divide beans between jars, packing them in tightly.

3. Bring vinegar, water, sugar, and salt to a boil, stirring until salt and sugar are dissolved. Pour boiling brine into the jars, dividing it to submerge the beans completely.

4. Seal jars. Return them to water bath and bring to boil. Once water is boiling, let simmer for 10 minutes.

5. Remove jars to a rack or clean towel and let cool undisturbed for several hours. Check seals, then store in a cool, dry place for several days before opening. The longer they sit, the sharper and more "pickly" they will be.

While chatting with a friend the other day over lunch, the conversation turned to travel-- where we've been, where we'd like to go, etc.

"Have you ever been abroad?" I asked my friend in a tone not unlike a half-soused society matron at a garden party. He nodded. I was expecting him to mention one of the usual places one goes to expand one's global horizons, like France, or Italy, or Japan.

"Well, I lived in Luxembourg for three years."

This wasn't the answer I had expected, which both threw me and delighted me at the same time.

"Luxembourg? Seriously?" I had to admit that, over the past forty years, I had never given that country the time of day, except perhaps in thinking that it's name gave the Benelux countries a decidedly luxurious ring.

And all of a sudden, I needed to know more about the last remaining Grand Duchy in existence. "Do they have their own language or do they speak French or German? Are they called Luxembourgeois? Do they look like regular Europeans with ten fingers and ten toes and whatnot?" And, lastly, since this was lunch and I was very hungry, "What do people in Luxembourg eat?

My questions were patiently answered. They do speak French and German, but they have their own, distinct language-- Luxembourgish. By the sound of things, however, the Luxembourgeoisie weren't above borrowing the occasional cup of nouns from their neighbors.

The people, who look rather normal by European standards so I am told, are called Luxembourgers, and they eat very well, thank you very much.

"Is there a national dish?" I asked, which is a foolish question, given the fact that even the French or the Greeks or the Japanese would have trouble coming up with their own.

"Well, there's Bounen," he said. The sound that came out of his mouth was neither "boon-in" nor "bone-in", but somewhere in between. "Basically, it's beans and ham." When I asked him how to spell it, he told me he was uncertain, since no Luxembourger he knew could spell it either.

And so, there we were, waiting at the bar for a table on a busy Saturday afternoon, talking about Luxembourg. A glass of wine at my elbow, and interesting fellow to talk to, and a Cole Porter tune running through my head.

"Well, I guess I know what I'm writing about this week," I said.

So here I am, writing about Bounen.

The dish itself is not called Bounen, but Bouneschlupp-- Bounen is simply the Luxembourgish (Luxembourgers, please correct me if I am wrong on this and I will gladly update) word for beans. In this case, green beans. Bouneschlupp-- green bean soup. With potatoes, bacon, and onions. To put it into terms that I could easily understand, from a cooking standpoint, at least, it's a chowder-- green bean chowder.

It might not be as elegant or interesting as other Luxembourger fare like Quetscheflued (plum tart) or Haam am Hée (Ham in hay-- I really wanted to try this one, but hay is hard to come by on short notice). It's hearty and, in the wrong hands, downright homely, but it is immensely satisfying.

To mangle that Cole Porter tune that was invading my head over lunch, it's delightful, it's delicious, and it's, well, de-Luxembourg.

Bouneshlupp

Serves 4 to 6 Luxembourgers

There does not seem to be one go-to recipe for this chowdery soup, which isn't surprising, given the fact that there isn't one go-to spelling for the dish itself. Does one spell it Bouneschlupp, or Bou'neschlupp? It doesn't matter too much, given the fact that there are two generations of Luxembourgers who can't manage to spell their own language, thanks to a government decision to teach only German and French in school and leave the native language for home use. Thanks to a healthy increase in good sense and national pride, that seems to have changed.

This is essentially a culling of various recipes. Some looked very bland-- calling for little more than the beans, bacon, potatoes, and water; others entirely too complicated, with far too many ingredients for a soup as simple and humble as this is and, as far as I can tell, should be. Some folks thicken theirs with flour, some with fresh cream, others with sour cream.

After making the Bouneschlupp, I offered to drop some off to my friend who lead me to the discovery of Luxembourger cuisine in the first place. He reminded me that he has never actually tasted it. I must have missed that part. So there went my expert Bouneschlupp opinion.

It doesn't matter, really. Make up your own Bouneschlupp. Given the fact that there are fewer Luxembourgers than there are San Franciscans and nearly 6.8 billion people in the world, you've got a .0073% chance of knowing someone who is going to tell you you've made it wrong.

Ingredients:

4 cups fresh green beans, cut into bite-sized pieces, with the ends trimmed (about a pound)

2 cups waxy potatoes, cleaned and medium diced (about two, medium-sized ones)

4 pieces of thickly sliced bacon, diced

6 cups of cold water

1 medium-sized carrot, finely diced

1 large shallot, finely diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Salt and pepper

2 to 3 tablespoons sour cream

Chives, minced

Sausage (optional). Non-spicy, humble, German-style sausage.

Preparation:

1. In a heavy-bottomed Dutch or Luxembourgish oven, cook bacon bits over medium heat until browned and crispy. If using sausage, throw that in, too, and brown. Drain meat, reserving the fat. Set bacon and sausage aside.

2. Return meat fat to the pot, add carrots and shallot (which, incidentally, I just learned is correctly pronounced sha-LOT, and not the other way around [thank you Renée]), and cook gently until translucent-- about 3 minutes. You're not looking to give them color, you're just mellowing them. Add garlic at the end, stir a moment or two, then add beans.

3. Cover vegetables with cold water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, covered with a snug lid. Many recipes will call for heavily salted water at this point. I prefer doing my serious seasoning at the end. The meat fat will be salty, remember. Add about half the bacon now, for flavoring purposes, reserving the other half for future, crunchy garnishing purposes. Cook for about 30 minutes.

4. Add potatoes to the pot and stir them in. Simmer for another 40 minutes, covered, or until potatoes are very tender. Salt and pepper to your heart's desire.

5. Turn off heat. If using sausage, bury it within the Bouneschlupp, to warm. Before serving add sour cream, stirring it in gently in order to not totally destroy the now-delicate potatoes. Though some people prefer to thicken their soup with flour, I find that the starch from the potatoes, plus a little help from sour cream, gives the soup all the body it needs.

6. Remove sausage from pot and slice. Ladle soup into bowls, top with sliced sausage, and sprinkle with chives. Serve with crusty bread and presto! You'll feel like you're back in Luxembourg City with the old gang, talking of the good old days of Grand Duchess Charlotte and not caring that there isn't a single university in the land wherein one might earn a degree in Luxembourgish linguistics.

Gudden appetit! Or however one chooses to spell it.