How to put a new spin on Christmas vegetables

Before you add roast potatoes and coleslaw to your Christmas menu, consider these fantastic ideas for vegetables from bite.co.nz

We are helping you with those Christmas lists again this week with more gift ideas for food lovers and you can enter to win a trip to Hawke's Bay for next year's Food and Wine Classic while you're shopping.

Warren Elwin's pickles make great presents and are incredibly handy for the summer table. Bread, cheese and leftover meats are lunch and sometimes dinner for my family over the summer holidays and it's the jars of pickles that keep it exciting. They're easy to make and you can get creative with the veg combos and how you flavour them.

For your festive table, Kathy Paterson has a set of sides that will liven up the menu: Little baby potatoes are dressed up with pancetta and truffle; grilled baby carrots are served with homemade labneh; minty tender beans, zucchini and peas bring plenty of green and we have Antonio Carluccio to thank for beetroot with bagna cauda sauce. Ray McVinnie is thinking sweets of the untraditional variety. For the traditionalists bite.co provides plenty of recipes for trifle and pav.

Readers still have Peter Gordon talking miso beef ribs – this time it's about the sous vide process. Our Monday night dinner is a salad of carrot noodles with tender chicken breast, and Louise Thompson is encouraging us to show up.