I must confess: even I, the mule of the table, get a little burnt out after the holiday season. The caviar. The foie gras. The goose. The prime rib. The munch-encouraging social environment.
I don’t really want to stop…but boy is my body giving me signals that I should.
Now, I’m not about to go cold turkey (except, perhaps, for a leftover sandwich!)…but on or about Jan. 2 I do start seeking lighter foods that also give me a gastronomic charge.
Interest in cooking short ribs at home has been re-kindled by the short-rib boom in trendy restaurants. Americans across the map have re-discovered the comforting deliciousness of collagen-rich cuts of meat, like short ribs, melting down in a pot over 3-4 hours into soft and buttery puddles of protein. The following recipe–with its wine sauce, and its carefully cooked vegetables–is a homey version of something you might expect to see in a modern restaurant. Serve, by all means, with mashed potatoes.
At year-end holiday time, Americans are highly imaginative in their party-planning: we’re likely to draw on American ideas, British ideas, Italian ideas, French ideas, Mexican ideas and more. But one of the world’s culinary corners that lends itself most delectably to parties–and to winter parties, at that!–is oftentimes overlooked.
Had you been a caviar lover in 2000, and, fully sated, had you gone down for a Rip Van Winkle slumber…and had you awakened today, preferably to the pop of a Champagne cork…you simply would not recognize the world of caviar around you. In 2012 (and, next week, in 2013!) we are in the full throes of an historic caviar revolution. Things, for better or worse, will never, ever be the same again when it comes to those yummy little sturgeon eggs.
What’s more southern, and what’s more classic, than pecan pie? Now, some folks, don’t like to mess with a classic–and if that describes you when it comes to pecan pie, by all means skip this recipe. But my personal pecan pie life changed a few years ago when an editor from Southern Living magazine demonstrated, during an interview I was conducting on TV, a pecan pie variation made with bourbon, chocolate, and walnuts.
