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.
Tuesday, January 1, Lead Story:
The World’s Lightest Salad…from Vienna!
It is the day after. You are stuffed. Might you consider an amazingly light salad from Vienna that the world has ignored, and the Austrians adore? Of course, in Vienna, they serve it with an impossibly heavy beef dish. But you don’t have to!
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.
I always recoil from knee-jerk Retsina-hating!!! Sure, if it’s bad Retsina…..but good Retsina is absolutely delicious with Greek food! To me, it’s even an essential ingredient that makes a Greek meal taste Greek! Today’s DRTV entry, from the enchanted land of Attica, is intended to warm you up a bit, Retsina-wise!
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.
