Happy New Year! I hope your holidays have been enjoyable; certainly they have been white. My boys say the city looks like a wonderland.
I’m considering what my family will eat tonight and tomorrow. Food for turn of the year is traditional; we’ll have New Year’s Day bean soup tomorrow. Our family will stay home tonight for a dinner we will prepare together – something a bit more special.
A long-running subject of family jokes is my recipe collection. (It’s never used, of course.) My collection consists of a few dozen recipe books (a meager number for serious chefs), dog-eared Gourmet magazines (I miss it), and several boxes of family recipes on index cards. My family is wrong, though, about my recipes not being used. For inspiration for tonight’s meal, I’m going to one of my most referenced sources: my college Gourmet Cooking Class textbook, “The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook,” (The Hearst Corporation, 1980).
The best feature of the cookbook is the color picture index. For 24 years, this photo gallery has inspired me for special meals. My family requested beef for dinner tonight and indeed the Pinterest-like depiction of Main Dish/Meat in this cookbook offers plenty of recipes that interest me:
• Filet Mignon with Mustard Caper Sauce
• Celery-Stuffed Flank Steak
• Braised Steak Caesar-Style
• Mushroom Sherry Pot Roast
• Beef Bourguignon
• Carbonnade of Beef
• Marinated Porterhouse Steak
As I finish this post, I’m not sure what we will serve; I likely will derive final inspiration at the meat counter. Whatever recipe we choose, I’ll garnish with parsley, just as the photos suggest. I brought a handful back over the holiday from a Georgia garden; everything improves with parsley.
I wish you a safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve and a great beginning to the New Year.
