The best meal I ever made was a New Year’s Eve dinner a few years back. Nothing about it was particularly unusual—bacon, a big piece of meat, dark chocolate. I’m not in the habit of preparing heavy, decadent meals, and neither are my friends who’d be eating with me, instead favoring somewhat healthier fare that doesn’t take a lot of time to cook. But I wanted to make something nice for the two of them, who were visiting from out of town, and decided to get more extravagant than usual.
I divided the meal’s preparation over two days. I wanted to spend time with my friends, once they arrived, instead of hurrying around the kitchen all day. The day before, I prepared the beef bourguignon through to before the frozen onions and sauteed mushrooms are added, and the lava cakes until before they’re put in the oven. The day of, after a chilly afternoon walking around my neighborhood and having a cocktail at a bar down the street (the best time to get a drink out on New Year’s Eve is dusk, when the bartenders are still happy to see you), the three of us came back to my apartment and got to work.
The peak of bacon-wrapped dates’ popularity has probably passed, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still good. They’re also incredibly simple to prepare. My friends did that, while I chopped and sauteed the mushrooms for the beef, and heated the stew on the stove. We ate the dates straight off the baking tray as soon as they were done and had (barely) cooled. Then, more civilized, we plated the stew and sat down to eat. The beef was tender, with a great depth of flavor. The chocolate cakes were, like the dates, easy to make, yet were still impressive with their warm, melted centers. Between the beef and the cake and the red wine we drank with it all, only two of us saw midnight; one friend, full and drowsy, dozed off on the couch while my radiators hissed. Second only to asking for more to eat, it was the highest compliment he could have paid the meal.
New Year’s Eve dinner menu
Bacon-wrapped dates with almonds
These are the perfect thing to prepare and eat while having a cocktail and finishing dinner, the hang-out-in-the-kitchen time. They’re good even without the goat cheese.
Ina Garten’s beef bourguignon
Ina doesn’t mess around when it comes to rich, filling meals. I think the time this spent in the refrigerator overnight only helped the cause.
Jean-Georges’ molten chocolate cakes
So simple, yet so very good. (Add a minute or two to the cooking time if you’ve refrigerated the batter.)
22 Comments
I always braise something – short ribs, lamb shanks, osso bucco – because it takes a long time so it makes me stay up later. Not till midnight, but past 10PM. This year it is short ribs probably with polenta.
I also usually make molten chocolate cake, but not this year. I have left over puff pastry from Christmas and some apricot jam so I am just going to make some simple apple tarts.
I like to say I’m a one trick pony, but it’s a pretty good trick. Braised short ribs are fantastic. I like parsnip puree with them.
Hi! Umm… Can I come over?
My NYE menu this year is pear, havarti and pistachio on bibb lettuce for starters, duck wellington with duck fat roasted potatoes and green beans and a napoleon with pistachio pastry cream, lemon curd and raspberries for dessert. The latter two are in part because my sister accidentally bought three boxes of puff pastry when she needed phyllo dough and we’re trying to use them up. I have just decided I may fancy up the salad with duck crackling, seeing as I’m taking the skin off the duck breasts. Why not, right?
What the…I usually just have some chips and salsa.
If it makes you feel better, when I lived alone my standard Christmas meal was seven layer dips and chips.
I always make Portuguese Vinho d’ Alho, marinated pork, for new year’s day but Ive started making a small side batch for NYE. It’s pretty much just pork loin marinated for a day or two in red wine, garlic, vinegar, and whatever spices a particular family chooses. My grandma always threw in some Madeira wine from her home island and a shitload of marjoram.
i definitely read that as “shitload of marijuana” at first…
Well, they do have that in Portugal
I’ll be doing Korean BBQ buffalo wings with my favorite dipping/dabbing sauce (Secret Aardvark Trading Co. Habanero Sauce) and probably a 12 pack of Modelo Especial.
I love Aardvark sauce, though haven’t had it since I graduated college in Oregon a little under a decade ago. My favorite late-night bar food at the dive we used to go to was pups in a pond (hushpuppies in gravy) covered in Aardvark sauce. Sooooo good. I wonder if they’ve added distribution to Chicago.
I get it on Amazon by the half gallon. I put it on everything.
Aux Hocks Snacks; Takeout Over in AV Club Takeover?
Typically it’s something I wait for New Year’s Day to cook, but this year I’m making gumbo on New Year’s Eve. We’re doing a gumbo cook-off.Growing up, my grandmother would make gumbo with black eyed peas on New Years Day. We’re upper Midwest, but my grandma was from Mississippi, so we grew up with southern and Cajun cuisine. I was chatting with a friend of mine from Alabama, and we got on the topic of the differences in our respective gumbo recipes – the big one being I always cook my roux to a dark brown, and she uses a light roux and tons of file powder, which gives it a greenish color. So we decided to throw down on New Year’s Eve and have our friends judge who makes it best. I can’t wait. I’ve even got a freezer full of chicken carcasses and vegetable scraps to make homemade stock on Sunday in preparation.
Mmmmmm, you’re making me hungry just thinking about it;)
That sounds awesome. I love it when good cooks throw down together. We’re all pretty good in my family and Thanksgiving is like our Superbowl.
The correct answer is skip dinner (ok, I’ll have a big salad) and have champagne and chocolate. My favorite is Veuve’s La Grande Dame and we live near a Jacques Torres chocolate shop and hubby got a box with my 3 favs, peanut brittle, dark w/coconut and dark w/earl grey tea. We’ll watch old movies (and hockey) til midnight. Perfect;)
New Year’s Eve is what take-out (or other people’s parties full of time-consuming freshly-made treats) is for.If I have to turn on my stove two days prior, let alone that day? My New Year ain’t Happy.
Vat of 6-layer bean dip, lox/cream cheese/chives tortilla rollups, toothpick’d meatballs, sliced up pear/feta flatbread, and one of those shitty frozen party trays has been my perfect go-to for all >15 guest gatherings for a while now! Always something for everyone.
That photo up top. Look at how lean those people are. When was that photo taken, the late 30s/early 40s perhaps? What has happened in the intervening years to make even the thinnest among us seem ‘hefty’ in comparison?
They are celebrating the event with a glass of beer. Calories of all kinds were much less available back then. Most people had never seen puff pastry, and certainly never at home. Refrigeration was very iffy, recipes were bare bones (put some meat in a pot, surround it with vegetables, and go to church), and for the average person, putting in a splash of wine in a sauce was revolutionary. If you didn’t live in a city, you had no idea what Chinese Food was. My parents looked like that. Unfortunately, I do not.
All sounds great. Beef stews like bourguignon definitely taste better the next day, and very smart to prepare something nice and hearty like that in advance, to spend more time with friends. Happy new year.