What's Cooking as the Year Ends and Begins

Tourtiere - French Canadian meat pie

I asked friends to share some of their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day epicurean traditions on Twitter and Facebook. Saying goodbye to the old and blessing the new can bring out deep and complex traditions of delight.

One of my fondest New Year's memories was when I was living across state in Menasha. A friend, born and raised in Europe, invited us to share a meal of New Year's lentils for luck. Beyond the warm friendship and sharing of a meal, the subtle flavors she coaxed from the lentils brought them from legume to legendary. 

I blogged about our tradition last year - cassoulet shared with friends.  What else are people preparing?

Cheryl: We are having a New Year's Eve homemade pizza, and a New Year's day breakfast. Jim calls the breakfast a "lumberjack breakfast;" I don't know why. (Eggs, potatoes, onion, cheese, ham or sausage or Canadian bacon, sometimes breadcrumbs, all together in a skillet.)

Melissa: Homemade pasta for New Year's Eve and homemade pierogis for New Year's Day....oh,and Bailey's cookies on New Year's Eve!

Ally: On new year's day, everyone I know eats black-eyed peas for luck. I've been informed that this is very southern. :)  My grandmother also insists on collard greens!

Jennifer Ann (in response to above):  SUPER Southern. This WI girl had never heard of such a thing until she married a Texan. Oh, a Cuban friend of mine makes us eat 12 grapes at midnight (1 for each clock-stroke) and you make 12 wishes!

Roxane and Steve: Venison/veggie stew and Bloody Mary's with our own pepper infused vodka. 

Meagan: Collard greens, black eyed peas & ham on New Years are a Southern tradition for luck & prosperity. I'm slow-cooking a soup with collards, peas and a crunchy bacon garnish...hopefully it will trick my husband into liking greens!  

Sue: Some day I'm going to get a taste of that cassoulet! But I do have my jar of herring ready for the stroke of midnight!

Stacy:  We do tourtière on New Year's Eve.

I can't help but want to share in all that delightful food. Happy New Year, my friends!

 

New Year's Cassoulet

For almost ten years now, we've been making cassoulet for New Year's Day. It takes awhile to put it together so I always need about three days off to get it prepped. The run up to New Year's Day affords me the time and leisure to make this savory peasant stew. Nothing is overwhelming in the preparation but it has many parts - duck legs to confit (or buy already prepared); lamb and bean stew to make a day ahead; chicken broth to make; bread to put out to grow stale for crumbs.

I discovered the pleasures of this stew in the January 2002 issue of Fine Cooking  in an article written by Chef Jean-Pierre Moulle (online at their website  for the short version). Now the pages of that article and it's recipe are crinkled, spotted and thin. I start looking at it in October and thinking about where I will find my ingredients. That article is with me all the time over those months running up to January.

Each year, we play with the contents - changing a thing or two: growing the shell beans in the garden; looking for local artisan sausage to include; using our home-baked bread for the crumbs; skipping the pancetta and using the dark applewood flavor of a chunk of Nueske's bacon. The next year we do it entirely differently. Cassoulet isn't fussy.

It's meaty and plain and rich and delicious. It is always a party dish - friends have joined us for years - there are seldom many left-overs. It is mindful cooking in the deepest way I know. It starts the new year. The pleasure of good food, good wine and good friends warms us in the winter.