A final trip to the sink to wash our hands of 2020
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- January 1, 2021
- 959
The year of pandemic soon dozes
After months of sticks in our noses
Farewell to you, Zoom
Give us plenty of room
We need hugs and happier poses
If one were to scour the whole of the planet, searching under rocks in desert plains and burrowing into the canopy of a rain forest, sloshing through London sewers and querying fish in the Atlantic, I doubt a single soul would turn up with a sad face at the passing of 2020.
Goodbye, you blowsy, staggering bore. It was as though a spirit snuck into our New Year’s Eve parties a year ago, got secretly drunk on sloe gin in the attic bathroom with a bowl of rancid appetizers and spent the rest of the year following us around, unable to get sober and throwing up in our Cheerios every day.
I remember the wonderful New Year's Eve party with friends a year ago, the first we’d been to, ever. Like most of you, we like to just tuck in with movies and snacks at home and text back and forth with friends until midnight.
We have video from last year of each of us counting down the seconds, swirling around the room collecting good-luck kisses. Thank goodness we didn’t know what lie ahead. It was the first pork and kraut I’d had at New Year’s in a decade, and it did no lucky good at all. May as well have had some K-Fried and called it a year. Here we are 300,000 graves later. Good riddance.
Let’s have a final trip to the sink to wash our hands of 2020, use plenty of soap and welcome a 2021 that will vaccinate us against both virus and gloom.
A couple of weeks ago, as in years past, I’ve urged you to get the cooks on your Christmas list some good cookbooks, knives, cookware and things like that. Santa listened at my house, and I now have a magnificent new cookbook by Thomas Keller of The French Laundry in Napa, California.
It’s so new I didn’t even know it had been published, and it weighs probably close to 10 pounds, all shiny, thick paper and binding. The French Laundry is probably the best restaurant in the world and in a class by itself. You get a tasting menu of a dozen or more courses, reservations are booked years in advance, and dinner there costs a flat $350 a head plus extras and wine.
The cookbook, “The French Laundry, Per Se,” gives a number of dramatic recipes I’ll never be able to pull off. I think there’s a certain level beyond which you can only sit perched in the bleachers, elbow on knee, chin on hand, and watch admiringly.
I also now have a knife I’ve been admiring for several years. It’s a big, wide cleaver hybrid from Spain in raw steel you could probably use to chop down small trees when not chopping onions. One good smack with this chunky thing and presto! Pureed garlic in a single swat.
Being separated from family for Christmas, we were deprived of the now-traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my wife’s folks, including the cheeseball her mom always makes, with enough to send a whole extra home with us.
We had to go searching for a replacement, and this turned out to be an at least somewhat satisfactory recipe. Perhaps it can help ring in the New Year for you, and a happier 2021. That pork and kraut? Not so lucky, in my experience.
CREAM CHEESE BALL
2 eight-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
3 scallions, white and green parts, minced
7 ounces dried beef, finely chopped
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
Pepper to taste
In either a stand mixing bowl or by hand, beat the cream cheese until smooth, add the remaining ingredients and mix well. The dried beef should supply plenty of salt but taste to be sure. Wrap in plastic wrap, form into a ball and chill for 1 hour or more. Remove wrap and serve with crackers.