This is a slightly updated repeat of a column I wrote last year for New Year’s Eve. We are off gallivanting around, and will be back in the new year, full of new resolves and recipes. Happy New Year, Gentle Readers!

This New Year’s Eve I am kicking back with gin and Champagne (probably Prosecco because we are starting a New Year’s Resolution Budget). We will fire up the Acorn TV and watch a couple of episodes of the original Upstairs, Downstairs. There is nothing that makes me feel like a schlubby, self-indulgent, middle-aged, middle-class American faster than Upstairs, Downstairs.

Prosecco or Champagne? It’s a personal choice. I am hugely impressed by a stately bottle of Veuve Cliquot, and would probably serve it to Mr. Hudson, the butler from Upstairs, Downstairs, if he ever came to call. But I find a pretty orange label on a bottle of Mionetto Prosecco just as appealing. Lady Marjorie, also from 165 Eaton Place, would never comment on the lower price point. She would be pleased just to loosen her corset stays and have a second glass. And then Lady Marjorie will tell me to relax, and to enjoy myself a little bit. “You never know when disaster will strike,” she confides. (Lady Marjorie went down on Titanic, so she has some experience with life changing moments.)

Mr. Hudson would tell me to pull up my bootstraps. The Christmas cookies are almost gone. In the meantime, it is Friday night, and it has been a long week. It’s the last time to indulge in 2018. Instead pouring a glass of my usual cheap winter Malbec, I thought I should test some seasonal, perhaps New Year’s Eve-ish cocktail recipes, to get back into the holiday spirit. These are crowd pleasers, but they require a little planning.

“The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love is like being enlivened with Champagne.”
– Samuel Johnson

French 75s

“Hits with remarkable precision.”
-Harry Craddock, The Savoy Cocktail Book

2 ounces gin
1 ounce lemon juice
1 spoonful extra fine sugar
Champagne

Shake the gin, lemon juice and sugar in a cocktail shaker filled with cracked ice until chilled and well-mixed and then pour into tall glass containing cracked ice and fill up the glass with Champagne. This clever cocktail was said to have been devised during WWI, the kick from the alcohol combo being described as powerful as the French 75mm howitzer gun.

“Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of Champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.”
-Winston Churchill

Champagne Cocktail

In a Champagne glass add a teaspoon of sugar and enough Angostura bitters to melt the sugar. Add a tablespoon of Grand Marnier or cognac and mix in with the sugar, bitters mix. Add a “fine” quality Champagne and stir. Float a slice of thin orange on top. This is what Ilsa and Victor Laszlo sipped in Casablanca.

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”
-Mark Twain

As always, our festive friends at Food52 have some delightful ideas for nibbles to help soak up some of the bubbly we are sure to be drinking on New Year’s Eve. http://www.food52.com/blog/2807

On a recent trip to food-forward-thinking-Charleston, friends ordered the Aperol and Prosecco cocktail, because they are oh, so trendy. I did not realize that this is the most popular cocktail in Italy. And now it can be one of yours, too!

Aperol and Prosecco

3 parts chilled, dry Prosecco
2 parts Aperol
1 splash soda

Serve with on the rocks in wine glass or rocks glass
Garnish with a slice of orange (this makes it practically health food!)
http://www.eater.com/2014/10/21/7020183/the-story-of-the-aperol-spritz-a-classic-italian-cocktail

This is very pretty, and so seasonal: pomegranate mimosas. Yumsters. http://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a46968/pomegranate-mimosas-recipe/

“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough Champagne”
-John Maynard Keynes

And the best of both worlds: a Black Velvet! Champagne and Guinness. This drink is simply equal parts stout and sparkling wine, and to be honest, there are some who will never understand its appeal. But to fans, this is a perfect special-occasion drink, particularly suited to mornings and late afternoons. I had my first on a gelid night in London, at Rules, in Covent Garden. Divine.

Black Velvet

4 ounces (1/2 cup) chilled Champagne or Prosecco
4 ounces (1/2 cup) chilled Guinness Extra Stout

Pour the Champagne into a tall glass. We first had ours served in heavy pewter tankards, but at home we eschew the delicate flutes for a sturdy rocks glass. This is not an effete drink. It is robust, and fills your hand with determination. Be sure to pour the Guinness on top. (This is important: Guinness is heavier. If you pour the sparkling wine second, it won’t combine evenly, and will need to be stirred. I shudder at the thought!)

Enjoy yourself this weekend. Happy New Year! Loosen those corset strings. And let the games begin, again, on Wednesday.

“Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn’t everyone?”
-Noel Coward

’Tis the season to be jolly, and generous, and thoughtful, and creative. While being mindful of your budget, and considering other people’s delicate sensibilities and constitutions. I will refer you to your local independent bookstore where recommendations will be helpful and insightful.

When we renovated this house we added two walls of built-in bookcases, one in the living room and one in the kitchen, because we live with books. I come from a family of readers and writers and book lovers. This week’s illustration is one of four shelves devoted to our cookbooks. Sometimes the books are grouped thematically – Jamie Oliver’s stands next to The River Café Cook Book because he got his start working at the River Café. Mark Bittman and Amanda Hesser bookend the shelf because of their New York Times connection. The well-thumbed Lee Bailey’s Country Desserts falls open to favorite, oft-baked Flourless Chocolate Cake. I still refer to the book, even though I bake a flourless chocolate cake a couple of times a year, and have done so every year since 1985.

Using the internets for finding recipes is convenient, but hardly as evocative as the grease-flecked pages of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is on another shelf, just out of the frame above. I don’t have recipe cards tucked into my own mother’s old copy of Google. I can’t dog ear or underline important directions that I overlook when I am in a hurry. Sometimes it is important to mix all the dry ingredients together FIRST. Or that an egg should be beaten before adding it to the mixture. I tend to be hasty in the kitchen, and do better with a paper version of the dish I am trying to produce than with a webpage that needs to be refreshed every few minutes. One of these days I will memorize Mark Bittman’s easy peasy pizza dough recipe, since I whip up a batch almost every week, so it is a signal that the weekend is about to begin when I get his book off the shelf on a Friday morning, and it opens to the very spot I seek.

And thus the holiday theme for this week’s Food Friday. Gift giving. Not gifting. What a terrible word! Please promise me that you will give book gifts.

You can start with the newest edition of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. The Basic Pizza Dough recipe can be found in my edition of the book on page 178. This is a wonderful book to give to youngsters just starting out – or to have as a handy dandy reference, or to give to someone who does not subscribe to The New York Times. I have the tenth anniversary edition – but a new and improved 20th anniversary edition is now in print. (Mr. Friday found this copy on a remainder table! Always a bargain hunter, our Mr. Friday.) https://www.markbittman.com/books

Vivian Howard’s Deep Run Roots is a beautifully designed book. She must have developed high production values when doing her PBS show A Chef’s Life. Her recipes are just as charming and quirky as the program. We cooked Scarlett’s Chicken Rice a couple of weeks ago, and froze several containers to have for winter weather insurance. https://www.vivianhoward.com/deep-run-roots

Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table was a revelation! I had always thought she was a baker. I hadn’t realized her versatility until a friend cooked the most impressive Chicken in a Pot for us. Amazing. It introduced us to another portal in the universe that leads to garlic and preserved lemons. And the fact that a screwdriver is a key cooking utensil lends the dish a certain bit of je ne sais quoi. For sure. https://doriegreenspan.com/book/around-my-french-table-more-than-300-recipes-from-my-home-to-yours-5/

While not a cook book, this new book is rather charming memoir by New York Magazine restaurant writer Adam Platt. It was a throughly enjoyable bit of armchair travel and fine dining: The Book of Eating. I always read his reviews in New York, not that I will ever dine in any of the eateries he reviews, but it feels as if the opportunity ever presents itself, I will be au currant and prepared for discussions about farm-to-table, fois gras, New Age crabmeat pithivier, or even “elegantly sliced hamachi crudo.” Here is an excerpt: http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/10/in-defense-of-wasp-cooking.html

Speaking of charming – this is a British podcast that I have been enjoying while walking Luke the wonder dog: Table Manners. Jessie Ware and her mother Lenny cook warmly satisfying meals for a panoply of talented guests, while discussing creative projects, books, movies, food, travel, Uber ratings, and final meals in a fairly ribald manner. (Spoiler alert – F bombs are dropped, but with cute British accents.) https://play.acast.com/s/tablemanners

I hope you will stroll into your local bookshop and will rummage through the cookbooks for all your nearest and dearest this festive season. Holiday meals can be minefields: it is good to have protective armor and reference books. No screens at the table, please. And another key to easing your holiday burdens – books are easily wrapped. Plus, one size fits all – you can always squeeze one more book onto a shelf.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook — try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!”
-Julia Child