Happy New Year! Let's make 2011 even more delicious than 2010!

I hope you are all resting up and recovering from the past month and week of Holiday celebrations! If you are like me you may be looking forward to 2011 with a list full of resolutions for yourself and a heart full of promise in the newness of a fresh year and a start full of potential!   2011 can be the best year yet should we choose to live with vigor everyday. Let's make another memorable year, a great start to a new decade and an even more delicious 365 days together. 

New Year's always holds an extra layer of promise for me because it is not only a new calendar year for me every January 1st but also a new year in my life as my birthday is also the first of the year. This year I rang in a new beginning with friends at a pre-party at my house then off to a rockin' Black 47 concert just a block away from the hub-bub of Times Square. 

I served some delicious prepared appetizers from Whole Foods but also made mini beef wellington appetizers to add that special taste to the evening. I call these "Poor Girl" beef wellington because I used eye of the round steaks, which is a much much less expensive cut of meat than the traditional filet mignon but has the same shape and limited marbling. Also, phyllo dough is usually less expensive to get than puff pastry. Maybe you will make these for your next special occasion or birthday! Enjoy!

Poor Girl's Mini Beef Wellington Appetizers

The Single Chef

“Never be daunted in private”

-MFK Fisher

Shopping for Christmas presents this year I discovered Judith Jones’ “The Pleasures of Cooking for One.” While the title lends itself to sounding a little cat-ladyish, the contents certainly live up to the word pleasure in the title. Judith Jones, you may now know thanks to her presence in the blog-to-book-to-movie “Julie & Julia,” is the editor who brought Julia Child to light in America. Living alone and being a declared foodie, one of the largest downsides is feeling the futility of grocery shopping and cooking for one when it seems to lead to waste. Jones’ collection of recipes contains a myriad of tips for saving and reusing your leftovers to create a whole new meal. She also includes recipes for meal enhancers to have on hand in the freezer such as duxelles, a rich mushroom sauté (see below). Since it is always less expensive to buy groceries in bulk these tips are also a great way to save money.

MFK Fisher’s found dining to be such an intimate activity she would share meals sparingly and only with a select few. The first letter of her “Alphabet for Gourmets” begins with ‘A is for dining Alone.’ Unfortunately, her foodiedom intimidated gentlemen who might otherwise ask her out to a meal as well as friends who wouldn’t dare invite her to dinner. Reading her entry of how she came to prefer dining alone to dining with a party of ashamed hosts and guests is disheartening. Writing “Alphabet” in the Forties when canned goods and frozen foods were all the rage in modernity it seems MFK Fisher was born in the wrong era. Today she would be an honored guest at a slew of restaurants and many aspiring chefs in restaurants, homes, and even on television would do their best to impress her, seeing serving her as a culinary challenge to be tackled and not shied away from.

However, as far as I can tell from my reading of Fisher, she might feel uncomfortably invisible in our day—but to consider this is to assume someone else would have played the same role she did in recording the American food revolution.

Duxelles A simple mushroom sauté best know for its place in Beef Wellington between the tenderloin and the puff pastry.

Very easy to make and luxurious to have. Chop up a bunch of mushrooms, sweat with salt then dry them, add to shallots sauteéd in butter until the pan juices evaporate and you're done! Simple, rich, and delicious. I made my first batch the same night I made the Boeuf Bourguignon from Jones' cook book and added a spoonful of the duxelles to the end product and you could really taste the mushroom's richness even with the meatiness of the stew (BB entry to follow).