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Hey, month of January: I’m just not that into you.

When January starts I always feel as though I’ve been kicked out of a great party because the hosts want to go to sleep. Out into the hall I am booted, my coat and scarf tossed out the door after me. Every shred of holiday glitz has been stripped away or ripped down faster than you can say, “Jingle Bells.” The Rockettes have gone home to soak their poor, tired, feet, and discarded Christmas trees line Manhattan’s sidewalks, lying on their sides as if they are sleeping off a long bender.

Worst of all, the kitchen has been shuttered: I can no longer use the holidays as an excuse for one more cookie.

It’s really a matter of outlook. I need to stop concentrating on January as the end of something, and start concentrating on January as the start of something; the frosty mug into which a happy, exciting, foamy, root beer will soon flow.

(Poetic? Hardly. You’ll notice there’s still something sugary on my mind.)

I should really be grateful to January for being the “tough love Mom” of the year. “Time to get back to the gym. Time to start eating properly again. You’ll look and feel better.” Yes, Mom. Okay, Mom. I will, Mom.

Oh, I was full of good intentions, one of which was to start the New Year writing about food that was less “sugar-centric.” With practically everyone now on a diet I confess that it wasn’t altruism that drove this editorial direction; I was afraid I might drive folks away if I kept up a steady stream of cakes, pies, cookies, and milk chocolate.

My personal belief is that cooking well for yourself is the keystone of a great diet. However, the trick for me is to get the ball rolling, which I have been gradually psyching myself up to do (I’m moving a little slowly these days due to all that holiday bloat.)

Then I got an invitation to a New Year’s Weekend Brunch. My mother trained me that you should never go to someone’s house empty-handed, so what was I going to bring: a bunch of celery? Heck, as I write this it’s still the holidays, so I’m having one last blast of sugar. Wheee!

(As you read this, I will have gone on the wagon. I swear.)

Breakfast is my favorite meal, so I am naturally drawn to the breakfast-y aspect rather than the lunch-y aspect of brunch. My hostess is well known as a skilled and discerning cook, so I really needed to be on my game. (She was certainly on hers!)

I don’t know why my head went directly to crumb cake. If this was the food equivalent of psychologists’ ink blots what would this say about my psyche? I wanted to make one of those old fashioned coffee cakes where the cake part merely serves as support to masses of cinnamon-infused crunchy crumbs. I’ve made things like this once or twice in the past, but noted that the recipes floating around out there always seemed to shortchange the streusel or crumb topping. Why be chintzy with the part that is always everyone’s favorite? So right out of the gate I knew that I would double the usual amount of crumbs usually called for.

The cake portion of our program was fairly straightforward: a touch of vanilla here, a hint of cinnamon there (to echo the streusel). My only twist was to replace half of the sugar with brown sugar, which would give the cake a mild glint of caramel. The thought of bringing a big tube pan-shaped cake seemed a little heavy duty for a small home brunch, so I pulled out the trusty loaf pan.

I would rate the cake a true first draft effort. The first problem was that there was too much batter for the pan. In a wink toward impending New Year diets, the recipe was designed to not be as rich, so I replaced the butter with oil. I also used regular plain non fat yogurt which left the batter a touch too runny to support the hefty middle layer of streusel crumbs. Next time I’ll experiment with either sour cream or Greek yogurt; both are thicker and should help produce a batter more up to the task of supporting the crumbs. I may even dial back on the brown sugar to restore a stark contrast between the toasted spicy crumbs and the downy cake. We’ll see.

Really though, what’s the point of all this fuss? Most folks will just eat the crumbs and push the cake aside. Well, I like the cake, so this is a personal errand.

Worst of all was that the top layer of crumbs over browned a bit in my oven. Using less batter or a different pan will reduce the baking time and reduce the chance that the crumbs may over-brown. I’m posting the recipe, so feel free to take a look and send me your suggestions. It’ll be our little collaborative project for the year.

Meanwhile a more earthbound question would be what to do with the big bunch of celery I bought to photograph. When I was a little kid my mother used to fill the hollow with peanut butter. I’m not averse to a dab of peanut butter every now and then—even on a diet—but I really thought I could be a little more imaginative. Yes, I could chop it and use it as part of the aromatic base for some hearty winter soup, and likely will use some of it for that. But I need a snack to replace the cookies which have been rotated off the menu.

If you’ve never heard of Bagna Càuda, it’s not an academic achievement, it’s a dip served hot, fondue style – Bagna Càuda translates as “warm bath.” The best part (right now) is that unlike fondue it is very light and its few ingredients shoehorn it comfortably into the Mediterranean diet. While this simple Piedmontese recipe usually starts with just olive oil, anchovy, and garlic, you can play around with the ingredients to suit your whim. I’ll be using it to dip that big bunch of celery and other veggies, but you can also drizzle it over cooked meat, or even use it as a side for antipasti.

All right! Now I’m hungry. Luckily there’s something good waiting!

Happy New Year!

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The kind folks at Saveur Magazine found my August 31^st, 2009 posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas and asked me to distill it for inclusion in their readers’ 2010 Top 100 list. You’ll find it in the Jan / Feb 2010 issue of the magazine, now on newsstands everywhere. Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Click here for the recipe for Crumb Cake and click here for the recipe for Bagna Càuda.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Still life with onions...

Yeah, yeah, I know: I don’t eat enough vegetables.

I recently read an article in a food magazine I respect and enjoy, written by a highly esteemed author/blogger/restaurateur. In the article the writer professed her love of kale, so much so that even writing about it made her hungry.

Kale.

To be clear: I am hardly a “Falstaff-ian” figure. I try to eat correctly, and usually succeed. But kale? No, the mere thought of kale doesn’t make me hungry.

Chocolate, yes. Kale, no.

It’s not that I hate vegetables; it’s just that I like all the other stuff on the plate more. Yet, I freely acknowledge that when vegetables are cooked properly (or uncooked properly, if that applies) they are wonderful.

So it follows that when the winter root vegetables start to show up in the markets every fall, I begin to feel confident that my veggie intake will increase for a few months, because I like them as much as or more than the other stuff on my plate. Heck, sometimes I don’t need anything else on the plate, and for vegetables, that’s saying a lot.

The great thing about winter vegetables is that they seem so easy to prepare that in my mind they qualify as fast food. The reality is that there is a bit of simple labor involved, yes, but knowing what awaits you when the timer rings (or beeps) is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. (This is not to imply in any way that the prep for these vegetables is in any way medicinal.)

Being a city dweller, the closest I get to handling earth is when I water the small juniper bush that sits on the ledge of one of my kitchen windows. So the fact that some of the winter vegetables arrive in my home with traces of the farm still clinging to them only increases the self satisfaction I get from the minor handling they require before they hit the heat.

It all starts with a few turnips, and a sweet potato or two.

Have you met parsnips? (Say hello, parsnips.) They look like carrots that slavishly wore sunscreen (and I thought I was pale!) Cooked, they taste like the progeny of a carrot and a potato. Sweet potato (I’m told) is a bit of a misnomer: the sweet potatoes we get are actually yams, and I like to mix the mellow white yams with the more effusively sweet orange yams.

When I was at the market this past weekend I found golden beets which, in addition to being mellower than their violet brothers, have the added benefit of not staining your hands when you peel and chop them. They’re good.

I also found some little cippollini onions. You don’t even need to peel cippolinis; when roasted they shed their skins so fast it’s almost like they’re stripping because they can’t take the heat.

The preparation / recipe is simple: first I rinse the vegetables to remove the dirt. No need to scrub, just a cool shower and a rub with your fingers is all that’s required (I mean for the vegetables–get your mind out of the gutter.) Then I peel the veggies using a vegetable peeler, but if you prefer, go ahead and use a paring knife. (As I said, you don’t need to peel the onions.)

Then the chopping. Don’t be put off by this. While fancy-shmancy knife skills are not a prerequisite, if there is any part of this routine that qualifies as the “tricky part” this is it. I recommend that you use a sharp knife. Chop everything to approximately the same size, so they will all be finished cooking at the same time. “Chop” is a misleading word. Cube may be more accurate. Cut the veggies into cubes approximately one-half inch wide and high. No need to measure.

Throw the cubes into a large bowl; drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil, and less generously with salt. Toss everything around to make sure all have been coated. Roast them on a sheet pan or cookie sheet in a hot oven (450˚F) for about 40 minutes.

If you want to magically convert this into a dinner, toss in your choice of protein. Some sliced turkey sausage is an easy choice. This past weekend, I threw the veggies in a roasting pan, and plunked a whole chicken breast (the bone-in, skin-on variety) on top. Fifty minutes later I had two meals.

Please don’t think that you need to adhere to my variety of veggies. If you like sweet potatoes just use those. (They are especially good when, just out of the oven, you drizzle them with a bit of maple syrup and then return them to the oven for a few fleeting moments.) If you can’t find cippollini onions, just chop a big, zesty, red onion into appropriately sized cubes and roast.

There’s also a great time saver that you can usually only find during November and December: many markets sell butternut squash already peeled and seeded.

But keep in mind that this is a great way to gamble at low stakes with a vegetable you’ve never tried before. Roasted using this method almost any hearty vegetable will have a toasty sweetness that won’t disappoint. And preparing vegetables as a Thanksgiving side could not be easier than this.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

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