The New Year's Plan

Dinner on New Year's Eve will be Mark Bittmann's pasta with crab from the New York Times. We'll precede it with an experiment, smoked salmon rolls with ricotta and chives. Since that's also a NYT Bittmann recipe, it should be great. For New Year's Day, we have a tradition of doing something along the hoppin' John route, supposedly for good luck in the new year. Looks like I'm on quite a roll with Bittmann, as our norm is his soup spin, black-eyed pea soup with ham and greens. If you try this out using his option of prosciutto, remember that the Pearl Street Whole Foods usually has small slabs of prosciutto for cooking in their deli case at maybe half the cost of their freshly sliced prosciutto. Corn bread is a classic accompaniment, and recipes are everywhere. I particularly like one that was published in Bon Appetit, green onion corn bread. New Year's morning is more likely devoted to working out than to cooking, but the New York Times just published a recipe for a strata with mushrooms and chard that has me intrigued. Stratas are usually artery-clogging affairs, but this one, published as a NYT "recipe for health," looks really appealing. Like most stratas, it can also be made largely in advance, so it could fit in nicely with the workout. Rather than going with whole eggs, we find that NuLaid makes a fine substitute to cut down the cholesterol. Here's to a great 2010!