New Year's Eve

Traditions, superstitions and saber tooth tigers

All my New Year’s traditions revolve around ____.

If you guessed “food,” you are obviously paying attention and deserve a year’s worth of good fortune, health and happiness.

My menu for the New Year includes, among (many) other things a porchetta, the traditional Italian rolled roast, slathered in a blend of rosemary, sage, garlic, fennel seed, red pepper flakes and lemon zest; a roast as good warm as it is cold, esp. on a buttered roll the next day.

For the pork roast, I ignored the shrink-wrapped pork shoulders and other parts at the grocery, and trundled down the Garden State Parkway (“trundle” almost manages to make the Parkway seem charming) to an old haunt, the Union Pork Store. The butcher shop opened in 1947, to supply the large German population in the Union, New Jersey area with necessary bauernwurst, weisswurst and knoblauch. The current owners are from Poland, Bozena and Leszek Jablonski, and have helmed the store since 2006. Although there are still shelves filled with German candy, Polish mustard and the rye bread is from a nearby Lithuanian bakery, the Jablonskis have turned the market into a veritable United Nations of sausage, which is much more reflective of the neighborhood it serves today.

I hadn’t been in a while, and I was instantly reminded what a mistake that was. I hope all of you have a place — whether a butcher, yarn store or coffee shop, whatever! — that takes as much joy in their work and in caring for their customers. Once I let Leszek know I was making a porchetta, he offered me options as if I were a princess at the royal jewelry store. A pork shoulder was brought on an orange plastic tray, its pros and cons as porchetta discussed, with Leszek politely suggesting it was more con than pro. Maybe a leaner pork loin, butterflied, with its fat cap still in place for juiciness? Leszek, ever the enthusiastic teacher, suggested the ultimate option. Instead of just the traditional pork belly, how about we tuck a pork loin in the middle for more meatiness.

While he trimmed and wrapped up my bounty, I spent another 20 minutes, discussing the finer points of pork cookery with a friend of the owners’ who’d come in for his own pork roast. He suggested I poke the skin and fat layer of the pork with a fork and rub in vinegar for a crisp skin, which I will try. I’ll then further rub it with a 2:1 salt/baking powder mixture to further enhance crispiness.

All the while, the owners were buzzing about, finding just the right aged steak, the perfect sausage and packaging up many large rings of house-made and -smoked kielbasa for their customers, while in between Leszek would offer up a pile of warm smoked tenderloin for customers to try.

I left with long pairs of kabonosy, the garlicky dried sausage my dad always had in the house when my son visited, a large rye bread, a spicy mustard, that giant pork roast to assemble, a container of herring chopped with pickled beets (which I’ll serve tonight on slices of cucumber), and a dozen chocolate ladybugs.

Tonight we will feast on porchetta, have lentils to ensure abundance, eat fish (albeit in a smoked salmon spread, made with bits of lox and chunks of kippered salmon mixed into cream cheese, dill and horseradish) because fish swim in schools (more of that abundance thing) and swim forward (onwards and upwards in the new year). We’ll make wishes with a marzipan pig (pigs root out goodness) and ladybugs, too.

And of course there will be an abundance of desserts. Yes, sure, for sweetness in the new year, but mostly because—and this too will surprise no one—I can never decide what dessert to serve at a party. So far the plan is a deep chocolate bundt cake glazed in ganache, vanilla kipferln and a passion fruit pie with a coconut crust.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to also de-furr the carpet, couch and floors, change the sheets for the new year, and finish tidying the pantry.

De-furr? How rude!

The odd part of all these (and every other) superstition is I have never looked back in the years where I haven’t had an abundance of money or my career path felt mostly backward and thought, damn that lentil/pork/fish/black-eyed pea/12 grapes at midnight, they let me down! I guess I do it for the moment of comfort these ridiculous superstitions bring as the clock strikes 12 and the calendar flips over to reveal a wide-open year of scary uncertainties and hopeful possibilities.

Maybe that makes me seem weak? Or perhaps just a quirky, quivering human being? When my kids would call to me shortly after they’d gone to bed, afraid of this monster or that bogeyman, I’d remind them it was natural to worry like that as we fell asleep, our caveman souls just wanting to make sure there’s a big boulder in front of the cave opening to keep the saber-tooth tigers out. I guess that’s how I feel about New Year’s Eve, just instead of a boulder, I’ve got a hunk of pork roast.

I wish a joyous, healthy, happy New Year to all of you. Thank you for being here. You have been a light in my life all year long.

And coming this January, look for some interesting food history posts, including some very strange diet fads from the early 20th century.

xomarissa

ps: here’s a silly little piece I wrote for Newsweek a while back about New Year’s Eve food traditions.

Do you have superstitions and/or traditions for the New Year? Coping mechanisms? Joyful approaches? Let me know in the comments.

How many of you plan to celebrate New Year’s Eve the Bosco Way? Snoozing until food appears?