Last year, we got a pass on December; it was so warm that the daffodils came up and we raked up the willow leaves just before Christmas. This time around, not so much. Snow, sleet, wind, and freakin’ frigid. So tonight, ironically, the freezer yielded the bulk of our dinner. Sweet potato gnocchi dough left from Thanksgiving, mirepoix, and kale were the bulk of it, supplemented by request with cranberry sauce- slightly undersweetened, with cider, ginger, and tangerine juice.
The gnocchi got a dressing of mirepoix sautéed with diced salt pork, the kale blanched in gnocchi water, the cranberries went on the side. The mirepoix, buttressed by the salt pork, gave off the beautiful, evocative smell of home. I was hoping to keep the frozen veggies until later, but given that there’s more light in February than November, it may be that our garden will provide us more towards the end of Winter, especially since there are a lot of yummy roots locked in the soil (provided everything else survives under the plastic.)
In the interest of full disclosure I haven’t had the cranberries yet, since they would wreak havoc on the heavenly alchemy currently swirling in my lead-free stemware: a 1978 Drouhin Vosne Romanée “Les Suchots”- which I opened fully expecting to be cooked, since others of the bargain Burgundies I bought this summer have been- but is instead singing a diaphanously elegant swan song as it fades from glory. Damn.
