New Year's Day Dinner - January 1, 2012

It has become a Hartman tradition to have a prime rib roast for some holiday each year. The first time was for Thanksgiving, but then we started going up to New York to spend the holiday with family. A couple years we did it on Christmas Eve Eve, before leaving for Florida the next morning... but that meant that the delicious leftovers languished in the fridge for a week and that was a serious shame! So this year it finally occurred to me that it would be appropriate to usher in the new year with a lavish prime rib dinner. Nothing like setting the right tone for the year to come!

This year I went all out, following the full set of directions in the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe (recipe here reprinted on Robert Mondavi Wines website) for making a prime rib roast with au jus and Yorkshire puddings. I failed to take my own picture, but here is the one from that site. Mine looked pretty much exactly like that... right down to the brussel sprouts that I roasted while the puddings were baking.

The only variation I had to make was that I couldn't find oxtails at either of the grocery stores I visited on New Year's Day morning (nothing like a last minute!) and ended up substituting neck bones, based on a suggestion I found via a quick Google on my smartphone.

For dessert I took the bag of frozen peaches from our tree I'd forgotten about and a bag of frozen raspberries I also found languishing in the freezer and turned to one of the cookbooks I asked for this Christmas after seeing it referenced in so many of my favorite cooking blogs, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion Cookbook. A quick perusal of the index and I located a recipe for a Peach-Raspberry Cobbler. Substitute arrowroot starch for the corn starch it called for, and it was perfect!

I also used one of my new toys to make some absolutely delicious corn-free homemade vanilla ice cream. I did remember to snap a very quick picture before it melted into a puddle.