TAKE IT EASY ON NEW YEAR’S EVE
Make Diana Henry’s laid-back menu to bring in the new year
New Year’s Eve is one of the most di cult gigs to cater. The whole evening is geared towards inducing euphoria, although a sigh of gratitude that we can now all go to bed, or at least get on with watching Jools Holland, is the most you can muster if you’re over 40. No meal is really up to that task. I’ve done the whole edible-gold-leaf-insauternes-jellies thing, and spent days preparing lavish meals (most of them during the 1990s), but I’ve given all that up now. Even if you go casual, you can end up in the kitchen resentfully cooking on your own. There was a memorable pizza party (the pizzas were homemade, of course) for friends and their children that I just couldn’t pull o , despite having a double oven. Those who ate the first pizzas were still hungry for more when the fourth lot were going into the oven. I wanted to cry. Pizzas from M&S would have been di cult enough to juggle, but doing your own without a pizza oven (those things cook pizzas in seconds) was sheer stupidity.
My New Year’s Eve Chineseinspired dinner – also attended by children – was another epic fail. A meal that requires you to make lots of dishes doesn’t get o the starting block. The low point of the night was watching the kids – aged between seven and 11 – picking up pork meatballs with chopsticks and firing them at each other. That was when I decided ‘no more’. Since then, I’ve cooked more doable dishes – Marcella Hazan’s slow-cooked leg of lamb with juniper berries was perfect, as all I had to do was keep turning the joint over in its pot. But this year, I don’t want to do anything at the last minute.
This could be the covid-19 e ect. It’s made me long for comforting dishes that can be reheated – pies and braises – so I can spend most of the evening in the corner of the sofa with the fire on. I’ve no idea how cold it will be by then, but on the New Year’s Eve of my dreams I’m wearing cashmere socks and having endless glasses of barolo delivered to me. Far from cooking a meal to match any sense of euphoria, I simply want to be content this year.
As many of my New Year’s Eves have been spent in Northern Ireland where I grew up, this menu is just a little bit Irish (whisky and stout in the same meal can leave you in no doubt of that). Both the trifle (p80) and beef (p78) benefit from being made in advance, and everything for the tart (p78) can be readied ahead for assembling and baking. Then there’ll be Irish cheeses (Neal’s Yard Dairy sells a good selection at nealsyarddairy. co.uk) alongside port.
It’s not part of the menu, but I’ll be serving Irish co ees after that. A warming, boozy nightcap with a layer of gently whipped cream on top seems fitting for New Year’s Eve 2020. Sláinte.