Chicken with Red Wine Auvergnaise

Monday December 31

New Year's Eve is a time for indulgence, but Holt wasn't feeling too well - perhaps Christmas was catching up with him. He didn't need to eat in bianco, but chose chicken with mushrooms for dinner as a nice stomach-soother. Tradition (who knows whose) says you shouldn't eat chicken on New Year's Day, or you'll be scratching for money - luckily, it says nothing about New Year's Eve.

The recipe came from our old standby, the Larousse Book of Country Cooking. It's pretty simple, especially if you choose not to marinate (we couldn't wait the 12 hours). You start with two bone-in chicken breasts, which you pat with a couple of spoonfuls of fresh chopped thyme. You brown these in oil in a large skillet, and set them aside. Then you chop up 1-2 small onions or 3-4 large shallots and brown these in the skillet. Next goes in about a pound of chopped fresh mushrooms, which darken and give off liquid. This is when you sprinkle in some chopped parsley and rosemary, nestle the chicken back in among the vegetables, give it a good glug of red wine, and cover and let it simmer until the chicken is done, 20-30 mins. At that point, put the chicken and vegetables on plates in a warm oven, reduce the sauce in the skillet, and add a dollop of heavy cream to bubble and thicken. Pour that back over everything, and enjoy.

We also had to deal with (usually = ignore) various other New Year's traditions. Barbara's family used to watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV, while eating apple and/or pumpkin pie. For a few years her Mom would dress up her grandson Robert as the New Year Baby, with a diaper and a new-year-numbered sash, and take a picture of him. As you can imagine, that lasted until he learned to talk enough to refuse (he's 32 now).

We did have the traditional Scandihoovian herring snacks (and some black caviar on cream cheese on water crackers), but for appetizers before dinner, not at the stroke of twelve.

Midnight calls for champagne instead, and sweets rather than salty things - in fact, for a little gold treasure-chest of wonderful cocoa-dusted truffles that Holt got in his Christmas stocking (thanks, whoever put it there!). We did watch the ball drop, so New Year's Eve was completely traditional.