A quick, satisfying dinner during minimal-starch month (and after a weekend of salt-depleting exercise). I’d shopped with Niçoise salad on the brain, but ended up making: salmon rubbed with salt, white pepper, and sesame seeds, broiled for 8 minutes skin-side-up, on a bed of butter-sauteed lettuce, celery, and black olives, topped with chopped up crispy salmon skin and a poached egg.

It was a rough day overall, but a pork shoulder braised in milk and taken in the direction of carnitas turned out very well: It started with five pounds of bone-in pork shoulder from Olivier’s butchery (at their recommendation, a cut with plenty of fat and even the skin left on one side), coated in salt and pepper, then browned in a little oil at medium-high heat on each side in a dutch oven on the stovetop. ...

A light breakfast. With a lemon-mustard-olive oil dressing.

One of the things I love about the city is being able to pop down to the Japantown market, pick up some slabs of sashimi-grade salmon, tuna, and salmon roe, then eat them over rice. With seaweed salad, sesame seeds, radish sprouts, pickled ginger… and the rarely-seen fresh wasabi root for grating ($100/lb but you only need an ounce). All for less than I’d spend going out for cheap sushi most places. ...

The first time I’d poached an egg? Or at least the first time in a decade. Tried the vinegar and whirlpool tricks: 3" of water, a few tsp white vinegar, brought to a light simmer, stirred into a whirlpool, egg eased from a cup (pre-cracked) into the center of the vortex (seemed to help keep the white in the middle with it), then left alone for 3-4 minutes. With great rye bread, chives/thyme/parsley from the window box, blood oranges, bacon. ...

I’d eaten Tartiflette (potatoes and cheese, baked– it sounds simple but it’s so much more) twice– many years ago in Southeastern France, and a year ago in Tavern de la Fermette in Southern Belgium (photo above). Both times it was a tastebud shock-and-awe (in a rich “I’m taking a month off my life” way). Today I was having a few friends over to taste some Belgian beers, and was inspired to try to make it. I think it turned out really well. ...

A quick salad-as-mostly-healthy-meal for visiting family: kale (salted raw, let sit, then rinsed), celeriac, smoked salmon, broccoli, lemon-garlic-olive oil dressing (using a smokier heirloom garlic with less bite raw), and grilled haloumi cheese. It worked. (Campari-soda with meyer lemon as apertif, and the still-amazing Dandelion Madagascar chocolate for dessert)

If I were in town for New Year’s, I would probably do this again:

Quick dinner a week ago: A salad of arugula, watermelon radishes, endive, kumquats, a little olive oil. Tart / colorful. Spaghetti with homemade sauce (shallots and garlic sauteed in olive oil, oyster mushrooms cut coarse and cooked down, sliced zucchini, summer-canned Juliet tomatoes, fresh oregano, a little crushed red pepper and salt).

A vaguely Eastern European-inspired brunch. At the shopping level: Brunch is served (everyone sits in the living room): Mashed potato pancakes (just regular mashed potatoes made the night before with plenty of butter and milk, warmed in the oven morning-of, with fresh minced green onions mixed in before frying the patties) Smoked fish (trout, mackerel) on dark rye and black sesame crackers Pickled beets Bloody Mary bar a.k.a. “Adult Salad” (tomato, vodka, fresh grated horseradish root (key!), cholula, pickled beans, olives, worcestershire, and oven-baked crispy bacon sticks for dunking) And from friends, many things, including: ...

Feisty, pinchy Dungeness Crab from the ocean to the kitchen in a few hours. Now that’s some delicious, sweet crustacean. Take live, actively-thrashing-around crabs (one source: Fair Share CSF) and drop one or two over boiling water in a large steamer. 12 minutes for a pair of 1 1/3lb crabs seemed ideal . Briefly plunge them into cold water, then clean out the guts: break off the apron, remove the carapace and most green-black guts, scrape out the rest of the guts by hand, and remove the spongy crescent-shaped gills and the mandibles. Finally, break it in half and rinse off any remaining bits of guts. Hat tip to canida for a good set of crab cleaning photos at Instructables, and the tip to use the crab toe as a pick. Why have I never thought of that? ...

Cut a delicata squash into slices (rings), brush with olive oil, oven-roast at 400F for 20 minutes on each side. Five minutes before it’s done (on the second side), crack an egg into the hole and bake until the yolk’s just the way you like it. If you’re feeling fancy, serve with leftover Dungeness crab you’d cooked and picked the night before, marinated for half an hour in lemon juice and a bit of salt. ...

A delicious, modest, simple-ingredients dinner with family: A 4 lb local chicken (no turkey this year), squash, beets, brussels sprouts, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Most of it grown / raised within about 500’ of where we were eating it . Wild cranberries found by chance in the woods! Brussels sprouts picked an hour before dinner (one of the last crops alive in the garden, covered with bits of ice and frost as we picked them): ...

Many years ago I started a “buy local” blog, but other parts of life intruded and it petered out after a few posts. But at the time I did somewhat obsessively catalog where every ingredient in that year’s Thanksgiving dinner came from, and many of the non-spice ingredients were from a 40-mile radius of where we were cooking: This is just a warm-up for doing the same thing for this year’s dinner. ...

Risotto made with Sav Blanc, bone broth, crimini mushrooms, onions, late-added pre-baked pumpkin, and crispy sage leaves. And a salad of bitter red lettuce, pomegranate, persimmon.