Virtuous and Light as Air

A salad for January

Here’s one thing I love about January: The quiet industriousness that is required to carefully dismantle the Christmas tree and all of its precious trimmings and the various delicate wooden Pyramiden balanced here and there and the orchestra set of wooden angels with their tiny wooden instruments and pink cheeks and white wings. Everything gets folded back up in its wrinkled paper, then meticulously slotted into old moving boxes scrawled with block letters, “X-MAS” or “CHRISTMAS TREE” and we haul out the heavy metal ladder and climb up to the Hängeboden, the little loft storage space over the bathroom, and one of us perches up there while the other carefully hands up each box to be pushed away into a corner where it’ll wait until next Christmas. Then Max hoists the tree to his shoulder and I run downstairs and he throws it down into the driveway directly under our balcony and I drag it up onto the sidewalk for the garbage men to take it away and that is that. The satisfaction I get from it all being gone again as on par with the delight I feel when everything is first set up.

Motivated by all that clean-up, I end up scouring the corners of our apartment for detritus to discard or things to organize and rearrange. I find bits of gold foil from Christmas chocolates in funny corners, a Playmobil knight gathering dust under a chest, a lost puzzle piece. For a few days, or weeks, if I’m lucky, the moment of Zen lasts. I rearrange the bookshelves. I get rid of clutter on that one side table that was threatening to topple. I go through the boys’ dresser and cull everything that is too small or full of holes or the wrong season and soon there is a bag for the thrift store and a bag for friends with younger children and I feel virtuous and light as air.

January is for daydreaming about the year ahead, yes, and a bit about the things I’d like to do differently, but mostly the things already planned that I have to look forward to, which this year seem to be all about travel. After the torpor of the past few years, I know we’re not alone. In a few weeks, we’re driving down to Austria again and for spring break, we’re taking the boys to Scotland. I have a trip with my girlfriends planned, we want to drive out into the countryside around Berlin a little more, and the biggest fantasy currently swirling around my January planning is to skip town entirely next Christmas and decamp to Sicily where we will hide out among the prickly pears and oranges. Big dreams in January don’t usually come to fruition, but I like having them nonetheless. There’s nothing like a fresh-cheeked diary and a lovely rolling pen to run over its bone-white pages. Looming over it all, of course, is the deadline for the full Classic German Cooking manuscript this summer.

Which leads me to you, dear readers: what would you like to see more of in this newsletter in the new year? More coverage of the books I’m reading? More focus on the recipes I’m cooking? Or something else entirely? I’d love to know and would be grateful for your feedback.

Here’s another thing I love about January: Sicilian blood oranges and Spanish tangerines and the smallest, most flavorful pink grapefruit. Gorgeously ruffled, pale pink radicchio Rosa di Verona and fat bullets of creamy white endive and glossy, jade-edged fennel. Lentil soups laced with too much vinegar (though is there really such a thing?) and bracing salads and mercifully quiet evenings after the madness of the holiday season. There are still Christmas cookies in tins here and there and even though I think I’m over them, the four o’clock slump always arrives and then I am grateful to have a little something to nibble on; even if they might be getting a little frizzled around the edges, they’re still good with a cup of tea.

In December, I discovered a salad from Carla Lalli Music’s That Sounds So Good that, well, sounded so good that I decided to make it for Christmas Eve. It is a brilliantly layered mix of bitter greens, salty, savory cheese crisps, a sour vinaigrette (the key being both vinegar and lemon juice), rich, toasted nuts and pockets of meltingly sweet dates. But since it was Christmas Eve and I was already losing my mind about everything else, I cut a few corners here and there. We proceeded to make that short-cut salad every few days for the next week. We couldn’t get enough of it.

And now in January, when one is perhaps still too depleted to do much cooking, yet one still craves nourishing meals that feel fresh and crunchy and big on flavor, this is the perfect salad. I’ve written down pretty vague quantities below, because this is how I make this salad now. I sort of eyeball the amounts so that there is a nice balance of bitter, salty, sour and sweet. You can adjust to your liking. The recipe it was inspired by includes honey in the vinaigrette, which I never include, but you might like to, and has you make frico with the Parmesan, for which I am far too lazy. I really like the recipes in Music’s book, which I picked up at Wellesley Books, a wonderful independent bookstore, when we were in Boston in the fall.

Radicchio and Endive Salad with Parmesan, Dates and Nuts
Serves 4

Juice of 1/2 lemon
A good splash of white wine vinegar
Flaky salt and freshly ground black pepper
A few tablespoons of olive oil (roughly twice the amount of lemon juice and vinegar combined)
A few handfuls of torn radicchio leaves
1/2 to 1 Belgian endive, leaves separated and torn
2 to 3 Medjool dates, pitted
A handful of pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts, toasted until fragrant
A bit of Parmesan to grate or shave (I prefer grated)

In a salad bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Then whisk in the olive oil until it emulsifies and the dressing becomes creamy.

Place the salad leaves in the dressing. Cut the dates into small pieces and distribute among the salad leaves. Chop the toasted nuts roughly and add to the bowl. Then grate or shave in plenty of Parmesan.

Toss the salad until well-combined and the leaves are equally dressed with vinaigrette and serve immediately.