For many reasons, we elected not to go with a turkey this year for our Thanksgiving dinner. We had quail instead, rubbed with herbs and olive oil and roasted in our cast iron skillet.

The rest of the meal was a bit more traditional.

It was a good day.

I decided to surprise him this year. His office wasn’t closed for the Columbus Day holiday, and mine was, so I had the apartment to myself and it would be easy. The plan was to make gnocchi – I haven’t done it in over a year, and a friend recently asked for some tips, so I’ve had gnocchi on the brain lately.

I’ve made dozens of batches of these little dumplings over the years, with varying degrees of success. The ones I made last night were my lightest yet, though I think they were almost too delicate. Still, I was pleased overall with the result and more importantly, Mike loved them.

I’m not going to print a recipe here, because I think gnocchi are something you just need to try and try and try again until you get a feel for them. I’ve always used Lidia’s recipe as a base, and I referred to Heidi and Elise this time around as well. I would estimate that I ended up using about 2 cups of potato, one egg seasoned with about 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt, and about a cup of flour – far less flour than I have ever used before.

As I said above, this made for extremely light gnocchi, but a few of them just barely held together in the sauce. It’s possible that gnocchi like this would do better in a lighter sauce – sage brown butter, perhaps – as opposed to the wild mushroom cream sauce I served them with last night.

The birthday boy had no complaints, though, and he happily downed two helpings between phone calls from our families passing along their well-wishes. We opened a bottle of Bindella Vino Nobile di Montepulciano with our meal, and drank a toast to the year ahead.

We are heathens and don’t really celebrate the religious holidays we were raised with, so I hadn’t really thought about doing anything special for dinner on Easter Sunday, but Mike emailed me last Wednesday to tell me that on his swing through the Greenmarket on his lunch hour, he purchased a small ham from Tamarack Hollow, and he thought we could make it the centerpiece of our Sunday dinner.

I’ll be honest, I never liked ham growing up. I sort of hated it. I’m sure my mom will remember a family gathering long ago when a certain picky little sprout protested loudly at being served ham and was sent off to sit in solitude as punishment for being rude. My, how times have changed.

As I have gotten older my tastes have developed, and I’m now a fan of ham of all kinds. I actually looked forward to cooking and eating this one. I’ve recently started paying closer attention to Ina Garten‘s show on Food Network, and I happened to catch an episode when I was home sick one day recently where she doctored up a store-bought ham with a chutney and mustard glaze. It looked delicious, and I decided to do something similar, basting our ham for the last hour of cooking with a mixture of fig jam (about a cup) and sharp dijon mustard (about 2 tablespoons). It caramelized beautifully, and the flavors worked so well with the rich, smoky ham. We have a ton of ham left, but you won’t find me complaining… it’ll be great on a sandwich with some good grainy mustard and sourdough rye.

One thing I do recall fondly from the ham dinners of my youth were cheesy au gratin potatoes, crisp on top and creamy in the middle. I wanted to downscale a bit since it was just the two of us for dinner, so I decided to make just enough to go into the two small terracotta bakers we usually use for brunchy baked eggs. I sliced two medium russet potatoes, skins on, with my cheap mandoline slicer, rinsed them well, and boiled them until they were just tender. I drained them well and let them dry for a bit while I made a cheese sauce, spiked with some dried Herbes de Provence:

Cheese Sauce for Potato Gratin

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
3/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tsp. dried Herbes de Provence
a pinch of Kosher salt
1/2 cup diced Raclette

Melt butter in a saucepan and whisk flour in until smooth. Cook for a few minutes then whisk in the milk and cream. Add herbs and salt and allow to cook over low heat until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the cheese a bit at a time, whisking in, until thoroughly melted and smooth.

I tossed the potatoes with the cheese sauce, spooned them into the two buttered gratin dishes, added a bit more sliced Raclette cheese on top and baked them in a 400 degree oven until the sauce was bubbling and the potatoes were soft, about 35 minutes.

For our vegetable side, I wanted to go simple – one bunch of asparagus, trimmed, tossed with salt, pepper and olive oil, laid on a foil-lined baking sheet and roasted at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. It’s one of my favorite ways to prepare asparagus, and it couldn’t be easier.

If you know me, you know I’m not a huge fan of the sweets and desserts, but my boss gave me some black plums earlier in the week and I wanted to use them in something. Mike asked me to reserve a couple of them so he could experiment with them in a drink, but I had three left, so I decided to combine those with some of last summer’s frozen berries and make a crumble. This is actually the kind of dessert I really do enjoy from time to time, more tart than sweet, with a bit of texture, and great with a scoop of really good ice cream on the side.

Black Plum and Berry Crumble

For the filling:

3 black plums, pitted and sliced
1 cup each frozen blueberries and raspberries
1 tablespoon lemon zest
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon cardamom syrup*

For the topping:

1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped raw almonds

Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl and toss gently to combine. Pour into a shallow baking dish and top with the oat/sugar/almond mixture. Dot the top with a bit of crumbled butter, and place into a 375 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temp with freshly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

*We used cardamom syrup because Mike made a batch for a cocktail he is working on; the recipe he used is from the excellent book The Art of the Bar. The flavor of the cardamom is lovely with the plums, but if you don’t have the syrup on hand or don’t care to make a batch, you can use a standard simple syrup.

Mike and I have traditionally stayed in and cooked at home for Valentine’s Day, but this year we talked seriously about going out. As it turned out, those discussions occurred far too late for us to actually secure a reservation anywhere. In the end we were lucky – the city was hit with a blast of wintry weather Tuesday night that continued through the day on Wednesday. Both Mike’s office and mine closed early due to the weather, and we were happy to be able to head straight home and be in for the night.

For whatever reason, our VDay dinners have usually featured lamb, but we got a beautiful pork tenderloin from Flying Pigs at the Greenmarket a couple of Saturdays ago, and it had been sitting in the freezer waiting for just the right occasion. Inspired by the Schneider/Borogove “Fig & Pig Thanksgiving,” I decided to wrap the tenderloin in pancetta and make a figgy pan sauce.

We had a nice bottle of champagne chilling, and we definitely wanted oysters to pair with it. Mike had recently made a batch of Francois Payard’s delicious Fried Oysters with lemon and balsamic, so he decided to make them again (and only a fool would complain – they’re addictive).

So we had a starter and we had a main, but I wanted to do one more course – Valentine’s Day does call for a little indulgence, after all. The Daily News had recently run a feature discussing the popularity of gnudi, and between that and a gnudi-centric episode of Lidia Bastianich‘s show I saw recently, both of us were craving them again. I had never made them at home, but we both remembered loving the ones we tried at The Spotted Pig (ages ago), so I thought I’d give it a try.

We got a pound of sheep’s milk ricotta from 3-Corner Field Farm, and I combined that with two beaten pullet eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, grated pecorino and some chopped spinach (I initially planned to cook down and chop some swiss chard, but by the time I got home, I wasn’t feeling it. Half a bag of frozen chopped spinach worked just fine, thawed and squeezed completely dry). I added about 1/3 cup of pastry flour to that and gently mixed it with my hands until everything was incorporated.

I grabbed small bits of the dough and gently rolled them into ovals in my hands, then dusted them with a little more flour. These went into the fridge to set for half an hour, and then I added them to a pot of rapidly boiling salted water until they floated to the top. I had melted a hunk of butter in a separate pan and let it begin to brown, and I stirred in a small splash of the pasta water. I pulled the gnudi out of the boiling water and added them directly to the butter sauce, turning them very gently to coat them, then I spooned the gnudi and sauce into shallow bowls. Taking a page from Del Posto, I topped the gnudi with a dusting of ground chipotle, which added a lovely smokiness and depth to the finished dish.

I had prepped the tenderloin earlier in the evening, so it didn’t take long to finish it. I browned it on all sides in our cast iron skillet, then chucked the whole thing into the oven to finish cooking (400 degrees for 15 minutes or so). Once the pork had reached our desired doneness, I pulled it out of the pan and set it aside to rest. I had mixed a couple of big globs of fig jam with half a cup of water, a splash of balsamic and a splash of tawny port, so I added those to the pan and began scraping up the browned bits. Once the sauce was reduced, I turned off the heat, whisked in a small hunk of butter, then spooned the sauce over the slices of tenderloin (which I served on a bed of sauteed haricots verts).

There were a few things I’d like to tweak in the future – we loved the chipotle with the gnudi, but we both thought the butter sauce needed a little more oomph, and my slices of tenderloin weren’t as pretty or uniform as I would have liked – but all in all, this was a great meal. It’s nice to go out to a restaurant, enjoy great food and not have to do the dishes afterward, but I’m always going to prefer sitting at home with my sweetie, sipping a drink, listening to some music, and enjoying the smells and flavors of a meal prepared with love.

Wine Note: We drank Magenta Brut NV with the oysters, and paired the tenderloin with the 2004 Benson Ferry Old Vines Zinfandel, one of our favorite wines to serve with pork.