New Year's with Ina and Patricia

In a Christmas Eve post we shared a holiday message from food writer Patricia Wells along with an exclusive snapshot she shared of her shopping at a Paris outdoor market with fellow cookbook writer and part-time Parisian Dorie Greenspan. Patricia promised a New Year's photo to share with Amazon and this lovely note just landed in our inbox. What exactly is on the menu when two of the food world's favorite women and their husbands get together for a holiday meal? Read on to find out.

--BTP

New Year's is a time for family, so we gathered together a family of friends to celebrate the arrival of 2008, which we all agree will be a special, positive year for all of us. We spent it at our farmhouse in Provence, with Ina and Jeffrey Garten, who arrived on the TGV from Paris with plenty of champagne and chocolates. For the feasts, my husband, Walter, made his spectacular scrambled eggs with fresh black truffles, a remarkable oyster casserole prepared with gigantic fresh oysters from Brittany, and a wedding-cake sort of cheese course: the fat creamy Chaource cheese from Champagne which he cut into three layers and spread with truffle butter and truffles. I dried grapes from our vineyard and prepared a "Vintage 2007 Old Vines" raisin bread, and offered a golden sponge cake made with lemons from our trees, fresh local olive oil, and almonds, and prepared a mixed berry sauce from summer fruit we froze for the occasion. We both have new books coming out  this year--Ina's is Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, out with Clarkson Potter in October, and Walter and I have written our memoirs, We've Always Had Paris... which will be out with Harper Collins in May. We all look forward to seeing many of our readers this year, and wish all health and happiness in 2008.   

--Patricia Wells