Winter

I can't think of a better food for the cold days upon us than a big bowl of comforting chili. There is something special about the heat of chile peppers that has a rightful place in this stew. Chili is a great dish for bringing people together and it can feed a crowd very easily. This recipe can be doubled or tripled. It's perfect for when you have group of friends over for game-watching on Super Bowl Sunday. The best part about a recipe like this is that it can be prepared in advance and simply reheated when it's time to serve. No one needs to slave away at the stove and miss watching the game.

Chiles, specifically chile powder or dried chiles, are the key ingredients in making a robust and flavorful chili. But I go further than that and jazz things up with a combination of fresh peppers in varying stages of hotness. I like poblanos for their grassy flavor, red bell for their sweetness, cubanelle for their mild fresh flavor, and jalapeños for the kick. I broil the peppers until their skins blacken and blister. Not only does this step add flavor, it's nicer to eat the chili once the peppers have had their papery skins removed. The hotness of the jalapeños is also tamed by broiling, so the chili doesn't scream hot, but instead it hums.

I ‘d always look forward to this time of year when I worked at North Dakota State University. One of my colleagues would bring a big slow-cooker full of her delicious Beer Cheese Soup. Up to that point in my life, the only Beer Cheese soup I had tasted was served at a Fargo restaurant. It was very thick, very cheesy and very goopy. In my opinion, too thick, too cheesy and too goopy.

Nancy’s Beer Cheese Soup would send a sweet, yeasty beer aroma wafting through the NDSU hallway. Lunch that day would be a big mug of soup ladled from the hot slow-cooker topped with freshly popped corn right out of the microwave oven.

Now, I don’t normally do much cooking with Cheez Whiz, but I just can’t make this soup any other way. You’ll see why when you taste it. The soup is light and creamy with just the right amount of beer and cheese flavors. I use unsalted butter in this recipe. The soup gets plenty of salt from the Cheez Whiz and chicken broth.

Wouldn’t you know it, I went skipping off to the grocery store yesterday, smugly thinking I’d pick up some fiddlehead ferns and/or baby artichokes and blog about cooking one or both of them this week. The grocery store had other plans. In other words, it had neither.

I swear I saw fiddleheads somewhere recently, even though I know the wild ones aren’t up yet around here. But I must have been imagining things (not surprising). I’m sure I didn’t imagine the baby artichokes; they’re at the other grocery store—the one I didn’t plan to go to yesterday. Oh well, soon enough for both.

Instead I bought broccoli. I know, broccoli. But it was, truthfully, the best looking thing at the store. And I think maybe I had a tiny cruciferous craving, as suddenly I had to have several of the perky purple-green crowns to roast for our dinner. (And a couple to put in a vase near the daffodils–weird but true.) I realized, too, that I needed something I could throw together pretty quickly, with a minimum of hands-on time, as I was probably going to be unloading the rest of my groceries all night!

Velvety smooth, thick and creamy, soft and spreadable, sweet and tart — all characteristics of a good lemon curd. Every year around this time, I pull out my favorite recipe for lemon curd. Last week, I adapted that recipe to create a mouth-watering bowl of mango curd. A kiss of citrus from lemon and lime juices gives this creamy tropical curd just enough tartness to balance the sweet-as-honey mango.

Spread this Mango Curd on scones, banana muffins or bran muffins. Use it to fill tiny tarts or little thumbprint cookies. Sandwich it between butter cookies or spread it on shortbread.

Mango Curd is quite sublime with Tropical Mango Baby Cakes. I baked the cake batter in mini-bundt pans. The next batch of batter was baked in traditional cupcake tins. The cupcakes can be cut through the middle to form two layers. The Mango Curd is a perfect filling. Sprinkle the little cakes with powdered sugar and they are ready to eat.