Winter

I'm not much of a coffee drinker but I love hot chocolate and I love tea. I enjoy the richness of hot chocolate, but sometimes it's a bit too much. I certainly couldn't drink it everyday. I have tried quite a few chocolate flavored teas and while some of them are pretty good, I've discovered a more satisfying solution. I make hot cocoa with equal parts tea and milk.

On the surface this might seem like a weird thing to do, combining cocoa and tea but it's really quite delicious. I learned from chocolate authority Alice Medrich that the fat in dairy products coats your tongue so the flavor of chocolate is sometimes muted in very creamy preparations. She said you can make cocoa with hot water, but I have found that tea provides an amazing addition of flavor. I like a little bit of milk to add some texture.

The result is a beverage that is richer and more viscous than tea and milk, but not quite as cloying as hot cocoa can be. In the Winter, I could drink it just about everyday!

There's no other month that represents comfort food better than December. Right now it's all about soups, stews, roasts, and much more. But sometimes all that rich food is just too much to handle! (Thanksgiving was for me.) So when I crave something comforting that doesn't weigh me down, I turn to pasta.

Old fashioned spaghetti and meatballs or any other tomato sauced pasta dish is always a welcome meal around this time. But my favorite way to enjoy pasta is with simple flavors and seasonal produce. A dish like this pasta with sautéed Brussels sprouts is perfectly comforting and light, all at the same time. There aren't too many comfort foods that can be both.

This recipe is unique because the sprouts are separated into leaves and then sautéed. There's no need to worry about smelly and awful tasting sprouts since sautéing is a gentle cooking method that coaxes out all the sweet flavors of the sprouts. Red onions add additional sweetness to the dish and Parmesan cheese creates a thin sauce that clings to the pasta and vegetables. This dish is worth making now while Brussels sprouts are in season.

I confess, I couldn’t live without onions - maybe if I was marooned on an uninhabited tropical island and there was literally ‘nothing’ to slow cook or even firewood [I suppose] I would have to adapt. No other vegetable makes me happier then local onions - it is my favorite. All the different varieties have separate flavors and I love to do different thing with each variety from Ailsa Craig to Walla Wallas.

The first onion of the season is always baked whole with a knob of butter, a few tablespoons of maple syrup and wrapped in foil or parchment paper. I slow bake the onion parcel at 325 degrees F for at least and hour and a half-you will know when it is done when the aroma makes its way all the way to the other side of your house. How is that for precise recipe writing?

After I’ve eaten my first baked onion of the season with a spoon I can relax and get a bit more creative. Did I mention I encourage my onion farmers to leave the green tops on? They think I’m a little daft to pay for the extra weight only because they have never baked one of their onions split in two, covered with a touch of stock and baked in a covered dish until it is tender and very little liquid is left. I pour a little heavy cream over the top along with its distant cousin, chopped chives and reduce the cream until thick-ish. Any variety of onion works - red onions will tint the cream a delicate rose color.

Blood oranges are all over the markets right now. It's actually very surprising, because a few years ago I could not find a blood orange anywhere but in the city. In my local supermarket they've even started selling them in bulk bags. Last week I saw packages upon packages of blood oranges in the reduced-price produce bin and of course I bought them, because there was nothing wrong with them. That tells me that people don't buy them because they don't know what to do with them. I've made this Valentine's dessert with them. I eat blood oranges throughout the season just as I do regular oranges. I enjoy the unique taste: very citrusy but more mellow with the flavor of dark fruits like raspberries or blackberries. Plus blood oranges share the same beneficial antioxidants as dark fruits.

This year blood oranges haven't been as sweet as in the past, but they are great for use in savory dishes, such as this salad. I start with a base of peppery arugula and thinly shaved fennel. The final touches are slices of blood orange, crumbled feta, and toasted walnuts. The anise flavors of the fennel, the peppery arugula, and the salty feta are a very nice match for the blood oranges.