Winter

Spicy Sweet Ginger-Garlic
Chicken WingsWe have a yearly tradition. For Super Bowl Sunday, we invite friends over to our house to eat, have some drinks and watch the game. Until our younger son, Michael, came into our lives, neither of us were much interested in sports.

Attending UCLA during the John Wooden days, when the men's basketball team reigned supreme, I never went to a single game. I didn't care. But Michael did. From the time he was a toddler, he watched Sports Center, baseball, basketball and football.

Like any parent we wanted to find common ground with our son. For us, that meant catching up with a three year old's encyclopedic knowledge of major league sports.

At first a chore, we got into it. We learned to cheer on the Lakers, root for the Dodgers and follow the careers of our favorite quarterbacks (Manning, Brady, Luck, RGIII, Rogers and Kaepernick).

Growing up I ate a green salad pretty much every night with dinner. In Italy, we did the same, though it was served at the end of the meal. These days, I find it hard to convince my other half to eat salad. My solution is to make main dish salads. This one uses Belgian endive and is easy to make for one or a group. It has many delicious things added to a base of endive and fennel, namely candied walnuts, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto.

Endive and fennel just seem to have a natural affinity for one another. Both are crisp, but fennel has a chewier  texture and a sweetness, while endive is lighter and juicier and has a slightly bitter edge. You could use them to make a simple side salad but this one has lots of goodies to make it a main dish. Use a Champagne vinaigrette or a Dijon mustard vinaigrette to dress it. Or even just lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil.

In general, shiitakes come in two forms: the slender stemmed variety and the ones which are fatter, with thicker stems and caps. Mitsuwa and SF Supermarket sell the fatter variety, which have a meater flavor.

With so many on hand, they can be used liberally in pastas and soups, grilled, and sautéed with garlic and shallots.

But how to store the ones not eaten those first couple of days?

Everyone knows that mushrooms should only be stored in the refrigerator in paper bags because kept in plastic they quickly go bad. Use a brown paper bag--not a white one, which is coated with wax so the moisture stays inside the bag--in combination with paper towels. The moisture that normally accumulates on the outside of the mushroom is absorbed by the layers of paper.

Kept in the refrigerator another week or two, the brown paper bag-paper towel combination acts as a dehydrator pefectly drying the mushrooms. This technique only works successfully with shiitakes.

If by chance any of the dried shiitakes develop mold, discard and keep the good ones. In my experience, more than 95% will dehydrate without harm.

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.