Winter

Now that the fall has given way to colder weather, enjoying winter’s chill outdoors requires a well-insulated coat and good gloves. Indoors, the kitchen fights back the cold with a hot oven and good food ready to eat. The best winter food comforts our spirits and nourishes our bodies. Nothing does that better than a roasted vegetable salad.

In summer, a ripe tomato salad mixed with peppery arugula leaves and bits of salty, creamy Bulgarian feta can be a meal in and of itself. When the weather cools and a weakening sun denies farmers the heat they need to grow nature’s leafy wonders, we still hunger for salads but now it’s time to look to hearty greens and root vegetables to satisfy that craving.

In winter, walking through the local supermarket’s fresh produce section, it’s easy to believe we live in a one-season world. Vegetables and fruit that require summer’s heat are stacked high in the bins. But one taste and it’s easy to tell, these delectables have been grown out of season or traveled long distances to reach our tables.

Root vegetables like celery root, beets, turnips and potatoes grow well in the colder months. When roasted, their starches convert into sugar, coaxing the best out of these subterranean gems.

I love mushrooms for their flavor, texture, and meatiness. It's almost odd to say so, but mushrooms do have a texture and deep flavor that reminds me of meat. One of my favorite comfort foods is a bowl of mushroom soup. For me it's just as satisfying as a bowl of chili. Like little sponges, mushrooms easily take on the flavors of other ingredients that they cook with. Sautéing them in garlic or onions makes them especially wonderfully robust. This soup uses cremini mushrooms, the brown button type, and dried porcini mushrooms, which have an intense almost nutty flavor. This soup has a lot of good going for it.

Not surprisingly, there are hundreds of varieties of mushrooms, but surprisingly the ones that we buy in grocery stores are almost all the same. White button, cremini, and portobello are all forms of the common mushroom. All our supermarket mushrooms are cultivated, grown on inoculated logs in mushroom farms. The most popular, button mushrooms, are white as a result of mutation. But the common mushroom is typically brown, such as cremini, or baby bella as they are marketed. When they are large and mature, they are sold as portobello mushrooms. All of these mushrooms are great in the kitchen, but each one has its best use. Portobellos, for example are exceptional when grilled and can be eaten like a burger. Cremini, with their full flavor yet tender size, are perfect for soups.

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.

Maybe it's because I grew up in New England, home of New England Clam Chowdah. Or maybe it's because it was my mom's favorite soup. All I know is that every winter, as sure as the leaves fall from the trees, I crave a bowl of steaming hot corn chowder.

When I called my mom to tell her I wanted to make corn chowder and would like her recipe, she said, "Ooh, corn chowder! That's my favorite soup." I smiled.

"I'm sorry, honey, I don't have a recipe. But, it's chowder. Everyone knows how to make chowder." Or so every New England mother who makes chowder firmly believes.

So I conjured up images and smells of mom's corn chowder and started chopping and sauteing and pureeing. I added sausage for depth of flavor and cheddar cheese for richness. Then I adorned each serving with a simple corn relish that added just the right amount of texture to keep things interesting. The chowder turned out just like I wanted it to: it was wonderfully thick and creamy and had a deep corn flavor.

After I was finished, I called my mom and told her all about it. Her response: "Ooh, that sounds wonderful, honey! Can I have the recipe?"

So if you froze summer sweet corn, now is the time to whip it out. Of course, either frozen or canned corn from the supermarket works just as well.