It’s been manic out there.

The swings in our weather these past weeks, I mean.

Last Wednesday boasted a balmy 75 degrees in my wee corner of the world, with clumps of yellow-tipped daffodils, poised to bloom in the side yard, and shoots of young chives emerging from drab garden pots. Such promise! I was rolling up my shirt sleeves, my thoughts racing: I want to dig in the dirt; I’ll get some seeds started, I want to plant, I want garden lettuces and peas and sugar snaps…

Too soon, the wiser part of me interrupted. It’s. Still. Winter.

Yep, three days later and fifty degrees colder, I’m huddled in the house, loathe to even poke my head out the door to get the mail.
These extreme swings make it hard to adjust.
So, for dinner, I want something to warm and soothe. I’m thinking Soup.
But I’d like something light and green ––the visual means as much as smell and taste—I’d like to spoon up a bowl something embodying the sense of warmer days, call it a promise of spring soup.

A Leek Soup could do just that.

Similar to the classic potato-leek, this one is All About the Leeks—the secondary potato is there to help form the base. I let some other members of the allium family into the mix—garlic, scallions, a few of those baby chives from my garden pot to boost flavors, give the leeks some company.
Simmered in vegetable broth and partly pureed with low fat milk, it is lighter, healthier.
And, its pleasing pale green reminds me that it’s almost spring.

LEEK SOUP
4 Leeks, root end removed, slice in half lengthwise, thoroughly rinsed and cleaned to remove all grit,
discard tough dark green leaves, chop remainder, reserving a few leaves for garnish
3 medium white potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 scallions, chopped
3 cups vegetable broth (can be made with water, or chicken stock, if you prefer)
2 ½ cups 1% milk
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Salt
White Pepper

In a 3 qt. saucepan under medium heat, warm the olive oil and sauté potato cubes for 5 minutes. Stir in minced garlic, scallions, and leeks. Season with salt and white pepper. When potatoes seem soft and leeks begin to brown (another 5-7 minutes), stir in vegetable broth, scraping any browned bits in the pan. Simmer, stirring occasionally. Pour in milk, and puree–to a point. You want to retain some nice flecks of leek throughout the soup. You can use either a hand held immersion blender, or transfer the soup into a blender or food processor. Taste for seasonings. Makes 6 cups.

Frizzled Leek Garnish
Thinly slice a few strips of leeks and lightly coat with olive oil. Spread out on a shallow baking pan and roast in a hot (400-425 degree) oven for 10-12 minutes, until crispy brown, frizzled. They will become crunchier as they cool. Sprinkle with a little salt. By themselves, these make a tasty snack.

I don’t eat much meat anymore.

It didn’t come as a lightening bolt; there was no conscious decision. I consider myself an omnivore. I still relish the rare juicy-grilled ribeye. But, there has been a gradual shifting in my tastes, a falling away of carnivorous desires.

No doubt, I trace it back to an experience from a few summers ago, while Bill and I were on our first Out-West driving trip. Our serene cruise across these rolling Great Plains was sporadically jarred by scenes of agricultural squalor: CAFOs, “concentrated animal feeding operations.” Miserable, crowded feedlots…wrong for myriad reasons. These sorts of images settled in the psyche…and demanded resolution.

So, over time, I’ve moved away from a lot of meat in my diet. I haven’t missed it. When I do choose it, I do enjoy it. And, I try to buy that which is locally pasture-raised, pesticide-antibiotic-hormone free.
I’m happy to embrace the Michael Pollan Manifesto:
“Eat food. Not so much. Mostly plants.”

Following is a simple and beautiful “Mostly Plants” kind of recipe that I recently made for a small dinner gathering.
There’s much to love about it:
cheerful colors, contrasting textures, a balance of sweet-roasted buttery squash with savory-toasted pearly grains.
Its seasonings are minimal:
salt, pepper, and a hint of nutmeg are all that’s needed to enhance the butternut squash.
And, it’s versatile, pleasing just about anyone:
Vegetarians, vegans, heart-healthy dieters, weight-watching point-counters,
and evolving omnivores like me.

Sweet Peppers stuffed with Roasted Butternut Squash and Israeli Couscous

1 large Butternut Squash
4 large Sweet Red, Orange, Yellow Bell Peppers
1 large Onion
Olive Oil
Salt
Black Pepper
Nutmeg
1 ½ cups Israeli Couscous

Serves 6

Peel and cube squash; dice onion and one of the peppers. Toss together with 2 Tablespoons of olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt, cracked black pepper, and just a few pinches of nutmeg. Spread out on a shallow baking pan and place in a hot (425 degree) oven. Roast for 20 minutes—until cubes are lightly browned. Remove and allow to cool on the pan.

Fill a deep skillet or pot with water and bring just to a boil. Cut remaining peppers in half, remove seeds, and plunge into water. Blanche for 5 minutes, then pull them out and let them drain and cool.

In a 2 quart saucepan with medium heat, coat the Israeli couscous with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil and sauté—about 5minutes– until the couscous gets a toasty look to it. Pour in 1 ½ cups of water and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and reduce heat to simmer. Cook for 12 minutes—until water is absorbed. Remove from heat and spoon in roasted vegetables, scraping in all the browned bits and oil. Fold the vegetables evenly throughout the couscous.

Coat a baking dish with oil. Place in pepper halves and stuff with couscous mixture.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Many years ago, when my friend Wendy and I were single moms renavigating a rocky world of dating and relationships, we dreaded Valentine’s Day. It was especially hard on Wendy, who then worked for a major department store.

For her, the first two weeks of February meant a daily assault of material icons that represented nothing more than unfulfilled romantic expectations.
For me, it meant weaving my way through that commercial Cupid’s maze to reach her in her office and then find our way out, psyches unscathed, for say, drinks and dinner.

We cringed at those manikins dressed in lacy pink teddies. We slunk past glittery promises of rings and bracelets displayed on jewelry counters and dodged fragrance purveyors’ blasts of Beautiful and Eternity.

I called it the holiday that made women unhappy and men wrong.
“It’s a set up.” I said.

Wendy agreed. “I don’t even know what I want,” she said. “I just know I’ve never gotten it.”

Mercifully, wisdom can come with age. I ‘ve long abandoned those consumer-driven notions of romance and know the answer to be simple: Chocolate.

For who, WHO wouldn’t feel happy and right and loved when presented with a sublime mound of chocolate mousse!

Here’s a basic recipe that I’ve had forever, and updated slightly: Back in the early ‘70’s, we didn’t know about—or have access to—the super bittersweet chocolate; M.F.K. Fisher’s recipe called for semi-sweet.

Yes, there’s some careful chocolate melting and the call for Egg Magic: studious separating, patient beating, deft folding. Still, it can all be accomplished in thirty minutes. In individual glasses, the mousse chills quickly.

One beauty of the recipe is that if you want other flavor nuances–orange, raspberry, or hazelnut, for instance, it’s no problem to lace them in.

Another is, it makes a lot. Six-to-eight servings. Much better to share the love.

Your Basic Wonderful Chocolate Mousse adapted from The Cooking of Provincial France, by M.F.K.Fisher with editors of Time-Life Books, 1969

6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
8 T. sweet butter, cut into small pieces
3 T. espresso, or strong coffee
1 T. vanilla
2 T. cognac, or brandy
4 farm fresh eggs, separated
¼ cup sugar
½ cup heavy cream, lightly sweetened and whipped

In a heavy 1 qt. saucepan under low heat, melt the chocolate and coffee together.
Whisk in the vanilla and brandy. Then, stir in the butter, one chunk at a time, until it becomes smooth and shiny. Remove from heat.

Using an electric mixer with a balloon whisk, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until the yolks become really pale yellow and thickened, almost triple in volume. This will take several (at least 5) minutes. The yolks will cling to the whisk.
Check your chocolate mixture; it should be warm—but not hot.
Beat it into the thickened egg yolks; the mixture will seem like chocolate mayonnaise.
Pour this into another large mixing bowl.
Clean and dry your mixer bowl and whisk. Beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy. Fold about ¼ of the whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, then fold in the remaining whites.

Spoon into 6-8 pretty martini glasses (or whatever individual serving pieces you like) and chill for at least 3 hours.
Top with a dollop of whipped cream, garnish with chocolate shavings.

In this composed salad, the earthy sweetness of beets pairs with honeyed tang of clementines—and their colors are riotously brilliant together, kind of like Mardi Gras.

Those colors can almost get out of control, especially where the beets are concerned. I’ve had numerous bouts of magenta-stained fingertips and countertops to show for it. (Thank goodness that’s only temporary!) In her work, my foodstylist friend promotes golden beets for that reason. And while I do love those golden ones, I think that the traditional deep reds taste a tetch sweeter.

Last week, when another friend served a lively tossed green salad that included shredded beets, she lamented their pervasive staining power.
Do you know about roasting? I asked her. Roasting the beets contains that somewhat, and there’s the benefit of intensified flavor.

It is simple to do: after cleaning the beets, trim the tops (save those beet greens to sauté in a little olive oil, and minced garlic), brush with oil, then lightly salt, and place on a baking pan. Roast in a hot (400-425 degree oven) for about 25 minutes. After cooling, their skins peel right off. Chill them whole, then slice later for the salad.

Yes, there’s still some pooling of color. Gorgeous. It makes me want to pick up a brush and paint.

Composed Roasted Beet-Clementine Salad
1 head Leaf Lettuce, broken into leaves, washed, spun dry
1/2 lb. Beets, roasted, chilled, and sliced
2 Clementines, peeled and sectioned
2-3 oz. Goat Cheese, broken into small pieces
1 batch Clementine Vinaigrette

Place lettuce leaves onto chilled salad plates. Fan out slices of beets and
clementine sections and paint (or squeeze from a squirt bottle) the vinaigrette onto them.
Dust with crumbled goat cheese. Serves 4.

Clementine Vinaigrette
2 Tablespoons White Balsamic Vinegar
2 Tablespoons Clementine juice
1 Tablespoon chopped Chives
1 teaspoon Clementine zest
½ teaspoon Black Pepper
¼ teaspoon Dry Mustard
pinch Salt
8 Tablespoons Walnut Oil

Place all ingredients except Walnut Oil into food processor that has been outfitted with the swivel blade. Process, adding walnut oil one tablespoon at a time. (If you don’t have a food processor, whisk the ingredients together in a bowl, adding the walnut oil last. The dry mustard acts as an emulsifier.)

Tips: You can readily substitute any favorite citrus
(grapefruit/orange/lime/tangerine…) and use its juice and zest in the vinaigrette.
If you are unable to locate White Balsamic Vinegar, which I found at
Trader Joe’s, then use White Wine or Champagne Vinegar.
The viscosity and subtle flavor of the walnut oil distinguish this dressing.

In one of the recipes from her memoir Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl writes that all you need is a good free-range chicken, a little salt, pepper and lemon to have a splendid roast—and I agree, to a point. The free-range chicken is key. So impressed with the size and quality offered by Weldon Hawkins of Emerald Glen Farms, I purchased one of his big free-rangers and gave it to my friend Lou for her birthday—a gift that at first had her a bit miffed when she held up the clumsily wrapped bag with a frozen six pound lump bulging out the bottom.
( A chicken? For my birthday?)
Later, she cooked it for friends and family.
(Oooh, that truly was the best. chicken. ever!)

Sadly, not everyone has access —either logistically or financially—to this most exceptional of birds. Mindful of these inequities in the world of good food, I straddle both sides of the discourse: if you can, buy fresh, local, fair, sustainable; if not, buy what’s available —and do the best you can with it.

Whether you have a chicken that was lovingly raised roaming the range of a local farm or one that has endured a more comprised life, you can easily transform it into the centerpiece of a great dinner. I rely on a mixture of kosher salt, olive oil, garlic, and fresh herbs. And, the herbs–used either solo or in combination– all yield tasty results. ( I have pots of sage, thyme, and rosemary that keep producing through the winter months. I encourage everyone to grow-your-own; it’s simple, cost-effective, and fun.)

The trick is in slipping the mixture underneath the skin so that the flavors baste and roast directly onto the meat. Placing lemon and sturdy vegetable pieces into the cavity of the chicken adds wonderful aromatics, and further enhances the roast drippings.

Here’s the method that we taught last week to Brentwood Academy students who chose to spend their Winterim cooking in our kitchen at Second Harvest. They did a fantastic job preparing roast chicken as part of a complete healthy dinner for their families.

If you have the time, prep your chicken early (like overnight, or in the morning before you go to work): it only improves from being refrigerated several hours in the herbed olive oil mixture.

But for our students, it was all in a day’s work and that night, their families were the happy recipients.

Herb Roasted Chicken
1 whole chicken (about 3-3 ½ lbs.)
½ lemon
pieces of onion, carrot, celery
2 large cloves garlic
assorted fresh herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme (oregano and Italian parsley are good,too!)
2 tablespoon olive oil ( or vegetable oil)
½ teaspoon paprika
kosher salt
coarse ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
After removing gizzards and any excess fat, wash the chicken thoroughly-inside and out-and pat dry. Liberally season the inside cavity with salt and pepper, then place ½ lemon, a stalk of celery, a carrot, and an onion quarter inside.
Peel and mince garlic. Finely chop fresh herbs-a heaping tablespoon of each. Mix the garlic and herbs in a small bowl with olive oil. Stir in a pinch of salt and pepper. Using your fingers, gently separate the skin of the breast of the chicken and rub the seasoned oil mixture onto the bird. Rub remaining oil and herbs onto the outside of the chicken.
Set the chicken in a roasting pan, breast side up. Roast uncovered for an hour until golden brown. To check for doneness, pierce the thigh with a sharp knife to see if the juices run clear. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before carving. Discard lemon and veggie pieces. Skim off the oil/fat from the drippings before making a gravy, or spooning over the chicken.
Serves 4.

just us chickens! the group has them oven-ready

roasted with plenty of garlic and herbs right under the skin,
this chicken is ready to take home