Comfort Food: Best of the Blogs - Dinner Tonight - Cooking

Winter Comfort: Best of the Blogs

No Comments | Written on January 19, 2012 at 3:00 pm, by The Editors

Corn Chowder courtesy of Eclectic Recipes

Comfort food is what we’re cooking in early January. The holidays are over, and while we whined about how busy we were, and how much cooking there was to do, now that it’s over we’re, well, a little sad. Or are we just suffering from SAD? You know, Seasonal Affective Disorder, when the sun sets early and the nights are long and cold.

With comfort in mind, we searched the blogs to see what other cooks are doing to ease winter’s chill. And we found recipes for food that should get us cheered up all the way through March.

No carb-lover in their right mind could resist What’s Cookin’ in Chicago‘s blog post titled “10 Pasta Dishes with Pizzaz.” Especially with big pics and recipes for lobster mac and cheese and creamy chicken marsala!

It may be 19 days into the new year, but we still crave hoppin’ john, the Southern good-luck stew of black-eyed peas, onions, garlic, and spices. The Pioneer Woman says she adds a “gnarly ham hock” to her hoppin’ john. We’re in.

Stews are also on the mind of Inspiring the Everyday, whose creamy smoked salmon stew with red-skinned potatoes, snow peas, and dill sounds like a prescription for winter blahs.

Gooey cheese is what raclette is all about, and Pots and Frills has got the raclette pans fired up. Unlike fondue, in which bread, meat, and vegetables are dipped into a bubbling pot of Appenzeller, Gruyère, or other high-quality Swiss cheese, raclette is about pouring the bubbling cheese over potatoes, and serving pickled vegetables on the side. It’s Swiss party food.

Pots of soup are simmering all over the country, and all over the Web. Smitten Kitchen’s carrot soup with miso and sesame seems like just the thing to spice up a lunch hour, while staying light and healthy.

That said, Eclectic Recipe‘s corn chowder with bacon might tear us away from the carrot soup for a day of pure, creamy indulgence.

Here’s a stew that helped a cook take care of her leftovers: Honey beans, spinach, and sweet potatoes make a hearty vegetarian dinner at A Year of Slow Cooking.

Beans—cranberry beans—are also on the mind of Garden of Eating, who takes a page out of chef Alice Waters’s book and cooks up a gorgeous (and fiber-rich) cranberry bean gratin.

Iowa Girl Eats (our very own Kristin Porter) is battling a cold midwest winter with her “ultimate comfort food,” chicken and dumplings. In cooking up her chicken, she also gets plenty of stock to use later. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Buying your favorite chipotle-lime tortilla chips is soooo 2011. Good Life Eats bakes up her own, with a healthy dash of cumin. It’s the slow way to amazing snacking.