comfort food

Bumping elbows in my tiny Japanese kitchen, G and I cooked up two of my favorite things this weekend:

- mushroom risotto
- sweet potato soup with nutmeg and maple syrup

we used maitake mushrooms and added a bunch of spinach, cut into ribbons, at the final stretch. usually I prefer pecorino but we used parm this time around. risotto is all about tender, painstakingly slow addition of stock, so it's a labor of love but So worth it. you can sub whole milk for the cream and the texture is still fantastic.

For the soup, with last time's episode fresh in mind, I let it cool before blending. this was a mistake, as the starchy, fibrous sweet potatoes become too gummy to blend easily. so, I recommend blending this one hot, in smallish batches. upping the amount of spices doesnt hurt either.

these two dishes are real champs at fighting the gloom of cold, rainy days.