Recipe: Linguine with orange and anchovy sauce

This year, I’m going for a different approach to winter food.

I like hearty stews, sort of. They do bring consolation to the cold and the dark. But hunks of long-cooked meat and potatoes are heavy at a time when everything else feels heavy -- jackets, blankets, boots. My sun-deprived heart. Stews are a make-life-in-the-cave-tolerable approach to nourishment.

But truth is, as much as I want to be a noble New Englander, snowing stomping and all cute in L.L. Bean, that ain’t me. I don’t want dark, heavy comfort, I want out of the cave. Period.

Here is a recipe that works magic for me. It has all the warm-your-bones richness that you want from winter food. But it offers sunshine, lush, soak-in-it sunshine. A closed-eyes smile. A memory of better times moving through you. Warmth that dances, that carries light.

I’ve been rereading my cookbooks with a new resolve to actually follow the recipes, and this is my first success. The directions do what good recipes should --take me someplace I couldn’t go on my own.

I’ve never made nor tasted anything like this sauce.

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Real Ramen at Sushi Tei

It snowed. In October. Which meant the weekend found me doing the following things in no particular order. Cussing. Looking for cheap tickets to California. Cussing. Staring out the window and hoping a tree wasn't going to crash on my roof. Cussing. Admiring the snow, which really was pretty. Buying hot chocolate and cheering my kids who were to first to reach the sledding slopes. Pretending I was not cussing and not thinking about California. Cussing. And dreaming of ramen.

I recently discovered that Sushi Tei has added shoyu ramen to the menu. It was my first thought when I saw the snow. SUSHI TEI. RAMEN. NOW.

I once spent a winter in Hokkaido, Japan where it was regularly 10-plus degrees below zero. And that was before the wind chill. By mid-winter, the sidewalks were lined with vertical walls of snow that reached several inches over my head. I walked the two plus miles to work. (And, yes, dear children, it was uphill both ways.)

It was there in Hokkaido, stomping the ice from my boots, unwrapping from three, maybe four layers of clothes, and wiping the frost from my eyelashes, that I learned about the sweet refuge of noodle shops. Small places. A stool at the counter if I was lucky. Conversation. And broth that could translate all the comfort to my bones.

There was a man only a few blocks from my office who rolled and cut udon on a large table just the other side of his noodle bar. Once a week or so, I watched his ropy arms, listened to his stories, and slurped down whatever he put in front of me. One day he plunked several pieces of molten mochi on top of the thick, chewy noodles, and for at least a few moments I convinced myself that all the cold in the world might indeed be justified if it led to the warmth in his shop.

For udon, I was loyal to this man. But for ramen, I made a full tour of my town. Shoyu ramen. Miso ramen. Ramen from the Chinese shop, which was twice the size of a normal Japanese serving and heaped with steamed vegetables.

Miso ramen – a Hokkaido specialty – was my favorite. But I loved them all. I’m hoping Sushi Tei adds miso ramen soon, but I am more than pleased to have found a local shop that makes any kind of real Japanese ramen.

So how is it? Pretty good.

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Chiang Mai Grilled Chicken

By most measures this was a rough summer. I spent a lot of it alternating between staring at my ceiling and staring at my TV as I recovered from surgery. There was a lot of pain. There were a lot of pain pills. There were few thoughts and no writing. At any given moment, the voices of my children seemed both too loud and too far away.

But I spent these dark hours surrounded by love – much of it edible. My family and closest friends took turns living with us, filling my house with laughter and comfort. One night my brother rescued a package of liver from the bottom of my freezer with a certain glee known only to people of my blood. He made my mom’s liver and onions, and I knew there was some pocket of the universe where I truly belonged and where no explanations were needed.

My larger community organized a meal train so that dinner arrived several nights a week for a good part of the summer. It was overwhelming to feel surrounded by the tangible care of so many people. I could spend the rest of my life cooking for others and never make a dent in my karmic debt.

Now, as the ugly parts of healing fade to a half-remembered haze, I find that my mind has reframed the experience as "the summer of other people’s cooking.”

Let me tell you about one of the best days.

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