Winter food

I'm not eating raspberries from Peru, nor weirdly early asparagus. Too much fuel. You know when you pick a fresh tomato, sometimes there are soft spots. That's OK, you don't notice or cut them out. Well, canned tomatos are available whole, peeled and really smelling and tasting wonderful in the winter. If you drain and seed them and remove any stem parts they are really very sweet flesh. Mushrooms are either your frozen or dried morels from springs past or you live in a different winter climate than New England. We can get the portabello easily. When sauteed in oil or butter they turn rich walnut brown and taste of the earth.

Well, I would like to thank Jake Levin and Stephan Reynard for pointing me in the right direction. Both the terrine (tomato, artichoke, and mushroom) and the leeks (browned then braised until meltingly soft) were part of dinner Sunday.

The terrines of Stephan Reynard are just worthy of Fauchon (for which you must travel very far to visit), or ecstasy (which requires little travel but a smattering of consciousness). Really inspirational and simple terrines. Really outside of the conventional terrine and pate. They're good too, but the others are just magnificent. People really love looking at the too so a double bounce when it's served.