Cozy Indoors: 5 Cooking Projects for Snow Days

Along with many of you, we stayed inside most of this past weekend watching the snow fall past our windows. As usually happens on such occasions, we eventually found ourselves in the kitchen flipping through cookbooks. Snow days are perfect for attempting a new recipe!

If we know a storm is coming, we can stock up on key ingredients ahead of time, of course. But even if we find ourselves short a few ingredients, we can usually come up with something to make! Any excuse to turn on the oven will do.

1. Bread - The super easy no-knead bread is great for our weekly loaves, but sometimes we like to mix things up with a carefully crafted loaf of artisan bread. Kneading the dough, waiting for it to rise, and setting the finished loaf in the oven to bake are calming and meditative.

2. Braises - Dig through your freezer and you're bound to find something that can be browned, seasoned, and thrown in the oven to cook for a few hours! Here are a few of our favorite recipes.

3. Gnocchi and Other Pasta - While you're waiting for your braise to finish, why not make a batch of gnocchi to serve alongside? Shaping those little dumplings while watching the snow and keeping cozy next to the stove sounds like an excellent project! If gnocchi's not your style, you can try a batch of regular pasta instead.

4. Macarons - We've been meaning to try our hand at these delicate and notoriously finicky cookies for quite some time. They require a bit more planning than other projects, but the trade off should hopefully be well worth it.

5. Risotto - Whether you think risotto is labor intensive or not, it's a good one to attempt for the first time when you've got a free evening on your hands. It's also a good dish to make if you can get to the store - as long as you have some rice and some broth, you can throw in whatever other ingredients you have on hand.

What projects have you been saving for a snowy afternoon?

(Image: Flickr member clairity licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (13)

This past weekend, I roasted a mustard-rubbed pork loin with red cabbage, onions, garlic, and Granny Smith apples.

I cooked a few pieces of really smoky bacon from a producer in Tennessee, and mixed the bacon into the vegetables, along with brandy, apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of maple syrup. Then I browned the pork loin in some of the bacon fat, rubbed it with brown mustard, and set it on top of the veggies, and roasted everything for a little over an hour.

It was delicious, if I do say so myself.

I don't get snow but on rainy days I love to braise things. Baking is always nice, too, but then I end up eating all of it in a sitting.

Canning, if you froze smashed berries in summer, is also a really nice thing to do on a cold, nasty day.

On really cold days I love the idea of having a pot of something great simmering in the corner. Plus, even just the smell of something cooking seems to warm me up. A recent slow-cooker favorite is this black bean soup: http://appetiteforconversation.blogspot.com/2010/02/dark-and-mysterious.html.

not the most original idea, but my pot of chicken-parsley soup is simmering on the stove right now. tomorrow, when we're supposed to see actual snow here in new york city, i'm planning on making tuscan kale and leek risotto and baking applesauce cake.

I love baking bread on a snow day - this past weekend when we were snowed in I made bagels for the first time (with the recipe from this site!) - they were amazing - Peter Reinhart can do no wrong.... anyways, for this upcoming storm I am making a double batch of bagels and English Muffins. I also love making marshmallows to serve with homemade hot chocolate. Yum!

Homemade chocolate pudding...you know, the kind we made in home ec class in the early 70's. So simple and SO good! Just cornstarch, cocoa, milk, and sugar. The recipe is usually on the cornstarch box.

I am testing out a savory yeast dough to use as a crust for a mushroom tart type thing. It is supposed to be something in between a pizza dough and a pastry. I haven't made anything with yeast for years, so hopefully it will turn out.

It did double as it was supposed to, so that's a good sign. I have to wait until this evening to see how it tastes.

I was tempted to make pizza dough at the same time, but thought I should wait and see how this recipe worked first.

I'm so happy that people living in the mid-Atlantic seem to have enjoyed this snow, slowed down and enjoyed life. I live in Boston area and we are used to snow, but a snowfall on a weekend is certainly a nice opportunity to slow down and enjoy home.

I've been using all of the extra time indoors to make granola to take to work. Yum.

Stuck in the South- no snow here! Just wind and rain outside of my window.

I did, however, make about 3 different types of soup this weekend to store for lunches this month. Hot and sour soup, hearty cheddar potato soup, and artichoke bisque.

I guess it's soup weather all across the States!

A snow day calls for beef stew and hot bread (with some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch!). Enjoy the nesting!

If I hadn't just made the Marcella Hazen Ragu a la Bolognese this past Sunday, I'd be making that today. (I do it with veal, which makes it lighter but still delicious.) (I can't help it, I can't give up veal.)