One Great . . . seafood chowder

Gray, damp and drizzly. Is there a better time than January for a good bowl of chowder? After the holiday party-food sales, I still had a container of crab and a bag of shrimp in the freezer, just waiting for a night that begged for something cozy.

I found this very popular recipe on allrecipes.com and made a few changes, dropping the original servings from 10 to 4, and simplifying some of the ingredients. The seafood is adaptable too: Thaw and peel a handful of shrimp and skip the crab, use crab only, or replace both of them with a chunks of firm fish, such as mahi mahi or even frozen wild salmon.

Corn and Crab Chowder

Adapted from www.allrecipes.com.

2 slices bacon
2 teaspoons butter plus 1/4 cup butter, divided
1/2 onion, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons white wine
1/2 teaspoon each dried basil and thyme
Pinch cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons Old Bay
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1 to 2 large potatoes, such as russets or Yukon Gold, peeled and diced
3 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup half-and-half
6 to 8 ounces peeled, deveined shrimp (rinsed to thaw if frozen)
6 ounces crabmeat, shell pieces removed

Place the bacon in a skillet and cook over medium-high heat, turning, until browned. Remove to a paper towel, cool, crumble and set aside.

Heat butter in a large Dutch oven or deep pot over medium heat. Stir in onion and celery and cook about 10 minutes, until onion is softened and translucent. Add garlic for the last minute or two.

Pour in the wine and bring to a simmer. Season with the basil, thyme, cayenne, Worcestershire and Old Bay. Add the corn and potatoes, then pour in the chicken stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer 10 minutes.

Melt 1/4 cup butter in a small saucepan while soup is simmering. Stir in the 1/4 cup flour and cook, stirring constantly, until flour has turned the color of peanut butter (be careful not to let it burn). Stir into the soup and add the cream, half-and-half, crumbled bacon and shrimp. Simmer about 10 minutes, until the shrimp are cooked through, the potatoes are tender and the soup has thickened. Stir in the crab meat. Taste and adjust seasoning and serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

One Great . . . side dish

January is named for the god with two faces, Janus. I'll take that as a cue to take a second look at collards. Last week, I offered an easy version of the traditional Southern good-luck foods - collards, black-eyed peas and ham hocks - cooked into a simple soup.

Collards are still piled on tables at farmer's markets and in supermarkets. That's a good reason to remember that you don't have to cook collards for hours with lots of pork seasoning. They can take a faster, more healthful treatment, too. One of the new cookbooks that landed on my desk over the holiday break is "Everyday Food Light," from the editors of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine. All the recipes have less than 500 calories a serving. I found this in the section on winter side dishes. It's fast, flavorful and affordable - definitely worth making more than once.

Sauteed Collards With Almonds and Raisins

From "Everyday Food Light."

1/4 cup slivered almonds
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/4 pounds collard greens (about 2 bunches), stalks removed, leaves sliced crosswise
1/2 cup raisins
2 teaspoons white-wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread almonds on a rimmed baking sheet and toast until golden, about 8 minutes, tossing halfway through. Watch carefully to keep them from burning.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat while almonds are toasting. Add collards and raisins. Cook, tossing occasionally, until collards are tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from ehat and stir in vinegar. Sprinkle with almonds and serve.

Yield: 4 servings. Per serving: 168 calories, 4.4g protein, 22.7g carbohydrates, 8.1g fat (0.8g saturated), 4.5g fiber.

Cookbook Giveaway: Send your side dishes

We spend so much time (or, OK, on a weeknight, maybe not so much time) coming up with main dishes. All our meal planning tends to get focused on entrees, and the side dishes just end up being a salad or a frozen vegetables tossed in simmering water.

We need 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. If we fall into the trap of the same old simmered side dishes, we're cutting ourselves short on getting some of the best nutrients we get all day. But who has time to put together a complicated side-dish recipe for a weeknight meal?

There's where the side dish staples come in. Stuff you can keep on hand and throw together without thinking about it.

You know where they do great side dishes like that? Italy. All those antipastos are really just small side dishes that you eat before you get to the main course. Looking through Mario Batali's new book, "Molto Gusto: Easy Italian Cooking," I kept noticing all the small but great ideas for vegetable dishes.

For this week's cookbook giveaway, I have a copy of "Molto Gusto." To get in the drawing, post your name here and include a short description of your favorite fall-back side dish, something fast and simple to put together on a weeknight. Deadline: Friday. Check back to see who won, and see what great ideas for side dishes we get.

To get you in the mood, here's a recipe from Batali's book. I bet it would work even better with frozen peas, rinsed under a colander to thaw them.

Spring Peas With Mint

From "Molto Gusto," by Mario Batali.

2 cups fresh (or frozen, thawed) peas

1 medium red onion, cut into dice about the size of the peas

About 1/4 to 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, torn into 2 or 3 pieces each

1/4 cup red wine vinaigrette (your own, or a good bottled one)

Maldon or other flaky sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Combine the peas, onion and mint in a medium bowl and toss with vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper and serve, or let stand up to 1 hour to bring out the flavors. Can be refrigerated for up to a day; bring to room temperature before serving.

Something to cook: Friday night

The rain has finally pulled out, but it's still looking gray out there. Here's a simple supper that you could do with a quick supermarket stop, adapted from Cooking Light's new book, "Cooking Light: Way to Cook." If you've got milk, bacon and onions at home, you could even use the 10-items-or-less lane:

New England Clam Chowder
4 (6.5-ounce) cans chopped clams, undrained
2 (8-ounce) bottles clam juice
4 strips bacon
1 cup each chopped onion and celery
1 clove garlic, minced
3 cups cubed red potato (about 5 or 6 medium)
1/2 teaspoon dried or 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups reduced-fat milk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup half-and-half
Drain the clams through a colander over a bowl, saving the liquid. Combine clam liquid and clam juice.
Cook the bacon in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and drain all but 2 teaspoons of the drippings. Crumble bacon and set aside.
Add onion, celery and garlic to pan and saute about 8 minutes. Add clam juice mixure, potato, thyme and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
Combine milk and flour, stirring together until smooth. Stir into the soup. Stir in the clams and half-and-half. Cook 5 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the bacon.
Makes 8 servings.

Thursday night supper club

If your refrigerator is starting to get empty and the week is wearing you out, you could use a simple meal from stuff you probably have on hand.

I'm not a fan of Rachael Ray's too-cute lingo -- all that "yummo" leaves me yawn-o -- but her recipes are simple with solid flavors. I found this one in her newest book, "Rachael Ray's Book of 10" (Clarkson Potter, $20) and liked it because it's so adaptable. You could change the pasta, swap Canadian bacon for almost anything (bacon, proscuitto, slices of chicken sausage) or skip the meat all together, and trade out the Parmesan for any grated white cheese, such as part-skim mozzerella. Even the flat-leaf parsley is skippable.

Walnuts, Ham and Cheese
1 pound bow-tie pasta
1/2 cup walnuts, finely chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
10 slices Canadian bacon or breakfast ham, cut into thin strips
2 large cloves garlic,. chopped
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup freshly flat-leaf parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus extra for serving
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add a little salt and the pasta. Cook according to package directions, stirring occasionally so the pasta doesn't stick. Set aside 1 cup pasta cooking water, then drain the pasta and set aside.

Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, add the walnuts and toast them for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Return the skillet to the heat and add the olive oil and the Canadian bacon, cooked 3 to 5 minutes or until it just starts to brown. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook about 1 minute. Add the reserved pasta cooking water and cook until reduced by half. Add the drained pasta, toasted walnuts, lemon juice and parsley, tossing to coat the noodles with all the ingredients. Cook a couple of minutes, until the pasta has soaked up almost all the liquid.

Remove from heat, add the butter and grated cheese and toss until the butter is melted. Serve with extra grated cheese on the side.