Chocolate and beets are a natural pair. The earthiness of the beets contrasts with the richness and sweetness of chocolate. The milk chocolate frosting on this cake is laced with orange zest—orange tastes great with both chocolate and beets.
Recipes
Milk-Braised Chicken Legs with Spiced Rice
Milk may not seem a likely braising liquid, but it works beautifully, tenderizing the meat and combining with the chicken juices and spices to create the sauce. You can brown the meat in advance, assemble the braise and refrigerate it, then pop it into the oven just before you want to eat; in under an hour you’ll have a comforting main course that’s perfect for a snowy evening.
Chumley’s Chaplin Cocktail
Chumley’s mixologist looked to cocktail history and added a dash of whimsy when naming her drinks. Think old times and bootlegging meets Mad Men. In his 1917 film, The Adventurer, Charlie Chaplin makes himself a strong cocktail: he sprays soda water into a bottle of whiskey and drinks it, only to spill it later.
The Blue Bar’s Dorothy Parker Cocktail
The Algonquin’s Blue Bar would be remiss if it didn’t serve a cocktail named after Dottie. The Blue Bar takes its name from its blue lighting, a recommendation by actor John Barrymore.
The Old Cuban from Bemelmans Bar
Given that Hemingway lived in Cuba for 20 years, you could commemorate Ludwig Bemelmans and Papa’s family ties and creativity with an Old Cuban, one of the bar’s most popular drinks. When mixologist Audrey Saunders created this cocktail in a New York bar in 2002, it became a contemporary classic.
Faith’s Hearty Curried Lentil Vegetable Soup
This is one of Faith’s favorite go-to soup-as-a-meal recipes. She prefers red lentils, simply because she finds them beautiful, but you could use brown lentils if that’s what you have or what you like. As a last step, she uses an immersion blender to thicken the soup, but you don’t have to if you like the texture of the plump cooked lentils as they are.
