deadbeat club

sweet & salty cookies and hastily made tomato dinners

Normally the week leading up to this long weekend is filled with people frantically trying to book a campsite, or get a reservation on the ferry, but since we aren’t supposed to be going anywhere outside of our own communities, it doesn’t quite hit the same. Even though I very rarely travel anywhere for the May long weekend, it does usually mark the start of my excitement for summer plans— barbecues with friends, beach weather, Okanagan wine tour, a BC road trip or two— but since things are still so uncertain, it just feels like… one less day we have to go to work, I guess.

However, it is hard to deny the pull the warmer weather’s been having on our spirits. Last weekend we spent lots of time outside gardening, finally getting some tomatoes into the ground, and making use of a large wooden planter box for squash. I also pulled out a few radishes that were starting to get crowded; the seeds I bought were an heirloom variety which produces several colours— they’re beautiful! And I spent Sunday afternoon sitting on the patio drinking a beer and reading most of a novel, which feels like the absolute height of luxury, before lazily grilling some veggie burgers and romaine for dinner. If delightful garden vegetables, grilling burgers, and hanging out on the patio turn out to be the main things I have to look forward to this summer, I suppose it could be worse.

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Mondays are usually my most difficult cooking day. I often haven’t finished planning meals for the week, so I’ll come home from work at 5pm and be trying to figure out what to make that night as well as what to make the rest of the week, so it often ends up being pasta, which I can get going quickly and without thinking about it too hard. This week was no exception, as I pulled out all the things that needed to be used up to hopefully concoct them into something quick to make and not boring to eat. I had 3 thin slices of capocollo left from making pizza, not really enough to do anything else with, so I began by frying them up to use as a garnish. (Aside: it was just this week, while double-checking the spelling of ‘capocollo’, that I learned it is sometimes called ‘gabagool’ in the US. I had no idea where all the jokes came from until now.)

Taking inspiration from this cherry tomato recipe, after cooking the meat I fried some garlic slices, pepper flakes, and a bit of tomato paste in the same pan, and deglazed with wine so the paste didn’t burn. I’ve had that happen before, and it results in the most bitter sauce you’ve ever tasted— do not recommend. Then I added a pint of slightly wrinkly grape tomatoes to burst in the pan along with the last of a bunch of basil from the previous week, and some pasta water to help create a less acidic sauce. This weekend I’d done some thinning of things in the garden, so when the sauce was almost done, I threw in a big handful of baby arugula to wilt. The result was a deep but still bright tomato flavour with a light bitterness from the arugula, and salty, crispy crumbles of capocollo to complement (if you don’t eat meat, fried capers as in the original recipe would do well). Orecchiette worked nicely here to pick up pockets of sauce, but I imagine most other short noodles would be fine, too.

As I was coming home on what had been a beautiful sunny day, a few raindrops started hitting the windshield about a block away from my house. By the time I was in the driveway, I had to run to the door to avoid getting drenched, so it seemed my grilling plans for the evening were out. Instead, I made a soup from Ottolenghi’s SIMPLE that’s been a perennial favourite since I got the book: curried red lentil & tomato with coconut. Tomato soup is prime comfort food for me, and it is known that adding curry to almost any soup instantly makes it extra appealing. The lentils give the soup a little more substance and make it feel like a meal instead of a side. This uses fire-roasted canned tomatoes, so as long as you have onions, ginger, and cilantro, it’s easy to make with pantry ingredients (perfect for when you were planning to make something else and haven’t gone to the grocery store).

The recipe isn’t blended, but I just prefer soups that are, so I generally blast it with the immersion blender at the end for a smooth texture. You can also add the full can of coconut milk directly to the soup if you don’t want to futz around with garnish, but it is nice to add a little extra fat to balance the heat. I also love that this recipe uses cilantro stems as well as the leaves, giving it a fresh, spring-like feel behind the roasted tomato and rich coconut milk (and don’t skip the lime juice). Grilled cheese and tomato soup is obviously the perfect combo, so to go with it, I made sandwiches on sourdough with aged cheddar and some of the pickled jalapeño I made in the fall. This was a spicy and wonderfully satisfying dinner, and I forgot all about the thing I’d originally intended to make.

For months I’ve been looking at this recipe (paywall-free here) for miso-peanut butter cookies whenever I’ve felt like making cookies, and then giving up after scanning through because it requires a refrigeration step. If I’m making cookies, it’s usually because I want to be eating them as soon as possible, so something requiring me to wait another 2-12 hours for dough to chill is simply out of the question. However, on a day when I was up early and home all day, it meant I could get the dough going before lunch and have them in the oven in the early afternoon, which seemed like less of a trial. I used canola oil because my butter was still frozen, and only had genmai miso instead of shiro so I swapped the measurement with that of the peanut butter for fear of the dough ending up too salty (it wasn’t). With a little elbow grease, you can also make this without using a stand mixer— I used my hands to mix in the second addition of flour.

If you, like me, barely have room in your fridge for the food that’s already in there, let alone two sheets of cookie dough, just cram in the bowl of dough before forming the cookies and chill for a slightly shorter time (so the dough isn’t too difficult to form), and then scoop out and bake. This worked for me and didn’t require precariously balancing a sheet of cookie dough on top of a tetra-pak of oat milk and two jars of olives. The step of slamming the baking sheets onto the counter partway through baking seemed kind of intense, but it was pretty fun and did result in nice crinkles across the tops of the cookies. They came out a touch dark on the bottom for me, but I forgot to rotate the pans, so that could be it.

I love a salted baked good so this was fantastic— sweet and lightly salty, and with a great crisp-chewy texture. There were a lot of people commenting that these were too sweet, and I didn’t find that, despite using the full amount of sugar in the recipe. I think the culprit is probably commercial brands of emulsified peanut butter, which are often already sweetened. If you aren’t using natural peanut butter, be careful with the salt and sugar content: your cookies could end up overly sweet or salty if those elements are already in your peanut butter. Mine had neither, so I definitely will make these again using the original amount of miso in the recipe, because I think they could stand a little more salt!

Also this week I made the mustard potato salad again, this time with hot sauce-marinated baked tofu, after we finally found extra-firm tofu at the store. But you know what? I think I prefer firm tofu now. And I used my favourite ginger-sesame marinade on some more tofu to go with a stir-fry of shiitakes and red cabbage in sweet chili sauce, which I liked much more than I expected to (I expected “food”, and what I got was “delicious food”). So I’m glad I now simultaneously have a new cabbage recipe and a new sweet chili sauce recipe up my sleeve.

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Media:
This time of year, when all my Ontario and New England pals are posting their ramps-related content, I feel very “I don’t have a room, I sleep in the hall, remember?!” about it, because I don’t have even the slightest idea what ramps taste like— they simply don’t exist here. If you too were born and raised on the west coast, you might find this piece on what they are and why they’re so insanely popular to be of interest. I really appreciated the look at the effects of the soaring demand for a foraged item, like overharvesting, sustainability, and skyrocketing prices which do not result in gains for the communities from which the ramps were foraged. These issues appear with along with almost any food fad, and it is always necessary to look at solutions, even if that means less availability for the consumer.

Additionally, the arrival of High on the Hog to Netflix is highly anticipated, and I enjoyed reading this article by Osayi Endolyn about its significance. So much of food media, and indeed food culture, is rooted in and marketed around whiteness, so it’s exciting to see that (finally) beginning to shift in real time. The author expresses her gratitude that the show gives Black stories and viewers the recognition and space they deserve without commodifying hardship:

“It hits the eye, mind and soul differently than any other food television program, because it simply does what so few have been willing to do: give Black people space to explore and express our own joy. […] I’m thankful that the structural white gaze in the entertainment industry didn’t disrupt the vision of this project, which is soulfully linked to Black people, but is expansive enough to invite all viewers to take part.”

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Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. Finally, if you’re of European descent, it’s important to know where you stand.