if we ever get outta here
apple baked goods and multiple brassicas
Time is fake, but it’s still hard to believe we’re only/already two weeks into January. Christmas was only three weeks ago, somehow, and yet the knowledge that Trogdor is 18 years old has ruined my life? So many ~events~ have been packed into such a short period that we barely have time to learn about them before something else completely deranged pops up. And any twitter user knows the feeling of watching something you saw three days ago start to make the rounds on instagram and facebook, or having your mom send a meme in the group chat about something that left your feed at the start of the week so you’ve completely stopped thinking about it (not my mom though, my mom is cool).
In no way am I saying this is a healthy way to live, but it can have its benefits: a meal I made a mere eight days ago feels so far in the past that I can make it again thinking, “oh yeah! That was good!” instead of “ugh, didn’t I just have this?” I’m not the kind of person who can make a big pot of soup and eat it for lunches all week— I will eat something once for dinner and twice for lunch before I refuse to look at it again— so it’s sometimes a struggle to come up with things that feel both rewarding to make and interesting to eat (and for you to read about). It’s a mixed blessing in times like these, when I am saved from having to be creative by the general chaos of the world around me. Nevertheless, amid dinners recycled from previous weeks, I still managed to cook up a couple of exciting things.
A massive cauliflower showed up in my produce bin, so I tried out another Melissa Clark hit: roasted cauliflower with pancetta and parmesan in olive dressing. Roasting is clearly the best way to eat cauliflower, and it works super well with lemon in general, so I was excited for the results. Happily, the part of this recipe that takes the most time is chopping a vegetable of such enormity, and the rest comes together really easily while it’s in the oven. I made the dressing in a mini food processor, adding lemon zest to increase the lemon flavour without increasing the acidity. I also shredded too much cabbage for tacos over the weekend, so I threw that in the baking pan at the same time as the pancetta. The recipe doesn’t specify which type of olives, presumably because it doesn’t especially matter, but castelvetrano olives worked perfectly (though this may just be because they’re my favourite olive).
This was spectacularly tasty— salty, tart, smoky, and with delightful crisp bits of cheese and pancetta, and caramelized notes from the cabbage and cauliflower. It did have more of an appetizer vibe, though, despite the notes saying it can serve as a main dish. We had it on top of some leftover quinoa which helped flesh it out a bit, and I’m sure it would also be good with pasta or as a side for another protein. If you don’t eat meat, there are plenty of people in the comments saying it was perfectly delicious without, and one commenter saying they used chopped sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts instead, with smoked paprika in dressing… I’d be willing to give that one a shot.
I don’t often share the workhorse meals of our household, the stuff I make all the time that’s merely a tasty way to eat something healthy and filling, but it’s important to have things like this: dishes you’re familiar enough with that you can make them on autopilot and yet still enjoy eating the result. Many of these come from the “bowls” chapter of Isa Does It— which I’ve mentioned I probably come back to more than a lot of other cookbooks— because a bowl is only as good as the sauce you put on top of it, and all hers are incredible. Miso tahini sauce, kalamata olive hummus, lentil gravy, cucumber ranch, and the absolute king: curried peanut sauce.
I apologize to any readers that have peanut allergies, because you can never understand the joy of this spicy, creamy, salty gift. The bowl base in the recipe is brown rice with steamed kale and pan-fried tofu, which is a bit boring on its own, but I’ve always tossed some broccoli in with the tofu about halfway through cooking, which breaks up the monotony of the texture, and as a bonus adds more nice charred bits too. I also never bother steaming kale separately, I just throw it on top of everything in the pan at the end and put the lid on; if it doesn’t want to fit, I’ll make it fit (fun fact about me, I think this in this voice at least once per day). Anyway, nothing can make me say, “wow, I love vegetables” quite like smothering them in large amounts of peanut sauce, which is probably why I’ve made this so many times I don’t even bring the book out for it anymore.
Because I keep accidentally getting more apples when we still had apples in the fridge, I now have approximately 300 honeycrisp apples that are a bit sour for just eating, so some apple-based baking was necessary. I made this vegan apple pie bread from Rabbits & Wolves, which was easy and quick. It was slightly annoying that the recipe uses ‘apple pie spice’, which, if you don’t buy pre-mixed spice blends, doesn’t really tell you much. I chose mostly cinnamon with dashes of ginger, allspice, and cardamom, since that’s what I tend to use in apple pies. Also I am here to tell you that if you don’t want to use up your precious maple syrup in baking, sugar will work fine— I did half of each, because I’m low on maple syrup but still wanted the maple flavour.
I think the Chloe Coscarelli Italian apple cake (sadly no longer on her website, but a memory of it exists on the Wayback Machine) still reigns supreme in my apple baked good rankings, but this is a nice middle ground between a banana bread and an apple cake, and I will be happily eating it all week. Yes, I put butter on it, and I regret nothing.
Other foods from this week include a fabulous bee sting pizza (inspired by one from a local pizza joint) using my new hot honey, kimchi & mushroom fried rice with too much ginger (whoops), and Smitten Kitchen’s classic 10-minute black bean & feta tacos (I recommend adding hot sauce when you mash the beans).
Media:
With prison and the food within it being an almost unavoidable subject this week, reading Samin Nosrat’s writing about Earlonne Woods and what it’s like to cook for yourself in prison felt pertinent. Woods, who was incarcerated for 27 years, describes a dish of chicken and rice he would make using bouillon cubes or ramen seasoning, instant rice, and chicken legs acquired through his kitchen hookups. She set out to help create a version for him to make now that he is free that would connect his creation of it with home kitchen techniques and ingredients.
“Prison dehumanizes the incarcerated in part by denying them so many of the sensory experiences of life, including the small, essential delights we take for granted when we cook.”
The people who are upset that the idiotic white shaman gained a court order to be fed organic food in prison are upset because this is not a privilege given to other incarcerated people: Muslim detainees were fed pork by ICE, Jewish protestors arrested and told to pick the ham off their sandwiches, people with serious allergies left to suffer the effects. Historically, other prisoners have not received a fraction of the concessions currently being made for a white terrorist, and have instead been forced to compromise their values or create meals from canteen products they purchased with their own money, as Woods and others did. If prison is about rehabilitation and not punishment, as people like to say, then there is no reason why prisoners should not be able to eat good food or be given the resources to make it themselves.
On a somewhat lighter note, I found the infographic site Know Your Alcohol, aimed at increasing transparency and sustainability in the alcohol industry, pretty interesting. The point that foods are required to list everything that goes into them while alcohols are not is a good one; it’s always been a bit odd that so many of us scrutinize what’s on our food labels but don’t care a bit what goes into our booze. We can see this changing somewhat with small-scale and craft distilleries, who are proud to tell us how their products are made and what’s in them, but there’s still a lot we don’t know. Additionally, I found the graphic showcasing what conglomerates own what brands fascinating— people do tend to have brand allegiances, but really it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Maker’s Mark guy or a Knob Creek guy, the money is still going into the pockets of the Suntory company.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! Because life is suffering, here is the most cursed chicken noodle soup I have ever seen. And as an antidote, a graphic designer who uh, forgot to finish their job.