pride & prejudice
grilling time, tomato things, and family dinners
Hello again, and happy Pride Month! First, a heads up that this post has a bunch of photos and may be cut off in your email, in which case you’ll need to click through to see the end. Apologies for another unscheduled break. The week of the stat holiday was abnormally busy and had me feeling like this the whole time:
I have since healed after a fairly chill weekend of knitting and reading in my backyard, but it was definitely a lot more socializing and running around than I’m used to. We spent part of the long weekend in Bellingham visiting with Jeff’s family— my literal first time crossing the border since the Obama era. His cousins hosted a little get-together at their place in the afternoon and we had some delicious takeout tamales from a local place for lunch, with sides of beans and rice and chips and salsas, of course. For dinner, we went for Thai in the Fairhaven neighbourhood— Bellingham’s old town— and followed it up with gelato a few doors down. It was a little too windy to properly enjoy gelato outside, but the roasted pistachio flavour was amazing.
On the way back to the border, I was excited to stop at Trader Joe’s— the licence plates in the parking lot of the Bellingham location are always at least 50% BC-ers who are there stocking up on snacks either for their road trip or to take home with them. My main mission was to acquire more of their soy chorizo; it’s gluten-free, tastes amazing, and is great for when you want a crumbly meat replacement rather than a full sausage or slices. I won’t detail all the other treats we brought home, but I will say it is impressive that we managed to leave there having only spent around $50US, and that I wish I had bought a second bag of the peanut butter-filled pretzels.
It was Jeff’s birthday last Monday, and when we got back from the states we walked to Beere and House of Funk to celebrate with a round at each. We also went out for a couple of meals while Jeff’s dad was in town: Orto for pasta on the Friday prior, and Farina a Legna for pizza on the Monday. The pasta features at Orto are always excellent, and I usually can’t resist the pillowy soft gnocchi, but I really had a craving for carbonara this time and it did not disappoint. At the pizza place we usually gravitate toward the finocchiona, because fennel sausage and provolone is an unstoppable combo. After dinner we walked down to Earnest for ice cream, which felt like the perfect finish to the long weekend (I got whiskey hazelnut).
I went out for a work dinner at Jamjar, which I hadn’t been to in a long time, apparently, since I was unaware they’d moved a few doors down on Commercial Drive. I think the space used to be a burger joint, but it’s much larger than their old space and is nice and open. Anyway, getting to eat bites of many different things is one of my favourite types of dinners, so it’s great to go to a place like this with a big group, because it means you can order more things! My favourites were the muttabel (like baba ganouj, I’m not sure if they’re different or just different names for the same thing), the labneh with mint and honey, and the marinated beet salad with pistachios. The fried cauliflower is also excellent, but Nuba has really cornered the market on that one— no other can quite compare.
This past Sunday we cancelled the cookoff due to various scheduling conflicts and general agonies, and instead Jeff and I went out to dinner with Liang and Tim in Chinatown. We wanted to go to Sai Woo, but didn’t realise they were closed on Sundays, so we went to Pizza Coming Soon, which does not serve pizza, but rather an assortment of Japanese-inspired snacks. They have all-day happy hour on Sunday, and I really enjoyed the wing flavours we tried (you can get chicken or fried cauliflower with any of the sauces) and the okonomi fries.
Afterwards we went to the Keefer Bar, since Jeff and I had never been. It’s very cool inside, and although the drinks are on the pricier side, the entire menu is immaculate (I do wish for a real menu rather than a QR code, though). I had the Skeleton’s Kiss, a pisco and mezcal-based drink with pineapple and rose, and loved it. We also ordered the soup dumplings, and I could easily have eaten way more of them. After two rounds we headed out to save our wallets, but we were having such a nice time that we ended up having a nightcap at Liang and Tim’s apartment, chatting until Jeff and I were in danger of missing the last seabus home.
The only thing of note that I cooked during my week of chaos was a baked pasta that was made specifically to use up an opened package of fresh mozzarella— we weren’t planning to make more pizza before it was liable to dry out in the fridge. But I used the idea of margherita pizza as a guide: blistered grape tomatoes with basil pesto, and torn pieces of the mozza both mixed in and scattered over the top. Assuming you already have pesto in a jar or your freezer, this is easy and quick to make, as well as very tasty and more summery than you’d expect a baked pasta to be.
While the noodles are cooking, turn an oven-safe pan to medium-high and blister the tomatoes (halved) with chili flakes and salt for a few minutes. Don’t cook them down too much— you want them to continue to soften in the oven to keep the pesto from drying out. Off the heat, add a generous amount of pesto (I used about half a cup for a pint of tomatoes and 250g of dry pasta) to the pan and some pasta water to thin. Stir in the noodles and some pieces of mozza, adding more pasta water as needed to get the consistency you want. Scatter more of the mozza on top and bake 12-15 minutes at 400°F, until the tomatoes have cooked down and the cheese is bubbling and brown (broil 1-2 minutes if needed). Garnish the top with more fresh basil when it comes out of the oven.
I’ve returned to this wonderful baked feta & chickpea dish with tomatoes, which I made so often last summer. Local hot house tomatoes are just starting to show up again, and I’m always excited to find the little pints on sale where you get two for three dollars or something like that. I usually add a shallot to this in addition to the garlic, and we have so much fresh oregano in the garden right now, so I’m putting it in basically everything. And Jeff went up to Amir Bakery to get some taftoon, which was fresh out of the oven and so soft and perfect. I’ve written about this recipe a lot in the past, so I’ll just say that you should definitely make it at least once this summer. If you don’t eat feta, you can make a good version of it by marinating some medium-firm tofu instead.
In other tomato news, we were accidentally sent two pounds of tomatoes on the vine in our produce bin instead of one, so I knew I probably had to make a sauce or something out of them. We had an eggplant, too, and I decided to grill it for pasta alla norma. Traditionally, the eggplant for this is pan-fried in plenty of oil, but something I won’t keep secret is that I hate frying eggplant. It never comes out the texture I want and it never all fits in the pan at once… no thanks. I decided to brush with oil and do it on the grill, like I do for this pasta salad.
Unfortunately, when I cut open the eggplant, it was nasty inside and I had to throw it away. C’est la vie. And I was so proud of myself for not taking ten minutes to get the barbecue lit, too. I made a pretty good tomato sauce anyways, sort of a loose marinara— chopped tomatoes instead of puréed, cooked down with lots of oregano and basil from the garden, olive oil, and some pecorino to finish. I’ll be honest, though, if I’d known about the eggplant ahead of time, I probably would have just made the chickpea thing again to eat with our fresh loaf of bread, instead.
I’m happy that rhubarb season is upon us, as it will force me into making pie, something I’ve been too lazy to do for awhile. My sister Alice is leaving soon for another work program at Epcot, since her previous one was cut short in 2020, so my mom hosted a barbecue earlier this week so we could all get together. I was planning to make an apple rhubarb pie, but there were too many of us for a single pie. Instead, we just doubled the filling and made the cobbler topping Jeff usually uses with peaches later in the summer. It was my mom’s suggestion to make it in the lasagna pan, after I wearily offered to make two pies. It honestly wouldn’t have occurred to me, because a pie that isn’t round is ugly, but my mom is used to feeding an army, so our minds operate differently. Anyway, I didn’t take a photo of it, because it was indeed not much to look at, but we didn’t go home with any leftovers so we must have done well.
The rest of the barbecue was standard fare: burgers and smokies and their vegan counterparts, several delicious salads (arugula with watermelon and feta, a southwest one with black beans, and potato salad), and a wide assortment of potato chips. My mom and stepdad also recently got one of those propane fire pits for their patio, and it enabled us to sit outside long after it got cold, until we decided it was probably rude to continue annoying the neighbours with music in the yard on a weeknight, and went in to sit at the table talking and eating chips until nearly 1am. We did make some s’mores over the fire, though, and I indulged in my semi-yearly ritual of ‘taste one marshmallow to see if I still think they’re a crime against man’ (I do).
At home I did some grilling, too. I forgot about some tempeh I took out of the freezer, so I tossed it in a little barbecue sauce, soy sauce, and hot sauce and let it sit while I prepped the grill and the other vegetables. The garlic-salted potatoes in the cast iron turned out so nice last time that I did them that way again, and at Pizza Coming Soon we had grilled radicchio with a caper vinaigrette which made me think I should grill the radicchio in my own fridge. I just cut them into quarters and brushed with oil, then chopped them up roughly and mixed them with some green lettuces for a caesar-esque salad, using some of the vegan caesar dressing we made the other week.
The tempeh came out alarmingly blackened due to the sugars in the barbecue sauce, but it tasted amazing, and the potatoes and salad were perfect too, a nice balance of salty and acidic against the sweet and spicy tempeh. I’m still praying we get some of the usual June-uary rain, but in the meantime, I don’t mind throwing everything I can onto the barbecue and enjoying dinner in the backyard more often than not.
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. Lastly, I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on in the basketball playoffs, but I do enjoy a good old-fashioned flame war, so, you know, there’s that.