shut up and play the hits
meals worth repeating, and seeing family again
This past weekend was a good one, and it felt so needed after the dread and suffering surrounding the heat wave the weekend before. I’m still running an undercurrent of despair over the fires and the billions of dead sea creatures, but in between donating money and signing petitions and cyberbullying public officials, I’m trying to keep my spirits up. BC is now in phase three of reopening, and while I do feel it’s a bit soon for the mask mandate to have moved from ‘required’ to ‘recommended’ when so many people have yet to get their second dose of the vaccine, I am cautiously excited about seeing our friends and families again without caveats.
My sister’s birthday was on Saturday, and we had a barbecue in my mom’s backyard. I made pasta salad and we had all the standard grilled fare: veggie skewers, hot dogs and veggie burgers, watermelon, assorted chips, plus a lovely white birthday cake with Swiss buttercream, and jam and lemon curd fillings. My mom also made a fabulous appetizer of grilled polenta with bocconcini and tomato bruschetta. My family loves food, but the food is almost always just an excuse to see each other: some of us were able to get together last summer, or briefly say hello while dropping off gifts at Christmas, but we hadn’t all been together since probably 2019. My brother on the island couldn’t make it, but we called him on video after dinner for what felt like 20 minutes and was actually an hour and a half!
One thing I love about spending time with a larger group in real life is seeing multiple conversations happening at the same time— Zoom and Skype and FaceTime saved a lot of us over the past year and a half, but with more than two people involved conversations are forced to happen in a way that doesn’t feel totally natural, because it’s confusing and jarring if more than one person is talking at once. And you generally can’t have music playing at the same time, either. To listen to at the barbecue, we made a collaborative playlist of songs that make us happy, which I took the time to curate the order of— no small feat with 120 tracks and everyone’s markedly different tastes. We were there from 3:30 until midnight and still didn’t quite make it through all of it, but we all agreed it was the perfect backdrop for our reunion.
It was a flashback episode kind of week over here in my kitchen: I’d forgotten to make adjustments to my produce bin delivery and was stuck with whatever they chose to send me. This included a pound of cherries which I sadly cannot eat (I plan to make jam), a 5-pound bag of apples which I really don’t need, more roma tomatoes, zucchini, and a bunch of spinach which I almost never use (I usually go for sturdier greens). So I didn’t get much of a chance to get creative and was just trying to find uncomplicated ways to use all of these unexpected things— relatedly, please send me your best apple recipes.
I made two curries in order to use some of the tomatoes as well as the spinach, both from Priya Krishna’s Indian-ish. The shortcut chhole, or chana masala, is something I make often, and I have also made the saag paneer-style spinach and feta before using kale. The texture is a lot smoother with spinach, obviously (and easier to blend without adding a bunch of extra liquid), and it also has a milder flavour so the spices and the taste of the cheese really come through. For the chhole, I think I had a higher chickpea-to-tomato ratio this time compared to usual, but I actually loved how creamy and hearty it felt this way. To think, I used to make only one curry for dinner on the regular when I could have been having two?
To use the remainder of the chickpeas I made in the instant pot for the chhole, I returned to Smitten Kitchen’s delicious zucchini and crispy chickpea dish. Amir Bakery was out of taftoon, so we ate it with lavash instead: it’s a bit thinner and not quite as soft which meant it was slightly more difficult to scoop up the salad, but allowed me to eat more bread, so still a net positive. I made tzatziki once again for the base, because I had the cucumber already, and I really love how it adds a little extra crunch to the dish (as well as another vegetable). Crumbling some feta on top is also a welcome little addition. If you missed it, I recently detailed my first time making this dish here.
One more note about the recipe: Deb has you cook all the chickpeas at once and save the other half for the following day, but I did not find they held up well texture-wise: they dried out and lost their crispy outsides. So this time I cooked half for dinner, and cooked the other half ahead of the zucchini for lunch the next day for a much nicer experience. I can’t overstate how happy I am with this dish, especially with August, or The Month of Too Much Zucchini, looming ever closer.
The one unique dinner I made this week was after stumbling upon a good deal on BC wild sockeye when I stopped for something else at the grocery store. We marinated the salmon in a ginger-sesame-soy marinade I make often— usually for tofu, but it’s also good with fish or grilled veggies— and put it on the grill. To go with it, I made a quinoa salad with cucumber and chickpeas (yeah, we’ve been eating a lot of those) as well as diced cucumber, pickled carrot, and cilantro. The dressing was a lime vinaigrette with some chopped pickled jalapeño for a bit of brine and heat, and it was really the perfect dinner for a hot evening on the patio (and aside from the time marinating the salmon, was very quick to make). Most times I can take or leave salmon skin, but when it’s salty from marinade and crisp from the grill? Perfection.
I had bell peppers that were on their last legs, so they went on the grill to eventually become roasted pepper relish. I started making this years ago and haven’t in some time, but it remains delicious for burgers, grilled mains like tofu or whitefish, and breakfast sandwiches. I’ve included my recipe below— it’s easy to make and no canning is involved. Another perennial favourite that I made this week to use some of my collection of tomatoes was puttanesca, the briny, satisfying pasta sauce that, presumably, was passed down from the gods themselves to give ladies of the night even more power. I have my process for this wonderful, rustic sauce in a previous newsletter, if you’re interested.
ROASTED PEPPER RELISH
2 large sweet peppers, roasted and diced (directions follow, or use jarred*)
1 medium onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño or serrano, finely diced (optional, for extra heat)
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp each ground mustard and cayenne
To roast the peppers: preheat the grill or broiler. For the grill, cook directly on the grill plate; under the broiler, use an oiled baking dish. Roast for about ten minutes, turning occasionally, until the peppers look fairly evenly blackened and have begun to collapse. If you have a gas stove, first of all, congratulations on being fancy, but you can also do this directly over the flame using a pair of heatproof tongs. After cooking you can set them in the fridge for a bit or place them in a bowl of cold water. This will help the pepper flesh pull away from the skin, making it easier to take off the skin. The stem and seeds should also pull out easily.
In a large sauté pan, cook the peppers in a little olive oil over medium heat for about two minutes, until they’ve started to release some of their juices. Add the onions and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and the hot pepper, if using, and cook another minute or two. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar and add to the pan, along with the salt and spices. Continue cooking at a simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed. If necessary, stir in a pinch of cornstarch to thicken. Makes roughly 2 cups and will keep in the fridge for about a month.
*note: if using jarred peppers, these often use a smaller variety of pepper than the fresh ones you buy, so if that’s the case, you’ll need to use more. Once diced the amount should be roughly equal to the amount of diced onion.
Media:
I liked this piece by Aaron Hutcherson, about the utility of garlic powder and why it deserves a place in our kitchens (and hearts). Much like the racial overtones associated with the stigma around MSG, Ethan Frisch says,
“Garlic powder got a bad reputation because it was seen as being associated with the type of cooking that fine-dining chefs didn’t have a lot of respect for.”
In other words, a product that is nothing more or less than the dried version of a fresh ingredient that is used with gusto has been viewed as lower in class and quality, simply because of the groups of people who used it.
The article doesn’t suggest that garlic powder or granules should replace fresh garlic, only that there are instance in which it’s simpler or more appropriate to use the dried version. There are some really useful tips in it about when and how to use it, and I’ll provide one of my own. If your garlic (or onion) powder tends to clump together because you don’t use it up quickly enough, mix some dried beans into the canister or bag when you first buy it to help keep moisture from accumulating. If it’s already an immovable rock, grinding it in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder will bring it back to its original consistency with no harm done. I keep these spices in bags now instead of the little jars because they can be hard to get out of the jars once they’ve clumped together.
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. And now, if you haven’t already seen this, it will be better if I let you look at it without any hint as to what it is (scroll up after clicking if you need context).