to wake up in the sun
chocolate banana bread, peanut stew, and re-using leftovers
Good news everyone, the month of January is finally coming to an end! Not that I think the world will magically improve come February, but I truly feel like I have lived about 5 lifetimes in the past few weeks, so the idea of a slightly shorter month ahead is appealing. It has been nice to have a break from the rain recently, and I’m loving the thick fog in the mornings and evenings the last week or so— being able to pretend I’m in a crime drama when I leave the house is one of the few things adding excitement to my days. I also received my booster shot over the weekend; I got my notification and was able to book an appointment for the following day (when I got my 2nd dose the wait was nearly 2 weeks). I’m lucky enough to have experienced very few side effects with all three shots, just a sore arm and a little tiredness the first 12 hours.
Last Saturday we had some beautiful weather— a fool’s spring, if you will— and Jeff and I walked down to Beere to have a drink on the patio over lunch. The Top Rope Birria truck was parked outside, and after tasting them a few months back when they were outside Strange Fellows, we were thrilled to eat their deliciously crunchy, cheesy mushroom tacos again (don’t skip the hot sauce). There were also a lot of dogs at the brewery, which is always a mood booster.
And speaking of mood boosters, we’re up to date on the only show we’re watching currently (The Book of Boba Fett), and instead of starting something else new, in between the release of episodes we’ve been watching Studio Ghibli movies. The art, animation, and characters are always a delight, but it’s also no wonder why it feels so moving right now to watch things that feature people within a community banding together to support each other in the face of a crisis.
On Sunday after getting my booster we drove to my mom’s to drop a few things off for her, but didn’t stay long to visit since I figured I would be too tired after my booster to be good company. I also assumed I wouldn’t want to cook, so when we got home Jeff made some pasta sauce inspired by sugo finto, a Tuscan ragù made of vegetables instead of meat, while I gave him advice from my seat on the other side of the kitchen counter. He used a base of finely chopped carrot, onion, and garlic with a can of fire-roasted tomatoes and some dried herbs, and also added the remainder of our first harvest of oyster mushrooms. It’s nice to do the mushrooms first so they can get browned and crispy, and then add them back in when the sauce is done so that they aren’t left to turn to mush while the sauce comes together. The flavours in this actually kind of reminded me of a mushroom pizza from an old-school pizza delivery joint, which in my mind isn’t a bad thing at all.
While the sauce was cooking we both thought we’d like something sweet, so we threw together the ingredients for chocolate banana bread, since there are approximately 400 bananas in our freezer. We just subbed in cocoa powder for a portion of the flour in Jeff’s usual recipe and added chocolate chips to the batter, but I am sure you can trust Deb Perelman’s recipe if you want to make it yourself. It was perfect, in that it feels like eating chocolate cake, but also feels like eating banana bread, so you can comfortably enjoy it after dinner or at breakfast time, or with that cup of tea you make around 3pm.
This week I almost gave in to the option of ‘feed and discard’ with my sourdough starter because I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to make with it when it was ready to use, but instead I remembered cornbread exists, and went, “can you sourdough that?” Yes, you can. The method here had good reviews so that’s what I used, with a little extra sugar since I didn’t want it to end up too sour. I baked it in a cast iron and it turned out lovely— browned on the outside and with a soft, crumbly interior. But then I needed something to eat it with.
I found a recipe in Bryant Terry’s cookbook Vegan Soul Food for spicy Mafé tempeh which looked good, and that I already had all the ingredients for. Mafé is a West African stew made of root vegetables and meat in a tomato-peanut base sauce, and this version creates a spicy peanut marinade to cook the tempeh in to give it a braised texture and an even more nutty flavour. I will say that this recipe is a lesson in reading all of a recipe before you start cooking though, because I saw the 1 hour baking time and assumed the rest of the stew would come together on the stovetop during that time… but it’s meant to simmer for 45 minutes after adding the tempeh! Since I am normally the king of having dinner ready at exactly 7pm this discovery made me very grumpy, so I just assembled and thickened the stew while the tempeh was cooking and it didn’t seem like the flavour suffered much at all.
I’ll also mention that the amount of marinade the recipe makes is staggering: I made a half batch because I was only using half a package of tempeh, and I think this amount would definitely still be enough to cover and cook a full half pound brick in an 8” square baking pan. I was also surprised that the marinade isn’t used at all in the stew after you cook the tempeh; I kept rereading steps in the recipe to see if I missed the part where you add it to the stew base, but you don’t! So because it uses a small fortune’s worth of peanuts, I froze the leftovers so I can use it to make this again. The good news is I will make this again, because it was filling and extremely tasty. I think it’d be good with tofu too, if you’re not a tempeh fan. This stew would usually be served with rice, but I loved it with the texture and flavour of the cornbread too.
We made oven-fried patatas bravas again on the weekend, and I used the leftover jus and hot sauce from our taco truck lunch mixed with some tomato paste and smoked paprika to make an approximation of salsa brava. I still made the garlic mayo from scratch though. And in a move of thriftiness surprising even me, I used the leftovers of the salsa brava mixed with the leftovers of the hot sauce marinade from last week to marinate and pan-fry some more tempeh for a rice bowl with goddess dressing, red cabbage, and cucumber. I love it when you can make something delicious and clear out three or four containers of assorted junk from your fridge.
Media:
It seems fitting that I read this interview with Natasha Pickowicz for Grub Street on her concept of the “soup mother” in a week where I took one sauce and made it into another sauce, and then made that sauce into a third sauce. The idea of using a portion of something leftover to make a new dish is something I’ve loved doing, sometimes out of necessity, but sometimes just because a wave of creativity strikes me. It’s definitely a kitchen tactic that’s come up for me more often now that we’re a household of two when (at least in my cooking years) I’ve always lived with at least three other people. As the chef notes, it’s harder to find ways to use up all of something without a lot of people around to eat meals. If I cook a pasta sauce that makes enough to feed a family of 4-6, sure, I can just freeze the extra for another time so we don’t get sick of eating the same pasta all week, but I also might poach an egg in it and eat it with toast, or add a little to a soup or stew.
“We’re so stuck in the recipes and what to do and the quantities of everything that you forget that cooking can be this super intuitive, relaxing process that doesn’t have edges around it, but is this ambiguous thing that flows into the next thing.”
I really loved reading this piece and found much of her attitude reflective of how I feel in the kitchen, even though I do still use recipes as a guide about half the time (Pickowicz says she rarely cooks with them). She stresses that cooking in this fashion shouldn’t be about focusing on how we can make our leftovers less boring and gross, but instead about making connections between what you’ve already got and what it else it could become, how flavours can complement each other and deepen over time, and the fluidity of cooking using your own intuition. I doubt I’m going to be keeping pots of soup on my counter overnight (Jeff, as a restaurant manager, cannot abide anything unrefrigerated more than a couple of hours), but there are still ways many of us could stand to relax a little more in the kitchen, and I hope you feel some inspiration from this interview too.
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. Anyway, no more thoughts, just cat in extremely appropriate basket.