transitory season

apple cake, dinners on the fly, and bringing donuts to the bar

Sep 30, 2022

Over the weekend Steph, one of my closest friends, celebrated her 40th birthday, so we spent the afternoon at a handful of the breweries and distilleries on the North Shore. Jeff and I picked up a half dozen assorted donuts from Cream Pony to share among us (how to win friends and influence people: bring baked goods to the bar).

It was a really summery day, despite the fact that we’ve now had our last 7pm sunset of the year and it was less than a week from the end of September. So we enjoyed sitting on the patio at Beere, drinking cold glasses of sours and IPAs that sweated in the sun. We also sat in the lounge at Copperpenny (I’ve only ever been on their patio) and it was nice to get a closer look at all the cool decor inside. I am such a sucker for art deco, and the gin cocktails there are so delicious and tastefully presented.

A close up view of a wine glass with a pale cocktail garnished with a sprig of lavender and a slice of dried grapefruit. In the background across the table are two people each with cocktails of their own.

In the evening Steph joined Jeff and me for dinner at Farina a Legna with my mom and stepdad— I always enjoy the homey vibe of that space, and both the pizza and the pasta are great (Steph and I shared the finocchiona pizza, my favourite). It’s always a delight to have dinner with my family, too; we all love eating and spending time together so much that often when we go to a restaurant we’ll watch the table beside us turn over more than once by the time we’re finishing our digestifs and dessert. I recommend an affogato, the most perfect after-dinner treat.

A restaurant waiting area, with a low table and two benches, wood and mint green. Above them on the wall is a stylized map of Italy with the name of the restaurant, Farina a Legna. To the left is a set of stairs where a woman is about to step down. — the birthday girl on her way out of the restaurant after dinner.

This week I experienced every home cook’s nightmare: being halfway through making a dish you’re so familiar with you can do it on autopilot, only to discover you’re missing an essential ingredient for it, and then having to rework it on the fly. I was making the pizza bowl from Isa Does It, a garlicky brown rice bowl with kale, vegan sausage, and olives in a cheezy cashew-based sauce.

While assembling the sauce in the blender as the sausages were cooking, I realised I’d mistaken a jar of sun-dried tomatoes for a jar of roasted red peppers, which are a key sauce element. Since the sun-dried tomatoes were already in my mind I used a few of those instead, adding a little extra lemon juice and some smoked paprika. The results were not exactly the same but bad at all; the pizza bowl vibe remained intact. I think the sauce made this way would work fairly well as a vegan mac & cheese base, too, with a little more liquid content.

A white bowl full of rice, kale, browned slices of sausage, black olives, and an orange-ish cheezy sauce with sprinkles of thyme and chili flakes on top. On a coaster near the bowl is a blue can of Four Winds IPA.

We had such a full weekend with the birthday on Saturday and then babysitting our nephew on Sunday that we didn’t make it to the grocery store, and of course by Sunday night we were also exhausted and too broke for takeout, so I needed an easy pantry dinner. I love a tuna pasta for this purpose, because you don’t even need a frying pan, just a pot to boil your pasta water and a big bowl to toss everything together.

While the noodles are cooking, put a can of olive oil-packed tuna (including the oil) in the bowl with capers, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper, and maybe some fresh herbs and a little parmesan or pecorino. I also added some chili crisp this time, too. Throw the noodles in while they’re still really hot, along with a little pasta water, and in twenty minutes you have a tasty and filling dinner that might even feel a little elegant.

A blue bowl of spaghetti with tuna and capers, sprinkled with parmesan and with a blob of chili crisp in the centre. A fork is on the table to the right of the bowl.

I finally got around to using up the poached apples Jeff made from the Bouchon cookbook a couple of weeks back using an old bottle of fruit wine. I remembered they were still sitting in the fridge, their container having been there so long it had become part of the landscape, when I was craving something sweet and cookies felt like too much work. I used Chloe Coscarelli’s apple cake recipe (now only available on the Wayback Machine— I have a screenshot saved of it just in case), adding a couple tablespoons more water to make up for the fact that the apples were already cooked.

This is already a lovely, moist cake, and using the soft poached apples with their sweet wine flavour only added to that. I intended to make it an upside-down cake like in the recipe, but the apple rings on the bottom were too soft and the cake broke apart a little, so I just flipped it back into the pan. Jeff had also made a reduction of the leftover poaching liquid, and I drizzled some on top like a caramel to fancy it up a bit. This kind of cake definitely gets a bit soggy after a couple days, but thankfully, it never gets to that point before we eat it all anyway.

In a cast iron pan, a golden-brown apple cake. On top is a drizzle of syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Also this week I made a decent teriyaki tofu with vegetables and rice, keeping the stir-fried veg warm on a plate under the pan lid while I shallow fried the tofu. I had a bottle of store-bought teriyaki sauce in the fridge but I often find these overly sweet, so I added a little rice vinegar and some sriracha to help balance it out.

In a white bowl with wooden chopsticks sticking out at the back, white rice is topped with pieces of tofu and stir fried zucchini and pepper in teriyaki sauce. On top are black and white sesame seeds and chili crisp. — I need to either start making chili crisp or buying a bigger jar.

And because every time I go out in the yard these days I come back inside with another three heirloom or San Marzano tomatoes from the garden, I made the baked tomato and chickpea thing with feta. I forgot to put in the feta at the beginning so I sprinkled some around when I added the chickpeas, and it still basically worked. I prefer this with flatbread for scooping purposes, but it was still really nice with slices of sourdough toast.

In a white rectangular baking dish, a mixture of baked chickpeas and diced tomatoes, covered with large crumbles of feta and chopped fresh herbs. To the left of it is a plate with three slices of sourdough cut in half.

Media:
A few weeks ago I brought up Alicia Kennedy’s writing on aesthetic exhaustion as a food writer, and in relation to that I loved this piece by Bettina Makalintal for Eater: the food photography vibe shift. Although the piece acknowledges that even a messy or simplistic or even “ugly” aesthetic is still an aesthetic, it also discusses the reasons why people are finding it a relief to move away from the artfully curated, professionalized styling of a few years ago. As Teresa Finney is quoted saying in the article:

“People want realness and not some ideal of a tablescape that seems like too much work to execute after a long day of living through a pandemic, especially if the picture is from a person and not a brand.”

This is why I try not to worry too much if I’m too tired to do anything but take a quick snap of my pan of food sitting on the stove after I take it out of the oven. It may not be as appealing visually, but I want the people looking at this newsletter trying to figure out what to make for dinner after work not to feel intimidated. I’m just here figuring out what to make for dinner after work, too!

And people online are increasingly tired of feeling they’re being sold something, so it makes sense that we’re finding it a welcome change to see food being made in kitchens like ours, with open cans of tomatoes or jars of peanut butter in the background, or plates after a meal scraped clean of everything but residual smears of sauce. These things speak of a shared experience, making it feel as though these things are approachable, rather than some stylized, corporate perfection that lives only inside of our screens.

Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please smash that like button below, or 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, I’m obsessed with how this dough looks like a foam mattress topper and yet so appetizing?

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