Good day, internet friends.
Hope you are all staying cool in the sweltering heat. I, for one, am not. I know I last wrote to you about how summer produce was still in full swing, but it rained one day about a week ago and consequently, I have transitioned into full autumn. We're talking shepherd's pie here, people. It's still 97 degrees. I've got a screw loose. Alas, as we approach the end of August, let this serve as a reminder that no, it is not in fact fall, nor will it be for the considerable future. T.S. Eliot opens his poem The Wasteland with the line “April is the cruelest month,” but clearly he never traveled to Texas in September.
I am mourning the end of Hatch green chile season which is the only good thing about August. Indeed, I will buy just about anything at the store with the fresh roasted peppers mixed in. Pimento cheese? Hummus? Guac? Sushi? Ok, I didn't buy the sushi, but yeah, I thought about it. God bless New Mexico for giving us Hatch chiles. And God bless HEB for roasting them outside of the entrance to the store.
For this roundup of thoughts, I present to you an essay about my old enemy, the refrigerator, alongside some culinary media I have been *consuming*. In between my extremely active child’s nap times, I have been plenty busy contemplating whether Caesar salad is my favorite food or if it’s seasonally appropriate to braise anything. This takes up most of my time.
Please peruse my thoughts at your own risk.
And if you haven’t — subscribe and share!
Love to you and your meal plans this week,
Allison
The Journal: Fridge or Foe
My refrigerator is not always my friend.
Yes, yes, it is a wonderful invention that elongates the shelf-life of produce and keeps us from falling prey to botulism most days. But it does not always work in my best interest. The fridge takes prisoners. It harbors stowaway produce that is apparently running away from me and my chef's knife. And it's extremely successful at the art of mind control. I am frequently hypnotized and convinced I have nothing to cook. Sure there are things in it, but it's prettyyyy much empty by the end of the week. No good can come from the questionable parsley and sad carrots. It’s just a fact.
But as you have read previously, my husband is very good at not falling for the fridge's tricks. He can find something to eat in it—pretty much always. And that is precisely why I love him.
Last Saturday morning, Mitch asked what was for breakfast. I had mentioned the day before that we should cook something big and hearty, but then was disillusioned with the slim pickings of the end of a week. There was no bacon on hand, therefore we could not have weekend breakfast. Guess this means we have to go to Taco Deli?
Wrong.
The fridge and all its tricks will not send us out into the wilderness in search of manna from heaven today.
Mitch looked at me lovingly, went to the kitchen, gathered up the remnants of the week's groceries, and placed them all on the counter. A bag of potatoes, a carton of eggs, some pretty crumbly corn tortillas. And he asked me, "What do you think you can make from this?"
And almost in an instant, as I saw everything before me, I shuffled through my mental card catalog of what was in the pantry too. I blurted out, "I think I'll make a Spanish tortilla and shakshuka," to which Mitch responded, "Oh yeah totally, I was thinking the exactttt same thing."
I could envision it now. A thick slab of potatoes and onions held together with egg. A skillet full of spiced tomatoes with little eggies nestled into the bubbling sauce, poached to perfection. I felt like a mad scientist off to my lab. I scurried off to grab an onion, a can of tomatoes, and my 600-page Cooks Illustrated tome to find a recipe that could guide me on my way. Not too long after, we sat down to a warm plate of eggs baked in spicy tomato sauce scooped on top of the Spanish tortilla. It was marvelous and just the kind of sleepy morning feast I was hoping to enjoy.
But at first, I couldn't see it because my refrigerator played its mind games again.
This happens often for me. I cannot envision what is possible with what I have until I haul it all out from the depths of my fridge into the light of day. This normally means Mitch really does have to take everything out of the fridge and I have to stare it all down. And then my little kitchen wheels start spinning, and I just know. Once my destination is in view, I hardly need a map.
It takes the help of someone I love and trust to crawl into the dark corners of this ice box of my brain and extract whatever is still edible and say, "What can you create from this?"
I am tricked by my refrigerator or my small living room or limited budget at the end of a month to think only in terms of what I lack. I don't have bacon in the drawer, I don't have a surplus amount of space in my floor plan, I don't have much extra to go out for dinner on a Friday. When I box myself in in those ways, I not only limit my perception of what I do have, but I limit my own capacity for enjoyment. I end up buying into the idea that the only chance at something good is beyond my reach.
And that is just not true.
The sink was full of dirty dishes, and the kitchen looked like I had just detonated a small explosive. Around our small table, I looked at my full plate of warm food in my house that is becoming home with the people I love the most. It was strikingly simple to see it laid out before me. Not tucked away in the dark, cold corners, but a spread of genuine abundance bathed in gentle morning light. There isn’t much more I could hope for, really. There was plenty to eat in the fridge—better yet, there was plenty to create something luxuriously wonderful. (And while we are on that note, I have yet to find something more luxurious than a perfectly cooked egg yolk. Give me that gold before, like, actual gold.) There is plenty space in my house. We rearranged and it feels more open. There is plenty for us to be well fed without venturing to a restaurant.
As I sliced my potatoes and sautéed my onion and simmered my tomatoes and poached my eggs, I looked over and watched my husband happily feed my daughter her breakfast. They were laughing and enjoying the beginning of the day. The light came in through the windows. The coffee was hot, our pajamas were wrinkled, our eyes sleepy but smiling, and the whole scene was bursting with goodness and togetherness and fullness and love.
I have so much with which I can create a beautiful life.
The Newsstand
This longform piece on “no-recipe recipes” captures something I’ve been thinking about - the marked shift in the way cookbook authors write recipes these days. The author here argues for recipes as pieces of narrative writing, which I find quite fascinating.
“Those who decry recipes and cookbooks as lacking narrative identity imply that household literature doesn’t deserve serious consideration. But they are often the richest source material we have for those domestic lives.“
Mission Impastable from Sporkful
Thanks, Morgan Luck for this submission!
Dan Pashman of the Sporkful podcast set out on an ambitious project: to create the perfect pasta shape. This was born of the belief that spaghetti noodles are actually terrible. Over a series of episodes and three years, Dan has finally presented to the world what he thinks is the perfect pasta shape—cascatelli. The shape was created to hit all the marks of his three core attributes of what makes pasta good: forkability, saucability, and toothsinkability. After extensive R&D, his pasta shape is available for sale!
The Bookshelf
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson
Thanks to Jacque Morrison for reminding me of this book that’s been on my list for a while! Bee Wilson is an amazing food historian and writer. I’ve just started her book on how we learn to eat, and I’m already highlighting things like crazy. Really my main thing about Bee Wilson is why did no one tell me that food historian was a job? Still trying for that one.
The Menu
This week, I’m attempting to make ribs in the oven, which is actually something I’ve never done before. And I’ve got it on my list to make jambalaya too. Other things I’ve cooked recently include: turkey shepherd’s pie and a riff on Conchita Pibil—a slow-roasted pork in all kinds of yummy spices. Might I again recommend Julia Turshen’s cookbook Simply Julia? All of the ideas above are hers. I have nothing original to offer.
In the spirit of the essay in this issue, here’s Melissa Clark’s shakshuka with feta recipe from NYT Cooking. If you are blocked by the paywall, make a tomato sauce with some warm spices like cumin, paprika, and cayenne, stir in some feta, and then crack some eggs into it and bake until just set. Eat with a spoon.
Lastly, I recently made a birthday cake for a good friend, using Deb Perelman’s genius cake section in Smitten Kitchen Everyday, and I will be making that chocolate cake til the cows come home. Oh, it’s good good good.
Even if it is not your birthday, I heartily endorse making yourself a chocolate cake.
My daughter has woken up from her nap, so I think that means this issue is coming to an end. I hope you enjoy reading, I hope you eat well, and I hope you don’t sweat to death trying to make carnitas.
XOXO — Allison
This all sounds tasty. I recently heard of a fridge hack where you have a "cook first" bin. It's the place to throw soon-to-wilt veggies, random knobs of cheese, and other items that need to be cooked in the next few days. It's a great prompt for what needs to be cooked soon. I also recommend having a few freezer friends. These are items that I keep in the freezer to make when I don't know what to make or when the groceries are low. My favorite is a bag of frozen spinach with which I can always use to make a side of cream spinach using whatever ingredients I have on hand. (cream cheese, half an onion, random bits of cheese, etc.)
This issue made me tear up at work during my lunch break. Thank you for your perfectly well-worded reminder to open my eyes to the many beautiful, disguised as simple, blessings in my life. <3