Hi!
Hello hello, and chag Pesach sameach to folks who celebrate. It was surreal to see a second year of friends organizing virtual seders with their families — time continues to move at both a breakneck and glacial pace.
I got my second COVID vaccine shot earlier this week and cried the whole way home. They were tears of relief, gratitude and anxiety about getting walloped by side effects (but I somehow escaped with nothing more than arm pain and lymph node soreness). While I’m going to remain cautious and continue to follow the current health guidelines, I am pretty jazzed about the prospect of a trip to the grocery store that doesn’t feel like a frenzied episode of Supermarket Sweep. I might get crazy and linger in the bulk section for a few moments while I consider what kind of almonds to buy!
What I made for dinner
Cold rice noodles with grilled chicken and peanut sauce: This was the same rice noodle bowl recipe from issue #8, made with chicken instead of tofu. And it was kind of celebratory! It was the first day warm enough in Buffalo to drag the grill out, and this bowl really begs to be eaten outside. More herbs are always welcome but all I had was cilantro.
A big-ass salad with double cider vinaigrette: A big-ass salad can be whatever you want it to be; the only thing that matters is that it’s big. We had this one on a night where the weather quickly pivoted back to cooler temps and it included baby romaine, pecans, gorgonzola, bacon, honeycrisp apple and a soft-boiled egg. I drizzled everything with Molly Stevens’s double-cider vinaigrette from her book “All About Dinner.” The recipe has you cook down fresh apple cider for an extended period until it’s thick and syrupy, then mix it with apple cider vinegar, some chopped shallot, olive oil and salt. It’s a nicely balanced dressing that doesn’t feel heavy but still plays well with fall and winter-adjacent flavors.
Pantry pasta: Have we talked about pantry pasta yet? This relies heavily on, well, whatever staples you tend to keep on hand in your pantry and fridge. My basic formula is any noodle + quickly sauteed tinned fish (usually sardines) and minced garlic + a squeeze of lemon juice. You’ll want to save a generous amount of cooking water when you go to drain your pasta because it’s going to pull everything together into a sauce (that, and a knob of butter thrown in at the end). This week I also added in some chopped kale but any green is a nice addition. There are plenty of variations and offshoots on the internet: slut’s spaghetti (Nigella Lawson’s version of a quick puttanesca), a Bon Appetit entry with anchovies and parm, or maybe this one from Geoffrey Zakarian with beans and artichoke hearts. If you have your own spin, I want to hear about it!
Arugula salad with shredded chicken and mint: This was new to me and I’ll definitely make it again (it also stoked my excitement for Jenny Rosenstrach’s next book). As with a lot of “no recipe” recipes, personal interpretations are crucial. Our rotisserie chicken was a bit limp (having been purchased much earlier that day) so I improvised a crunchy addition to the salad: I peeled off all the chicken skin before shredding the meat and quickly crisped it under the broiler. They were like little crispy chicken fat breadcrumbs! Another tweak I made was to steep the chopped shallots in a big glug of red wine vinegar before tossing them in the salad — I’m not big on raw onion, so I wanted to mellow them out. Next time I’ll probably include a cooled, cooked grain like farro to bulk things out to four servings.
What I made that wasn’t for dinner
Hot cross buns! (Hot cross buns!): I know these are traditionally made on Good Friday in celebration of Easter, but you know. Let go of what doesn’t serve you and hold tight to what does. I hold tight to yeasted buns, Lenten fish frys and Reese's peanut butter eggs.
This recipe was from “A Good Bake” by Melissa Weller. Weller was a chemical engineer prior to becoming a baker and it shows — her instructions were clear and methodical, which is exactly that I want in a baked good recipe. The “cross” part of hot cross buns apparently is a hot topic of debate (in the circles of people who debate these sort of things). You can opt for a flour cross or a confectioner’s sugar icing cross — I did the latter and did not regret it one bit.
Other dinner-adjacent things from this week
RIP Beverly Cleary, who I think of every time I make pancakes:
This has to be from an old recipe AI bot, right? RIGHT? I like all of these things separately…but together??
Talk to you next week!-Katie