A (sheepish) hello
I didn’t mean to abandon this for a month, but it’s been a busy spring (especially at work) and keeping afloat meant letting myself be pulled along by the current for a bit. That manifested in a lot of takeout, a lot of freezer meals and very little time for newsletter-writing.
And then we got a puppy. This is Sparrow! She’s some kind of terrier-chihuahua mix, almost four months old and only five pounds.
(Pictured here with one of several toys graciously shared by her fellow puppy friend Nemo, who is already 10 times the size of Sparrow)
We lost our dog Margo last fall after she spent the greater part of 2020 in chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma. It took some time, but we started to feel the tug to adopt another pup over the past few months. Having Sparrow around has been a huge comfort, despite a house-training schedule that has us waking up in the middle of the night to run her outside, wild-haired and clad in bathrobes and whispering “Good job! Gooood job!” while praying that no neighbors are awake to see that kind ridiculous display.
With the disruption that a puppy brings to schedules and free time, I’m thinking that a more sustainable format would be to feature one or two recipes a week instead of talking through the the full slate of what we’ve been eating (trust me, you’d be sick of hearing about how much toast with almond butter and bananas I eat after like, a day) and offer a few honorable mentions of other hits from the week. So let’s talk about the handful of things I did make for dinner while things were quiet in newsletter-land.
What I made for dinner (while I was gone)
Whole trout with maple roasted carrots and couscous: This was my first attempt at cooking whole fish, something I’ve always been to chicken to try. My mother-in-law and her fiance surprised us with some freshly caught and cleaned local trout at the beginning of April and I didn’t want their generosity to go to waste. After sifting through a lot of YouTube tutorials from burly prepper-type dudes cooking in the woods, I ultimately took this video’s approach, which was to roast the trout with their heads on with lemon, olive oil and salt. This saved me from having to fuss with deboning them — all I had to do once they were fully cooked was tug at the tail to slide the still-attached bones out (which was comical and looked exactly like every cartoon rendering I’d ever seen of of fish bones strewn about an alley by cats). I served it with maple roasted carrots and some couscous and chopped kale. I want to try this recipe next.
Life-changing udon with soft-boiled egg, hot soy and black pepper: This was the first recipe I made a beeline to after Hetty McKinnon’s new book “To Asia, With Love” arrived. It’s simple but deeply satisfying because of the broth, glossy and luxurious thanks to a judicious amount of butter. The soft-boiled eggs are perfect as prepared but I took the opportunity to go one step further and marinate the leftovers for nitamago eggs the next day. I also threw some chopped bok choy into the water with the noodles during the last few minutes of cooking to bulk up the finished dish.
Honorable mentions:
Leek and mushroom pie with skin-on mash: This pie was a very cozy, very beige Sunday dinner from Nigel Slater’s cookbook/kitchen diary “Notes from the Larder.” It wasn’t pretty but it was delicious. If you try it, it needs a drizzle of sherry vinegar or some other acid at the end.
Spring pesto pizza: This topping combination came from Heidi Swanson’s new book “Super Natural Simple.” I didn’t make her dough recipe, instead opting to use a premade bag from the co-op down the block. This had pesto, shaved asparagus, broccoli florets and mozzarella with ricotta dolloped overtop the whole thing. It’s an excellent vehicle for whatever vegetables you have on hand.
What I made that wasn’t for dinner
I have no decent photographic evidence to show for it but I did make Smitten Kitchen’s strawberry summer cake despite summer being…more than 50 days away. It’s such a treat, even with out-of-season berries.
Reading corner
Recent cookbook acquisitions: “Greenfeast Spring/Summer” by Nigel Slater, “Vegetable Kingdom” by Bryant Terry, “The Barbuto Cookbook” by Jonathan Waxman, “Huckleberry” by Zoe Nathan and “Baking at the 20th Century Cafe” by Michelle Polzine.
Laurie Woolever’s Grub Street Diet (Pepto shots!)
Other dinner-adjacent things from this week
I am fully vaccinated and ready to reunite with my beloved restaurant bread basket: