026: He's the only one for me, Vaccine
Recipes and rants for Moderna girls and old-fashioned men
(SB) Beloved readers, we’ve made it to the time of year where the sun begins to set not long after lunch. Usually, we have a few more options to fight off the slow and determined creep of seasonal depression: friendsgivings, holiday parties, and a robust roster of cozy bars, some with fireplaces. Fortunately, this year hasn’t been without a few ecstatic and satisfying consolation prizes. This week, our gift was the resurgence of Princess Diana content, both in advance of and in the thrall of season 4 of The Crown, which dropped this past Sunday. Tingling with anticipation, I could barely contain myself when friend of the newsletter Lexi hipped me to a nearly six-hour Princess Diana deep-dive in podcast form. I listened to every minute during the week before spending much of Sunday in repose, letting the bizarre, neurotic, and excellently costumed criminality of the British royal family wash over me for several hours.
This roller coaster prompted me to reflect a little bit on what The Crown does for me, a person who cannot make it through the entire BBC News Hour without yelling about colonial chauvinism. Of course, it scratches an itch common to many historians by presenting an argument about the past that is both nuanced and rooted in narrative. It panders to me explicitly (casting Gillian Anderson) while challenging me (as Margaret Thatcher 😭). It continues to offer a constant stream of small confirmations about British high culture neuroses. And, this season, it has given us all the shared gift of exploring the chaotic and complicated story of Diana, a woman who has occupied rarefied space in the mind of a whole swath of women of color (moms of color?) around the world in her personification of the unfairness big and small. Mother-in-law angst? A fraught relationship with your body? The woes of loving someone whose entitlement is only rivaled by the size of his ears? Extra-marital affair angst? The racism jumping out ? True crime conspiracy theory? There’s something here for everyone. For now, I’ll leave the work of think pieces and ThinkTok’s to the professionals, but please feel free to write to us with your feelings, impressions, memories, and disidentifications. You’re all candles in the wind (JS: 1997) to me.
This week I ate:
Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Potato Leek soup. I liked it, but “best” is a little bit of a hyperbole for me.
Brown rice grits prepared with bone broth, ginger, scallions, fish sauce, and a little cheddar cheese. I’ve been topping this with eggs and various veggies for lunch, but it’s made me a bit sleepy.
Smitten’s fajitas, but with some leftover chicken.
(JS) I think it’s important to let you all know off the top that my British period piece of choice this week is actually Downton Abbey, seasons 1 and 2; I’m not like the other girls! I’m about nine years behind the times! I’m annoyed with almost everyone in the cast and yet I can’t stop watching (maybe I should give The Crown another try). I will also remind the readers that I’ve nobly (if also somewhat belatedly) taken the deep dive into Mariah’s memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, in audiobook form; suffice it to say Salonee and I have had no shortage of captivating and complicated 20th century royal content reverberating in our headphones these past few days.
For reasons which should be obvious at this point, we’ve forgone the expected Thanksgiving content this week (SB: It’s a pandemic). I don’t have any especially hot takes to add here. I admit the holiday, or really its menu, is my problematic fave, but lacking a sufficient number of hungry and respectably inebriated dinner guests, it’s probably not worth your effort. I will echo Soleil Ho’s suggestion to go all in on takeout and support some local restaurants that could use your business instead. And for those still itching to cook, over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out some of our personal, scaled-down Thanksgiving spread faves that can and should be enjoyed year round (or at least like… in December and January).
Foodwise, this week has been all about trying new things, including:
A couple banana-based treats that are not banana bread: chocolate and banana cookies from Ottolenghi’s Sweet, subbing in walnuts for pecans, and banana cardamom buns from Meera Sodha’s Fresh India, excellent with Sambal Lady kaya
Sabrina Ghayour’s citrus-spiced salmon, a lighter alternative to my usual slow-roasted confit-adjacent preparations
I’m trying to get into smoothies for breakfast? So far it’s been established that bananas are essential and a little spirulina goes a long way. Otherwise their form is malleable, their taste, volatile. We’ve had our ups and our downs.
TMYK: Stromboli
(JS) Lately I can’t stop thinking about stromboli, and not for the reasons The New York Post might have you believe. A couple weeks ago I found myself with about a pint of this newsletter’s permanent rotation oven-roasted vodka sauce to use up, as well as some extra salami and cheese odds and ends from my experiments with baba rustico. Midweek pizza for one feels especially dark these days, but for some reason taking those same ingredients and rolling them up into something akin to a gentrified Hot Pocket is A-OK by me. I’ll admit my stromboli was rather impromptu and veered somewhat into calzone territory; the original is not a traditional product of Italy, but a midcentury creation from the Philadelphia suburbs, using ingredients more likely found at a deli counter than your average slice joint. Ever the shrewd businessman, Nazzareno Romano called his rolled Italian sandwiches stromboli, capitalizing off a contemporaneous film of the same name (or really, a torrid affair between the director and its star).
Stromboli are an appealing alternative for the home cook because they bake at a manageable 350°F, much lower than better homemade pizzas, while still satisfying a similar craving. Begin with your favorite pizza dough and sauce. I like the Roberta's recipe, but if you're really pressed for time ~*store bought*~ is probably fine. The vodka sauce was a hit but feel free to experiment with your own lingering fridge contents or jarred faves. Arrabiata or puttanesca would be most welcome, or perhaps pesto if you wanted to take things in a slightly different direction.
Preheat your oven, then roll and stretch your dough to form a rectangle roughly the size of a quarter sheet pan. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet — if you have a pizza stone, feel free to skip the baking sheet and use just the parchment instead. Spread with a thin layer of sauce, leaving a half inch border along both short edges and one of the long edges. Next, choose your fillings. Because my sauce already had some cream in it I cut back on cheese a bit, choosing a few slices of provolone, an unsung hero we’ve previously described as “that girl” (SB: underrated queen, I’m drooling), which I slightly overlapped and alternated with Calabrese salami. To this I added a respectable dusting of parmesan and a pinch of red pepper flakes, and then rolled everything from the sauced edge inward to form a loose pinwheel, placing it seam side down and tucking the ends under to seal the deal. I let it rest for fifteen minutes or so while my oven came to temperature, then brushed ‘er with olive oil once more, sprinkled with oregano and flaky salt, and set ‘er in the oven to bake for about 45 minutes. At that point I hit it a second brushing of olive oil and baked it ten more minutes, at which point she emerged golden brown and perfumed with the tantalizing scent of melted provolone. Rest for five minutes and slice, or don’t! A couple days later I baked another which I enjoyed in the car, an uncut gem of a lunch on the go.
GLD: Paayasam, Please (Kheer, Kheer!)
(SB) A bright spot during my fateful, frightful, and fitful two years in New Haven was the all you can eat lunch buffet at Sitar, an Indian restaurant at the edge of Orange Street. Friend of the newsletter Beans and I would usually meet at Sitar on Wednesday afternoons to gorge ourselves on butter chicken (paneer, in Beans’ case), basmati rice, and a host of pakoras before valiantly making room for 1-3 bowls of the house special desert, usually a creamy kheer. It was Indian food as many beyond the subcontinent have come to know it: a rich and decadent assortment of dishes rarely made by any of the Indian home cooks I know. The history of commercial Indian food in this country is longer than many realize, a cuisine rooted less in any specific tradition than in the ingenuity of Bengali immigrants and moments of interracial and religious coexistence and solidarity.
Surprisingly, the spread at Sitar usually involved a couple of South Indian dishes — the occasional thoran or sambar led me to believe that perhaps the chef hailed from parts near and dear to my palate. It hopefully comes as no surprise to you, dear readers, that the cuisines of India are as regionally varied as its dialects. Americans eating out are likely more familiar with North Indian food (admittedly an overly broad category). With the exception of Saravana Bhavan and the Washington Square dosa cart, South Indian options in the city are few and far between.
A personal tragedy of this great culinary oversight is the total dearth of paayasam. Theoretically similar to the more commonly available kheer, paayasam is the crown jewel of Kerala cuisine,a slow-boiled rice and milk pudding that takes hours to come together in its fragrant glory. There are many paayasam varieties — in fact, many temples have their own, specific, paayasam on offer, with some involving ghee, tapioca, vermicelli, or jaggery. In my opinion, eating it feels pretty close to convening with the divine, too. My personal favorite is the simple pal paayasam, a specialty of my Great Aunt (whose recipe you can find here). It is almost always a special occasion dish, because it involves boiling long grain rice, low and slow, with gallons of milk,stirring constantly for hours. This continues until the milk caramelizes and takes on a slightly reddish color. The quality of the rice and long boiling process are essential: there are no other flavors in this mixture, besides sugar. Usually made in large quantities, the paaysam is a gift that keeps giving: it’s good hot, it’s good cold, it’s good for breakfast, it’s good for desert. I have many memories of my mother and her cousins frantically filling gallon-size plastic bottles with leftovers to bring home when you could still take liquids on to planes.
I say all this as a preface and explanation of the emotional baggage and expectation I brought with me when this past weekend, laid up with a back injury during Diwali and craving a little comfort, I decided to throw caution to the wind and attempt to make the quinoa kheer featured in Priya Krishna’s Indian-ish. While many might raise their eyebrows at the inclusion of protein-rich quinoa, I was unfazed: the combination seemed to evoke tapioca/sago/sabudana kheer/payasam I've loved before. What did raise my eyebrows was the cooking time — the recipe promised a lush and creamy pudding after just 40 minutes of constant stirring and an overnight stay in the fridge. With an ache in my back and a longing in my belly, I was prepared to find out: was it too good to be true?
As it turns out, for my spoiled Keralite palate, sort of. Priya’s recipe is simple: bring half a gallon of whole milk to a boil, add in washed white quinoa, some cardamom, and stir constantly until the milk resembles the texture of cream, about 35 minutes. Add sugar, stir, and remove from the heat to cool to room temperature. Transfer to the fridge to chill overnight. This recipe yields a tasty, light, and easily drinkable kheer, a sweet, if thin, milk pudding that I couldn’t help but have for breakfast. While I stirred my hot milk mixture for closer to an hour, the quinoa didn’t soak up nearly as much of the liquid as I had hoped. After some experimentation, I’m convinced that the quinoa kheer has the potential to meet my lofty expectations with one small change: swapping out about half the milk and the sugar with a can of sweetened condensed milk, a cheat code that the home cooks of the subcontinent have been recommending for some time. I’ll be trying it shortly (and reporting back).
TRASH TALK: Fatoot Samneh
(JS) Many baking cultures have a quick and simple stir-fried solution to make use of stale bread. Think of dishes like chilaquiles, migas, firfir, matzo brei, and the like. Salonee tells me her grandmother fried pieces of leftover roti in sugar whenever she had a sore throat. In The Jewish Cookbook, Leah Koenig explains that Mizrahi cuisine incorporates a whole category of recipes called fatoot, meaning “crumbled” (the same Arabic root as fattoush; there will be a quiz next week), dishes prepared with stale flatbread that’s been torn and repurposed for a second run. Fatoot samneh is a typical Yemeni Jewish preparation, in which torn flatbread is toasted in clarified butter and scrambled with eggs for an easy pre-shabbos meal.
Traditionally fatoot samneh is made with leftover flaky malawach or fenugreek-scented saluf, but store bought pita will work just fine. Make sure to use a large enough pan to accommodate the pita for optimal toasting. Frying in ghee or samneh, its Arab equivalent, allows you to really crisp up the bread without the risk of burning your butter, but you can certainly sub in regular butter in a pinch. Leah also suggests frying your pita in schmaltz, begging the eternal question, why is it kosher to mix chicken and eggs but not milk and meat? I, a Bad Jew™, will continue to enjoy both combinations, but insist the former is somehow more perverted. To finish, you can take your fatoot samneh in a sweet or savory direction. Leah serves hers with a drizzle of honey (I like Mike’s Hot for a little kick), but a dollop of labneh and/or herby schug would also work well here.
PERMANENT ROTATION: Regardless of the size of your holiday plans, they may leave you with a little je ne sais quoi (gas). If you find yourself in bloated discomfort, I (SB) humbly suggest the following subcontinental remedy: toast 2 tablespoons whole cumin seeds in a saucepan until fragrant; add 1.5 cups hot water and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, and let the mixture steep for a few minutes. Drink, release, rejoice.
WISH LIST
(JS) I was raised in a home where potato chips were standard cocktail fare. Pour ‘em in a cute lil’ bowl and it’s like ok, we’re in Europe! A family friend recently turned me on to Zerbe’s, a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania russet varietal fried in lard for full-bodied flavor and extra crunch; plus, they were awarded “darkest chip” at DarkPotatoChips.com, and that’s saying… something!
(SB) Despite being a one woman upper Manhattan booster society, I often find myself contemplating what it would be like to move to Queens for the easy and delicious chaat access. This chaat-set from Spicewalla may have to tide me over until I’m ready to call the movers.
(JS & SB) Since we won’t be summering (or wintering) in Italy for the foreseeable future, we’d like a few of these Italian meat & cheese candles from East Fork Pottery. They have some fruits, too, for the vegans!
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I too have been in the grip of The Crown, which I finally dove into after 4 consecutive re-watches Call The Midwife, a show that takes place during the same time period in England in one of the poorest areas of the city. Cross-referencing between the two shows has been fascinating. I am excited to dive into season 4. I think that my reliance on British period shows as problematic comfort food started with Harry Potter, which caught me before I was old enough to think critically about media (other than to look at the goblin bankers as a Jewish child and say hmm.) I want to try and make a lot of holiday cookies this year since I will have more time to bake than ever before, so I will be adding banana cookies to my list. xoxox matilda