09: Shortcuts Are Good

Hello from the middle of a heatwave,

It’s hot which means we should be eating cold things. Think cold salads, water with lemon juice ice cubes, and paletas from La Michoacana pulled from the freezer. It also means we’re cooped up inside where we thankfully—blessedly, gratefully, counting our lucky stars—have air conditioning which makes these scorching days feel less painful. We’re constantly watering our outside plants, taking short walks with Momo, and bracing ourselves for the big storms we’ve been having at night. With any luck, the heat should break in the next day or so, and we can return to our stoop where we enjoy reading our books, saying hello to our neighbors, and keeping an eye on Momo who is keeping an eye on the neighborhood cats.

This preamble is not much of a preamble, in that I plan to keep today’s post short. Because I am hot, I am tired, and I’m using the best piece of advice I’ve found from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: shortcuts are fine. Take the shortcut. To literally quote Chef Nosrat, “​​And if you’re short on time, pick up a rotisserie chicken from the store and use a good-quality store-bought mayonnaise spiked with a clove or two of pounded or finely grated garlic to speed things up.”

I can’t explain why exactly I feel like I need permission to not make homemade garlic aïoli and a roasted chicken, but I did. And wow, did the Sicilian Chicken Salad taste totally delicious with its cut corners and grocery store rotisserie chicken. In fact, in addition to taking liberties with the dressing and the chicken, I also subbed run-of-the-mill raisins where the recipe asked for dried currants (help me find currants??) and extra celery for the diced fennel (which I am convinced is only in stores a fraction of the time you need it). Turns out, no one noticed, the salad was excellent, and it’s okay to trust your instincts. Would I make it again? 100% yes. Would I make it without pine nuts because who can afford pine nuts in this economy? Yes, absolutely. 

In addition to making Sciilian Chicken Salad, I attempted to make Grilled Artichokes with homemade Garlic Aïoli and have reached the following conclusions: 

• That I prefer my artichokes steamed in water with lemon and garlic. 

• That it was a minor tragedy cutting and stripping away so much perfectly good artichoke to make something that looked stunning on a plate. 

• That it was too hot and far too windy to grill, even though I now know how to start a charcoal grill (!!). 

• That these artichokes tasted pretty decent being cooked in a cast iron skillet. 

• And that I am truly awful at making homemade mayonnaise. And I accept my fate.

Which reminds me, it’s okay to take Hellmann’s and toss some pressed garlic into it. It tastes good in chicken salad and extra good with artichokes dipped into it. Today’s takeaway is that you shouldn’t make things harder than they have to be. And if the store doesn’t have currants, raisins are a fine substitute.

Stay cool out there,

Sandy

A plate with cooked artichokes wraps another dish containing garlicky mayonnaise. On the bottom right of the image is a blue bowl containing dressed greens topped with Sicilian Chicken Salad. The plate and the bowl sit atop a yellow floral tablecloth.

08: Simply Good Salmon

Hello from the future! 

At least that is how it feels writing this because when I last wrote it was late-February and my life felt and looked quite different. I’m writing perched from my kitchen island in my new apartment in the South Side of Chicago. I’m noshing on a salad made of leftovers from last night’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat extravaganza of a dinner, wherein everything we ate was from the book. 

I’m still unpacking, literally and metaphorically, settling into a space that is entirely “my own” (my own, as in shared with Todd and Momo). But what makes it my own or our own is that we own it. During the winter we found a charming storefront-cum-loft-style-apartment on a sunny corner. We viewed it by first placing our faces against the glass, imaging what it would be like to live in a first floor apartment, before visiting again with our realtor and eventually making an offer. We closed on April 1st, and while it was all done off-view from social media and ended on April Fool’s Day, this is no joke! We began moving our things over throughout the month of April, which resulted in me tapering off from cooking and baking as we carefully and sometimes haphazardly boxed up our kitchen and the rest of our apartment making many, many, many trips across the city. 

The number one question I get these days is, “So how’s the apartment coming along?” And all I can say is, it’s going. Homeownership is very cool, kind of weird, and involves lots of problem-solving. Each problem that arises is uniquely our own to discover, strategize, throw money at, and eventually solve—in a way that I had never felt in my 11 years as a renter. What I will say is that I love it here. I love that we have a stoop to sit on which I have filled with edible plants and which we sometimes grill from with our trusty Mr. Bar-B-Q. I love that when we need to take Momo out, we simply put on his collar and open the door. I love that the ice cream man comes at the same time every evening, serving up gorgeous flavors like strawberry cheesecake and pistachio. I love that the neighbor we share a wall with is cool and kind, and has a dog that gets along incredibly well with Momo. I love how most everyone says hello when we are stoop-sitting, often chiming in to ask us if we knew that our apartment was once an Italian restaurant for more than four decades. I love that throughout the day, we get wafts of tortilla smells from the El Milagro factory mingled with garlic smells from the neighborhood restaurants making pizza, and pasta, and mouth watering garlic bread. 

And wow, do I love my kitchen. Ample counters, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a new fridge and microwave, plenty of space to flex and stretch and do massive amounts of food prep. While we are still figuring things out, I’m attempting to get to know the neighborhood and the kitchen with recipes from SFAH. Where can I find kumquats and fig leaves around here? Who’s got the best deals on chicken? What’s the closest grocery store on foot? Who’s got the absolute best produce in the neighborhood? And where are we getting takeout on the nights when we simply cannot fathom cooking or scrounging in the pantry? Todd came home from walking Momo earlier this afternoon with two tamales that he shared with me, and they were divine. We’ve got a taqueria around the corner that makes deliciously good $5 tostadas and another one about an 8 minute walk away that we once stumbled upon in 2019 when we were lost in Pilsen and just needed to get out of the cold November rain. There’s a spot we like for pizza and another spot we love for their cheap burgers and South Side commitment to playing the White Sox with the bar music turned off until the next commercial break. All in all, it’s feeling pretty good here. Good enough to shop, and prep, and cook, and sometimes enjoy our meals from the comfort of the stoop with Momo hoping he’ll catch a bite of whatever it is we are eating.

Last night was Slow-roasted Salmon cooked on a bed of parsley and fennel fronds, topped with Mexican-ish Herb Salsa with a touch of mango, and served with a side of Shaved Fennel and Radishes tossed in a Lemon Vinaigrette. Two things I loved about this meal were that we used the entire fennel in both the salmon and the salad and that when I couldn’t find kumquats at my local Pete’s I free-styled with chopping up frozen mango. Additionally, I had to learn how to use Todd’s mandoline slicer—something I’ve long feared and dreaded—and I ended up with delightfully thin radish slices and a fear well faced. 

Some tips for future Sandy: make the vinaigrette and salsa a day in advance so you aren’t stress food prepping after going to the movies and grocery shopping on foot.

A note of gratitude: Thank you to Alessandra for sending me a shipment of olive oil and balsamic from Brightland. I made good use of the olive oil in the lemon vinaigrette last night and it was delicious! Can’t wait to use the balsamic on something special.

More soon,

Sandy

image description: a salmon fillet topped with a mango and herb salsa and a radish and fennel salad are plated on a blue and white ceramic dish. The plate of food is next to a napkin with an orange and silver flatware set and a light cotton napkin. The tablecloth beneath them has a yellow floral pattern.

07: Picking Up Where We Left Off

Happy 2-22-22 and Mardi Gras, fam! 

Though it’s raining heavily, and it’s dark and gray out, I’m feeling rather perky today. I spent the morning cleaning up the kitchen from last night’s epic cook: Heaven on Seven’s sausage and chicken gumbo, and have a giant pot to look forward to eating today, and tomorrow, and maybe three months from now because I’m definitely freezing half of this goodness. If your eyes and ears perked up at gumbo, let me tell you, this recipe is no joke. I started a tradition of making it ahead of Mardi Gras in 2019, just as I was coming out of the historic government shutdown and figuring out how to be a little less homesick and lost in my career. Something in my core was like, “Sandy, you need to track down a copy of the Heaven on Seven cookbook and make the gumbo.” And that is exactly what 2019, 2020, and 2021 Sandy have done every year since. 2022 was no different, but there’s something that gets me every time. And that is: how much work it is to prepare for such a rich yet humble bowl of warmth.  

The steps include making a Cajun seasoning charmingly named “angel dust,” making homemade chicken stock (which I thankfully had on hand), making a dark roux, and making a roasted garlic puree—the latter two taking about an hour each, but can be done at the same time. Then there is the chopping, slicing, and dicing. Slicing andouille sausage into coins, cutting up chicken breasts into ¾ inch cubes and then seasoning with angel dust, chopping onions—so many onions—celery, green bell peppers, and jalapeño, and managing to keep the onions separate from the celery/pepper combo. The sausage is cooked, then the chicken is added, then the onions, then the celery/pepper, garlic puree, and seasoning, followed by broth, and then finally (FINALLY!) whisking in the roux. Let that pot simmer for an hour, uncovered, and do not, I repeat, do NOT forget the filé powder at the very end as you take the pot off of the heat. Serve your gumbo over cornbread or white rice, and you have something that is as good as what you’d find at a little cash-only restaurant, nestled into the seventh floor of a building in Jeweler's Row. 

I credit my dad for taking us here as kids, often after a treacherous visit to the dentist’s office on a different floor of the building. I recall thinking this place was pure magic. The walls are lined with hundreds of bottles of hot sauce with names like “slap my ass and call me Sally!” and “ass in space” and “ass in the tub” to describe just how hot they were. The big bronze candelabra-style light fixtures are dripping with Mardi Gras beads, and the entire place just sparkles. It’s a remarkable thing, being in a building that smells like a dentist office on other floors, to arrive on the seventh floor and be rolled into a wave of the smell of fried green tomatoes, gumbo, and shrimp Étouffée. Their key lime pie is as legendary as the hilariously named hot sauce bottles. 

But back to the kitchen. 

With all that chopping, pureeing, stirring, and whisking, I felt a little zing. A reminder that I really like making food for myself, especially those special, once-in-a-year, damn is this good dishes. My silence on the cooking/blogging front this last month wasn’t due to throwing in the towel or biting off more than I can chew. In fact, I’ve made 20 of the 126 recipes on my list, so we’re still in good shape. I was sidelined with coursework (so many articles!), TAing, and a few other side projects in addition to it being cold, and snowy, and just needing a break from big projects. But hello, I am here, and goodness gracious, was making gumbo exactly the reminder I needed that cooking is the best!

In an effort to pick up where we left off many moons ago, I wanted to share my thoughts on the Glazed Five-Spice chicken with a side of goma-ae (with a variation on the tahini dressing) and steamed jasmine rice. A big takeaway was that, from what I can tell, Chef Nosrat’s rice-to-water ratios incorporate more water than I’ve ever read in the instructions on the back of the rice bag! I skeptically brought more water than I usually do to a boil, added my ::rinsed:: jasmine rice, and was blown away by how moist, fluffy, and good this rice turned out! I also added a few drops of sesame oil to the rice as I fluffed it, which complemented the sesame in the tahini dressing and the sesame oil in the glaze. 10/10 would make this gorgeous dish again! 

And you better believe that I’m making rice with my gumbo this evening using Chef Nosrat’s ratios. We need fluffy moist rice for our gumbo my friends!

Now to figure out what’s on the menu next…

[image description: A chicken, deconstructed into legs, thighs, and breasts, on a quarter sheet pan, about to be prepped for overnight marination in the fridge.]

[image description: Two shallow bowls painted in a blue and white swirling pattern. Each bowl contains a scoop of jasmine rice, goma-ae spinach salad, and a piece of Glazed Five-Spice chicken topped with sticky marinade.]

06: Let Them Eat (half-of-a) Cake

Good morning fellow cooks and friends,

It’s snowing in Chicago. I’ve yet to pull on my warm socks and boots to take a walk in it, but from my perch at the bright table in my kitchen, facing the window, it looks like a lovely animated snow globe. I’m sitting with my cup of matcha listening to afternoon bike ride (thank you TikTok algorithm for the recommendation) thinking about cake. Or half of a cake. Actually, a halved cake recipe to be exact. It was two weeks into the cookbook challenge, eating big bowls of curdled stracciatella, that Todd recommended we halve the recipes since there are only two of us noshing. Readers: the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind and a lightbulb moment ensued. I wouldn’t have to eat leftover curdled egg soup or over-toasted bread salad if there wasn’t any left to eat! 

Which leads me to cake. I had lofty goals of making a cake, a frittata, and a butternut squash and brussels sprouts dish amidst a busy holiday weekend where I was also getting my footing with the new semester. I had a moment where I said to myself, “Sandy, you do not have to do it all right now.” I made this cookbook mission for myself because I needed a hobby that brought me solace, not stress and anxiety. Good news, the sprouts and squash keep for a while (hoorah for hardy vegetables!) and cake and frittata are relatively easy to make. In giving myself permission to do a little bit less, I found that I enjoyed the process of cooking and baking much more and the food turned out quite well! Also also, Todd caramelized onions for the Roasted Potato, Caramelized Onion, and Parmesan Frittata using a sweet trick from J. Kenji López-Alt’s book The Food Lab that plays on the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction that shifts the pH of the onions resulting in sugary caramelized onions in much less time. The key is adding ¼ teaspoon of baking soda for every pound of chopped onions. He saved us time and effort, caramelizing onions while I fried a batch of potatoes in butter and olive oil! 

But back to the cake. 

Do you ever recall defining moments in your life that you credit with having a causal effect on who you are today? Here’s one: I was lucky enough to go to museums from an early age, ergo, I wound up studying art history and working in art museums for over a decade of my life. Here’s another: I always wanted an Easy Bake Oven growing up but was never given one (sob!). But… did you know that most kitchens have actual ovens? And that if you are lucky enough to have been raised in the company of those who cook and bake regularly, you can hang out in the kitchen—the one with the egg yolk colored yellow walls and the Mexican ceramic tiles—and watch them bake and cook, eventually learning how to use the oven to bake cookies and cakes yourself? Mind-blowing! I attribute some of my love of baking to the fact that I didn’t have an Easy Bake Oven, which pushed me into the kitchen at a younger age. I recall coming home in middle school and high school, with a sincere need for chocolate chip cookies, and figuring out how to make them myself from the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag—a gold standard recipe imho. 

Fast forward two decades later to today. I have an adult version of an Easy Bake Oven, a toaster oven that can also airfry and go into convection mode, it’s truly a transformer! And now I have a cake recipe that I must tell you about. In Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat writes about one of her favorite cakes, the Fresh Ginger and Molasses Cake that was on the menu at Chez Panisse while she worked there. She begins the recipe with an anecdote. When she arrived at work in the mornings, she would grab a slice of this deliciously moist day-old cake, make a cup of milky tea, and bring the tea and cake into the walk-in refrigeration, eating while she reorganized the space around what meat and produce they’d be cooking with that day. I love this anecdote so much because it shows that small moments, even work, can be made memorable and delicious with the perfect slice of cake. The recipe is close to the original one they served at Chez Panisse, with a few slight modifications that make it easier for home cooks (thanks, Chef!). 

What I found so good about this cake is that it uses fresh ginger, which is blended into a spicy sugary syrup that is mixed with oil and molasses, creating a dark moist cake that is utterly delightful. In the chapter “Fat”, Nosrat expounds the reason why oil-based cakes are so moist yet light. The fat in the oil coats the flour proteins which prevent gluten networks from forming, which causes an oil-barrier that prevents water from participating in the gluten formation process, resulting in a moister cake. Causality, science, baking perfection! 

In my wildest Easy Bake dreams and with my new focus on halving recipes, I halved the proportions and baked two layers in teensy six-inch pans, making the cutest little cake you ever did see. I topped the cake with cream cheese frosting I’d made in May and frozen for occasions like this. Defrosted in the fridge, this frosting held up! The sweet, creamy, slightly dense frosting was the perfect foil for the light moist spicy cake. ::Chef’s kiss emjoi:: It was good enough for Wayne Thiebaud to paint. 

I will be making this again, maybe next time with the Scented Vanilla Cream Nosrat recommends. And who knows, perhaps when it is safe for us to gather again, I’ll make the whole recipe for us to enjoy over milky tea while we take stock of what’s in our kitchens and all the meals we could make with everything we already have. 

two plates each topped with a slice of potato, caramelized onion, and Parmesan cheese frittata, flanked by a green salad with cucumbers and feta

a partially eaten ginger molasses cake with cream cheese frosting and a single slice cake next to a mug of matcha with pillowy almond milk foam

05: We Got Cocky

There’s no use in crying over mushy beans, rubbery tuna, or curdled stracciatella. That’s how the old adage goes, right? 

I write to you after a solid week of cookbook mission failures. I had big ambitions, fueled by my successes over the first week of this project with my meticulous shopping list and cooking schedule. But one by one, these recipes dropped like flies. In fact, last night’s planned main dish of Tonno e Fagioli (made from Tuna Confit, simmered white beans, parsley, and lemon juice) transformed into takeout Thai food from our neighborhood haunt, Siam Noodle and Rice. That’s a testament to just how rubbery the tuna was, how mushy the beans were, and how much I am willing to admit that it didn’t work out.

In an effort to be honest about my wins and losses, I thought why not chronicle both as I move through this journey of learning new skills and trying new recipes. Not everything is going to be a social media spectacle, with a perfectly styled photograph and a rave review. Think of all the meals you have eaten that you didn’t photograph, didn’t remember, or worse, choked down because you just needed to eat something. So without further ado, here is a list of my food failures from the last week, some from the book, others totally free-styled, and my 10-point-scale ratings of them.

• In an attempt to make a big batch of vegetable broth from a bag of vegetable scraps and a few fresh onions, carrots, celery, and parsley, I totally bombed. The broth was a gorgeous golden color but tasted horrifically bitter. My best guess is that I cooked it for too long and that some of the scraps in the bag were from bitter greens, which tainted the flavor.

  0/10 I would not make this again.

• Following my fiasco of vegetable broth (and previous post about chicken!) I made Samin’s gorgeous gorgeous golden Chicken Broth with a layer of fat skimmed off the top and frozen for future matzo balls. Starting off strong with perfect broth, I attempted to make a batch of Brothy Stracciatella Roman Egg Drop Soup and ended up with a bowl of curdled eggs in broth. The whole thing reeked of Bridget Jones’ blue soup, omelette, and marmalade. I know exactly what I did wrong here. I whisked too quickly rather than slowly stirring the eggs into the simmering broth with a fork. I should have put my craving to whisk eggs into something more productive and appetizing like meringue or homemade mayonnaise.

  4/10 It tasted pretty okay and I’m going to make myself eat the leftovers, but dear lord is this soup funky on the eyes. When I figure out how to make it right, maybe I’ll write a happier post.

• Yesterday I managed to make not one but two batches of failed simmered white beans. The first were a mushy gooey mess. The second were undercooked and yet somehow still a little mushy. While the beans taste like perfectly fine beans flavor-profile wise, they’d be best refried or buzzed with broth into a bean soup. They do not have the bite, texture, or desired look to be mixed with tuna for a refreshing and appetizing tuna and bean salad. They’re a bit of a mess, as they say on GBBO.

  5/10 they’re edible but depress me. Who fails this hard at making beans twice?

• In my fridge is a container of shredded rubbery confited tuna in seasoned olive oil, that Todd has generously said he will turn into tuna salad this week. Todd, thanks for taking one for the team. This tuna was a disaster. My mistake: I didn’t read the instructions closely enough and wound up cutting my raw tuna into 1-inch pieces instead of 1-and-a-half-inch pieces. I am my own worst enemy here. I’m 33 years old, I’ve been cooking for literal decades, and I know the number one rule when cooking is to read the recipe through before starting. Y’all, I skimmed the recipe and got very into cutting 1-inch cubes of tuna, like I was making ceviche or something (which perhaps I should have just done). Since I plan on eating Tonno e Fagioli before the year is over, I will be attempting confited tuna again and getting it right the next time I make it. Stay tuned!

  5/10 the tuna tastes okay, it’s the consistency that’s off. I’m doing some cursed magical thinking hoping that the tuna somehow got better in the fridge overnight sitting in the oil.

• Last Saturday in an attempt to make Torn Croutons from homemade sourdough bread for Roasted Radicchio and Roquefort Panzanella, I somehow managed to OVERTOAST my croutons. My apologies to my dentist, these croutons, even when tossed with Brown Butter Vinaigrette, were unforgiving on my teeth. If my crowns could talk, they’d tell me to stick to a liquid diet so long as it doesn’t contain curdled egg soup.

  1/10 though the Brown Butter Vinaigrette was incredibly delicious it wasn’t wet enough to make the torn croutons edible in a bread salad.

Mercury is in retrograde, it’s the start of the second week of the semester, and I am not a perfect cook. But what I do know is when to throw my hands in the air and declare, “Todd we’re getting take out!” The Tom Kha soup was a balm and there are leftovers for lunch today. Better luck next time, I suppose! Perhaps I’ll do better with Roasted Potato, Caramelized Onion, and Parmesan Frittata or the Fresh Ginger and Molasses Cake with Scented Vanilla Cream that’s on the docket.

two bowls with blue and white floral patterns lining the rims contain yellow Italian egg drop soup with a suspicious curdled texture

04: Facing Fear

Dear readers, I have a confession. 

Prior to embarking on this project [checks notes] nine days ago, I had cracked open Salt Fat Acid Heat and attempted to read it cover-to-cover multiple times. And every time I got to the section on chicken preparation, more specifically, how to deconstruct a whole chicken for various dishes, I thought, “That’s nice, but no. I will not be cutting up a chicken myself. I can buy chicken in pieces, thank you very much.”

Initially, I dismissed this as disinterest, laziness, and the modern convenience of our relationship to meat, that stuff that comes cut and parsed into the pieces you want, pre-packaged in styrofoam or plastic, and tightly sealed complete with a price tag neatly stuck in the corner. It wasn’t until I decided to start this project, until I was all in, that it dawned on me the actual reason I responded with such aversion to instructions on how to break down a chicken. It was out of fear. If I bought a whole chicken and took it apart, with a knife and cleaver, then I would have to get into the literal bones of the animal, breaking it into pieces with my bare hands. 

Though I’ve dipped my toes into vegetarianism—briefly in college, briefly again after reading Jonathan Safron Foer’s Eating Animals—it wasn’t until last fall while reading the introduction to Sunaura Taylor’s book Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation that I realized that meat is animals. Or let me correct. I knew that meat is animals, but I didn’t consider the transformation that animals undergo in our minds to take them from, say, cow to beef. I suppose that a huge part of the erasure or disconnect is due to how we consume meat: as processed, packaged, and so far from the source that when eating a burger, it’s hard to imagine that this flavorful, fatty, juicy bite was once a living breathing being like me.

Yet here we are. It is January 10th, and in the last week I have spatchcocked a chicken, cut off wings (twice!), and broken a whole chicken down into breasts, legs ‘n thighs, and a carcass for stock. Samin Nosrat’s recipes don’t merely instruct you to buy a spatchcocked chicken or buy 2 lbs of bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, no, they encourage you to turn to page 318 for illustrated instructions on how to take a chicken from whole to eight pieces with a sharp knife and your hands. How to cut out the spine and press down on the breastbone using your body weight to flatten the chicken, salting it overnight, resulting in a crispy and quickened method for Crispiest Spatchcocked Chicken.

Upon reflection, I chuckle at how fearful I was about these instructions having cooked countless chickens and chicken parts over the last ten years, considering myself pretty good with a knife and fairly confident in the kitchen. Though a little over a week ago, I would have balked at the idea of processing a chicken myself, intimidated by the very thought of it. Which goes to show, if you set your mind on something, find a pretty good YouTube tutorial, and psych yourself up just enough you can do just about anything! For me this meant facing my fear of the inside of a chicken, the crunch and sharp edge of the bones as I cut through them with my kitchen shears. Taking a moment to look at the tiny kidneys and heart that were still inside of the body, taking a moment to give gratitude for this animal, for what it can teach me and how it can nourish me. Pausing to make sure I could strategically use every part of this animal, saving the bones, carcass, and innards for stock, shredding the leftovers for chicken salad and BBQ chicken pizza. 

All of this is to say, try the thing you’ve been putting off because it seems scary or like too much effort. We’re in season three of the pandemic and there’s not an end in sight. What recipe did you want to try, what skill are you considering picking up, what complicated puzzle are you too intimidated to start? What book has been sitting on your shelf mocking you because you haven’t cracked it? What art form have you feigned interest in because you didn’t think it was for you? I implore you to find your metaphorical chicken and figure out how to spatchcock it, fear, kidneys, crunch and all. Because what awaits you on the other side is the knowledge that you tried, that it might not have been perfect, but you did it nonetheless. And the reward is knowing that you can keep growing and stretching and doing the weird and new and foreign stuff that you thought you never could do. For me, lately, that’s going on very silly Peloton power walks in the bitter cold with a big grin on my face just for showing up. And using Todd’s cleaver to not so gracefully chop into not-so-perfect pieces what’s for dinner tonight: Glazed Five-Spice Chicken.

A salted spatchcocked chicken in a cast iron skillet chills overnight in my crowded refrigerator

A roast chicken right out of the oven with crispy golden skin sits in a cast iron skillet.

03: The Special Sauce

Good morning!

I’ve slipped into the cozy outfit from yesterday, walked the dog, it’s not -6° outside anymore, and there’s a loaf of sourdough doing it’s thing in the oven. We made it through the first week of the year and I’ve managed to dip my toes back into work and homework, awakening and stretching those parts of myself that I’d allowed to rest for the last two weeks. All in all, I’m feeling quite good about the start of the year, tucked into my little kitchen with a cup of coffee, a grocery list, and another recipe to tell you about.

Pasta alla Pomarola is the quintessential “special sauce.” It’s not the special sauce you’re thinking of that goes on burgers; that lovely combination of mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, a dash of tabasco and Worcestershire (I like this recipe). What I’m referring to is the Italian red sauce that conjures checkered tablecloths and begs for meatballs and parm as a companion. The origin of Pasta alla Pomarola is somewhat mythic to me, as a bona fide Chez Panisse fangirl. Chez Panisse, the gorgeous Berkeley restaurant and café where Samin Nosrat got her start in a professional kitchen, is known for crafting a new menu every single day and letting the freshness, color, and texture of what’s in season guide their decisions in the kitchen. Years ago, while Nosrat was fairly new to working at the restaurant, Chez Panisse held a contest among all the staff to create the best tomato sauce with the only rule being that the contest entrants had to use ingredients from Chez Panisse’s kitchen. The prize was $500 and credit on the menu each time the sauce was used in perpetuity (wow!). While Nosrat used this anecdote to explain the importance of using high quality olive oil in one’s cooking, my takeaway was “Great, now I have an incredible tomato sauce in my arsenal forever!” 

IMHO, and in Nosrat’s opinion too, what makes this sauce so good is the aforementioned olive oil that emulsifies with the stewed tomatoes right at the end of cooking. Some incredible magic takes place, binding the acidic tomatoes and bright basil to the fatty oil, which is blended together into a gorgeous red sauce that is a welcome base for any pizza night at home (we swear by Mark Bittman’s dough in this household) and the centerpiece of any bowl of pasta. This week I used the Pomarola sauce in a bowl of homemade pasta; layered it between ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan and homemade noodles in a lasagna; and spooned it over warm yeasty dough for prosciutto, bell pepper, caramelized onion, and feta pizza. I’ve got a little sauce left, maybe I’ll toast some bread and make sourdough pizza bread with the leftover sauce and mozzarella!

If you’re reading this thinking, “Oh my god, I’m not sure my olive oil stands up to making a good sauce like this, and I don’t want to spend an arm-and-a-leg at one of those fancy olive oil stores,” Nosrat’s got you. She recommends the Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Costco which you can buy a big bottle of without breaking the bank and use for most of your cooking. We buy a bottle every time we wander the aisles of Costco and it lasts us months. When in doubt, look for oils that are produced from 100% California or Italian olives, keep your olive oil out of heat and direct sunlight, and use it or lose it. As an FYI, Nosrat reminds us that olive oil goes bad within twelve to fourteen months of when it was produced, so don’t save that fancy bottle from the beautiful olive oil store in Georgetown (lol, Sandy), use it in your cooking. And decide how you plan on using it. If it’s central to building the flavor of your dish, as in a moist olive oil cake, use the good stuff. If it’s a cooking medium, say for pan frying, use the Costco stuff. And remember, taste as you go. If it smells like crayons or tastes a little off, it’s time for a new bottle. 

Now I have two questions for you, dear readers. Do you have a go-to pasta sauce recipe you swear by? And what do you do with your leftover sauce? I’m stumped at dreaming beyond pizza, pasta, and lasagna and would love to know your thoughts.

A blue bowl with homemade pasta tossed in Pomarola sauce and topped with shaved Parmesan cheese.

02: Thesis, Methods, and Granola

Declarations like “I’m going to cook an entire cookbook and then document it with some regularity” don’t come easily. Or perhaps they do, it’s the follow through and commitment that are the tricky parts of the equation. When I decided I was going to attempt this project in mid-December, Todd immediately encouraged me to write about it. To which I responded with a series of concerns and worries about picking a title, how to go about starting, and whether or not this would be more work than simply cooking and enjoying the fruits of my labor. But here I am, several recipes deep and my big announcement out there in the spotlight looking for company. 

As a doctoral student with a love of spreadsheets and organizational tools, it should come as no surprise that I’m tackling this cooking journey the only way I know how: by reading Salt Fat Acid Heat from cover to cover, highlighting sections that seem especially important, and figuring out what Samin Nosrat’s thesis is. Yes, I am breaking down and digesting her work as if it were a text for one of my classes and it’s actually a delightful process. 

Nosrat’s thesis is hinted at in the title of both her book and mini-series. She argues that there are four elements essential to being a great cook: salt, fat, acid, and heat. If we understand and employ our understanding of these elements to guide our decision making in the kitchen, at the grill, and when shopping at the farmer’s market, we should be able to transform our cooking from good to great. Through years reading cookbooks, writing, and research that took the form of observing in countless kitchens, working in several restaurants, and conducting world travel in search of flavor through cultural and historical experiences with food, Nosrat landed on these four essential elements. The book is not so much a standard cookbook, but rather a series of treatises on how to use salt, fat, acid, and heat followed by recipes that demonstrate how all of these elements are at play in the creation of really good cooking. In explaining that the layers of fat from cold butter are what makes dough so flaky in a pie crust or that Diamond Crystal salt is the “least salty” salt due to its molecular structure, Nosrat illuminates readers and cooks on the basics of the alchemy and chemistry of cooking and baking with simplicity and clarity. 

And while accessibility is made clear through the omission of jargon and the back-to-the-basics recipes included, Nosrat also offers variations that allow each cook to add their flourish through modifications to the recipes based on culturally specific and ingredient-driven flavor profiles. Further, what makes this book extra special is the author’s decision to forgo having photography in the book, employing the handiwork of illustrator Wendy Macnaughton to illustrate the text with gorgeous drawings, humorous marginalia, and fantastic flavor-matching charts. In eschewing stylized food photography, as most cookbooks and food blogs showcase, Nosrat removes a barrier: that of perfection. Rather than instructing us to cook or bake something in the hopes of making it look as good as a professionally styled photograph of a dish, Nosrat frees us up to focus on flavor and understanding the four elements rather than on appearances. I can’t speak for Julia Child, but I feel like she would approve, no?

An additional perk of how Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is structured is that Nosrat offers recommendations for how to build meals and pair dishes for almost every recipe, based on what flavors and textures go together. I’m telling you, this is a cookbook unlike any other I’ve encountered. My method for approaching this project then, has been to determine what I want to make and when I want to make it, based on what is in season and what goes together. I created a massive spreadsheet of every recipe in the book, with a column that details what season to best eat certain produce or specific dishes (chicken soup and citrus in the winter, cucumbers and basil pesto in the summer) and which dishes go with one another or build upon another (Kufte Kebabs go with Persian-ish Rice and Persian Herb Yogurt, and save the carcass and spine from the Crispiest Spatchcocked Chicken to make Chicken Stock to go in Chunky Tuscan Bean and Kale Soup). I’ve then begun mapping out what I’d like to make each month, trying to cook at least one of the thirteen chicken dishes every month and one or two sweets from the end of the book. Honestly, I’m a little too excited about how I’ve been able to organize the plan of action. 

Which leaves us with granola, the very first thing I made out of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Nekisia’s Olive Oil and Sea Salt Granola combines all four of the elements: fat from the olive oil, salt from the fleur de sel, acid from the maple syrup, and heat to transform raw oatmeal and nuts into fabulously crunchy granola. The batch makes a big bowlful that should last me through the first few weeks of the semester and goes beautifully with yogurt. I’m planning to break up a pomegranate to add to my bowl of granola for the rest of the week to add an extra burst of acid, crunch, and color.

Now I’m off to the store to transform some of my leftovers into a sheet pan dinner, which come to think of it, is rather polarizing. Sheet pan dinner, are you a believer or a critic? Do tell!

a baking pan lined with parchment paper and full of fresh-from-the-oven granola with an assortment of toasted nuts and crunchy oats. The pan sits on a yellow floral oilcloth tablecloth next to a copper pot with fresh tangerines.

01: Hobby-Haver

I’m sitting on my bed, my toes grazing the edge of Momo’s back while he lounges at my feet. It’s the third of January, a new year, with new desires, intentions, and ambitions. I’m not sure about you, but I’m teetering between feeling energized and looking forward to the months to come and completely exhausted and overwhelmed by reality. 

Thinking back on the last year, I clocked that something was missing. My days blended together in a pandemic, commuting, homework, working, errands, streaming, dog-walking, sleeping haze. It dawned on me that I was completely devoid of hobbies. I was (and am) in survival mode, as most of us have been for years. Not just pandemic-response survival mode, but the crushing-weight-of-capitalism survival mode. I was trying to get through the days, trying to make it to the weekend and the days off. Yearning for rest while losing sight of the things that make me, me. And in this desire to find a hobby and build some growth into my life, I am choosing curiosity and my love of food.

Looking back on the books I most enjoy reading, I always land on memoirs by chefs. Reflecting on some of my favorite ways to spend my time and money, I always choose food and cooking. Thinking about how I structure any vacations, it’s always been about where and what we are eating. The life rafts of the last two years have been the sushi we got from Sushi Ogawa on my 31st birthday, the smoked shrimp we ate on a stoop at Calumet Fisheries, the chocolate layer cake with buttercream frosting I taught myself to make, the trips to Gene’s for landjägers and good mustard, the salty buckwheat chocolate chunk cookies I baked in batches and mailed to friends, and the sourdough starter I was given my second week of school that has proved good fodder for me to learn the heady Tartine method of breadmaking. 

To try to anchor myself to something (re: anything) while focusing on nurturing myself, I’ve come up with a plan.* To cook myself through the unknowns of 2022. 

For those who have been reading my blogs and newsletters for years and those who know me IRL (many of you are both), it should not be news that “Julia and Julia” is one of my comfort movies. I watch it at least once a year, if not more. There’s something incredibly warming and satisfying about the story, with its parallels between two seemingly “lost” women, grappling with their raison d’être and ultimately falling in love with food and cooking. Julia Child, a beloved protagonist in the public eye and in my heart, is at the center of this story, finding a rhythm in the kitchen and out in the French markets that was both contagious and effervescent. I fell hard for Child, devouring My Life in France, teaching myself how to make her omelettes, and growing to understand why she favored white pepper to black (for aesthetics!).

I always liked the idea of trying to cook my way through a cookbook, though I never felt driven, focused, or ambitious enough to tackle it. Not to mention, how do you pick the book? Decisions, decisions; commitment, commitment. Enter Salt Fat Acid Heat and Samin Nosrat. I was first introduced to Nosrat through my Mom. I recall it was the holidays, 2018, and we watched her television show Salt Fat Acid Heat in rapid succession. I was entranced. Who was this bubbly, joyful, chef, so curious and committed to flavor? Todd gifted me her book, which I pawed through, cooking recipes that always always came out good. Chicken stock that cooks so low and slow that it gets a gelatinous wiggle when you let it cool in the fridge. Pie dough that broke my intimidation of making pie dough from scratch. Tomato sauce that is not only rich, but hails from a cooking competition at Chez Panisse, and doubles as a delicious pizza sauce. 

And so, As Salty As The Sea is born. It takes its name from Nosrat’s recommendation to salt your blanching and pasta water “as salty as the sea.” It is a writing and cooking project that I hope will carry perhaps an ounce of the poetry, humor, and delight that Nosrat brings to the table. It is a space for me to document what I’m cooking and learning and share some of the tips and tricks I’m pulling from the lessons in Nosrat’s book. In combining photography and writing, I hope to create accountability for myself as a writer, cook, and hobby-haver while also drawing in readers, friends, and community. Over the course of the next year, I want to step out of my comfort zone in the kitchen, visit farmer’s markets, cook with the seasons, and decrease my food waste. In addition to trying new recipes and techniques, I’m focusing on feeding and caring for myself in the best way I know how, through home cooked meals and time in the kitchen. Won’t you join me?

*The plan includes a detailed spreadsheet of recipes and pairings, a month-by-month meal plan, and a growing collection of salt!

My wooden kitchen counter is topped with yellow semolina pasta dough being fed into a red metal pasta maker.