Sunday Digest
Am I the only person not on vacation right now
Hey gang,
First of all a PSA that if you’re selling something on FB Marketplace and the buyer tells you that they’re trying to send you Venmo money but they need your email address because your Venmo name isn’t going through— IT’S A SCAM and go no further. Two different accounts tried to get me with this just in the last two days!
And for today’s sole recipe = a kale Caesar. Groundbreaking!
I desperately need to eat more salad right now and this is one of the best, with some charred broccoli, chickpeas, and no Parm or croutons to drag you down. I made this one a lot for my last clients.
Original recipe here but I made it better / lazier for you below.
Kale Caesar with Charred Broccolini and Chickpeas - serves 2-4 for lunch
Dressing:
1 Tbsp. anchovy paste (if you can find this one, stock up)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (I like Sir Kensington’s)
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard (this is the very best Dijon out there)
3/4 teaspoon minced/grated garlic (I use a garlic press and you can, too*— this is the best one ever made but only available on eBay after OXO inexplicably changed the design)
1/4 tsp. salt (but taste it first so that it’s not too salty)
1/4 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper
Whisk it all up in a bowl = Caesar dressing.
*Don’t let snobs tell you that you shouldn’t use a garlic press. Enough.
Salad:
2 bunches broccolini, trimmed
olive oil
1/2 cup toasted almonds (with or without salt), coarsely chopped
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 small heads Little Gem lettuce, cored, big leaves torn (~4 cups) OR 1-2 heads of romaine, chopped in large pieces
1 large bunch Tuscan/dinosaur/lacinato kale (all the same thing), stemmed and chopped (~4 cups)
1 cup thinly sliced red onion
handful crispy chickpeas (like this kind)
Maldon salt
black pepper
Preheat broiler. If any broccolini stalks are particularly fat, slice them down the middle into two. Place broccolini on a sheet pan, drizzle with ~2 Tbsp. olive oil and sprinkle with ~1/2 tsp. salt.
Broil until broccoli is bright green, charred in spots, and crisp-tender. Once it’s cool enough to handle, chop into ~2” lengths.
Place kale in a large salad bowl with some dressing, and toss to combine. Add more dressing as needed until kale is coated but not sopping, and kale leaves are still somewhat crisp. Add broccolini, chickpeas, lettuce, almonds and red onion to bowl and toss it up. Add more dressing if needed.
Plate into wide salad bowls and top each salad with crispy chickpeas, a pinch of Maldon, and fresh pepper.
*if you omit the lettuce, this salad can keep in the fridge for a day without getting too soggy.
Meatless dinner idea for Stroganoff addicts like myself:
If you’re like me and you live for sour cream and are also trying to eat less meat, try this NYT mushroom Stroganoff recipe. I made this before Christmas for a few vegetarian friends and dare I say we didn’t miss the beef? Also cooks way faster than meat, and the sour cream and the egg noodles are the point of this dish anyway. Thanks to Charlie’s mom for the rec. Would go great with that kale Caesar!
Found this old menu in my emails from early March 2020.
This was for a 50th birthday brunch I was very excited to cook for an actor client and her friends, until Covid showed up and brunch was canceled the day before. We all promised to reschedule “in a couple of weeks” once it blew over.
BRUNCH MENU:
- eggs Benedict (hollandaise, ham, English muffins, poached egg)
- spring vegetable fricassee (asparagus, snap peas, peas, shallot)
- crispy potatoes
- butter lettuce with mustardy vinaigrette
- lemon almond cake with whipped cream and berries
CAVIAR:
- blini? (TBD if it comes with the caviar)
- diced red onion
- egg yolks/whites
- creme fraiche
DRINKS:
- peach bellinis (I can make the peach puree)
- coffee / tea
Last but not least…
Good and depressing recap of the rise and fall of the optimism surrounding the cultivated meat sector. I found this especially interesting as I spent a good chunk of my recent ~18 month networking phase speaking with a handful of people in the lab-grown meat biz. Some of them were chefs who believed in this new endeavor so much they went back to school and studied food science in order to join up; one was a sales rep who moved across the country and took a pay cut because she “really drinks the kool-aid” (her words). All of them are unemployed now, as the optimism outpaced the technology and the funding reached its limit. It’s sad!
The ending of the article sums it up:
We are in the middle of a slow-motion global catastrophe. With every passing year, the destructive force of climate change gets more destabilizing, and the human harm to animals gets more extreme. But the societywide changes we’ll need to make to avert the worst outcomes are overwhelming, too. It’s so tempting to cling to recent memories of a less disordered past.
Cultivated meat was an embodiment of the wish that we can change everything without changing anything. We wouldn’t need to rethink our relationship to Big Macs and bacon. We could go on believing that the world would always be the way we’ve known it.
Cultivated meat was also a tantalizing spin on a deeply American fantasy: that we can buy our way to a better world. In a world where our favorite indulgences tend to come at someone else’s — or something else’s — expense, this was a product that reframed consumption as virtue. And for the investor class, it was confirmation that making money and doing good can really be the same thing.
No shortcut out of this besides eating less meat! It sucks.
Actually one last thing
A few days after that brunch got canceled, I was called in to interview for a chef position with a famous divorcee. While rolling her eyes about Covid, she told me very matter-of-factly that we’d all be leaving for the Hamptons the next day and that her kids would definitely yell at me and “is that a problem for you?” That marked the second time I was warned that I’d be yelled at by a client. I turned down the job, and last year she made news (again) for threatening her housekeeper with a knife!
I’m out. Love youuuuuuu.