036: May Cooking Notes

Everything I cooked

Welcome to Home Cooking Diary, a newsletter on my journey as a home cook—the successes and failures alike. Part cooking log, part recipe recommender, and part chronicle of my thoughts as I feed myself and my family. This is a recurring installment in which I recap my month of cooking, highlighting noteworthy meals. Note: if you’re reading this as an email, you may want to read it in your browser, lest it get cut off at the end.

Many many thanks to the wonderful Ally Mitchell for highlighting Home Cooking Diary in From France, With Love. I am an avid reader of her recipes, and so humbled to know she reads this. <3

Tuna Salad and leftovers

I try to avoid writing these monthly installments as if they were a Hudson Valley weather report, but I seem to always start them that way. I grew up in Los Angeles and have an incredibly vague sense of how to orient my memories in time because there weren’t seasons to mark it by. Sure, there are more subtle indicators that I probably don’t remember—and I’m sure LA weather is very different in these dark days of climate collapse—but at the time, aside from the brief period in early fall when the Santa Ana winds were raging, I remember it feeling more or less the same all the time. Or maybe I didn’t give LA enough credit for weather because I was too busy glamorizing the East Coast, as I pored over Vogue’s September Issue admiring Gisele in tweed coats and knee high leather boots. Little did I know that even NYC is usually too warm in the fall for those looks. The weather (this month it was warm, sometimes too warm, and then a day later really cold) does dictate most of what we do all day. Actually, that’s not entirely true. My son’s sleeping patterns are actually what dictate my days even more. Not so long ago I was despairing of how little I was able to do because of his sudden mobility, but that didn’t last long. He might be very mobile, but he’s also now napping in his crib like a champ and I find myself experiencing the joys of freedom whenever he’s asleep.

I’ve probably said this before in a different way, but the funny thing about these early days/months of having a child is how simultaneously the same but different your routine-based days are. For three months your life is one way—and you can’t do as much with your days as you did when you were childless—then suddenly it’s tweaked ever so slightly because of a shift in the baby’s development. I was remarking to someone recently that we’ve been through every kind of sleep scenario you can imagine—which is genuinely unexpected given how scary sleep is portrayed in parenting circles. As you probably have heard or experienced, how one approaches sleep is…loaded, so I was a bit surprised that we sort of did it all (most of it) without meaning to. I’ll keep the details sparing because I don’t want to trigger anyone for a stray comment about concepts like sleep training or bed-sharing or whatever. My experience has really assured me that whatever your intuition tells you is what you should probably do. Follow your kid’s lead if you can (I realize some can’t because of childcare requirements). If I had another baby the experience would probably be completely different, only because that baby would likely have an entirely different sleep sensibility.

Cooking-wise my baking marathon has continued. For one, I nearly forgot that in May I worked on my recipe for Orange-Cardamom-Walnut cake, riffing on an old family recipe. For another, Reed, my husband, is part of a group restoring the Kinderberg at Chess & Checkers in Central Park, and has to leave for work at around 5AM each morning. Having a loaf cake or snacking cake on hand has turned out to make things a lot better for him. Otherwise, he doesn’t really eat in the morning. I try to make it happen once a week if I can. Lastly, we’ve had visitors throughout the month so that has also dictated the cooking vibes. My go-to hosting meals and some fun cooking projects too.

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The Notables

Torta della Grazia / This is my version of my great-grandmother’s recipe, with orange, cardamom, and walnut. I wrote about it here. I hope you take a look (and if you make it, please send me any and all feedback).

Rachel Roddy’s Chicken Cacciatore (recipe, My Kitchen in Rome) / THIS. This chicken. It’s perfect. Once the skin is seared and properly browned on both sides it’s braised in white wine for an indeterminate period of time (timing depends on the chicken but it usually takes me about 40 minutes), and then salty black olives and a bit of white wine vinegar are added right at the end. I made it at least three times this month. It’s my new go-to meal to make for guests.

Chicken Cacciatore (Rachel Roddy’s My Kitchen in Rome)

Grilled Skirt Steak with roasted parsley potatoes and salsa verde and grilled asparagus; Grilled lamb chops with grilled spring vegetables / I wrote about these meals in my newsletter about grilling, but had to include both of these dishes here. Buying excellent local meat, preparing it thoughtfully/lovingly, and grilling it alongside seasonal vegetables, is a gift.

Potato and Broccolini and Frittata / I was proud of this frittata and will, I think, include a recipe for it soon. I love a frittata for the way it allows me to dig deep into my fridge for the vegetables I’ve been neglecting (likely bought for another reason that didn’t quite transpire)—like the broccolini I bought to make Sohla’s charred broccoli skillet, but didn’t quite get around to. A frittata also reinforces my belief that it’s never a mistake to always have potatoes around. They last forever and you never know when you’ll reach for them.

I love the drama of Alison Roman’s Mint Chip Ice Cream Cake. Also: delicious.

Alison Roman’s Mint Chip Ice Cream Cake (recipe, Sweet Enough) / At the risk of turning this into an Alison Roman stan newsletter, I loved making this dessert so much. Truly. Some of our best friends traveled up from the city for Memorial Day, and this was the first thing that came to mind when I began mulling over what to cook. Making a special dessert for people brings me a lot of pleasure. It’s a gesture so earnest (and a bit extra), and whenever I don’t happen to have something ready I feel irrationally bummed. Like I missed out on my chance to show this person/these people how much I love them. Sometimes it’s not in the cards for the myriad reasons you can imagine (time, childcare, energy, etc etc). The great thing about it is that if you plan ahead, this is actually very simple to execute. The All-Purpose Chocolate Sheet Cake I made at 9 o’clock at night after Tycho was in bed and dinner had been eaten, and I let it sit on the counter overnight to come to room temperature. The next morning I carved my 9 inch circle out of the cake before our family walk, then did the ice cream assembly as soon as we got home to give it as much time as possible in the freezer. My one misstep was forgetting to add the whipped cream at least two hours ahead of time to give it plenty of time to freeze, but it was fine after about thirty minutes. And next time I would add more powdered sugar to my whipped cream. She’s right that after freezing there isn’t much flavor unless you add a mindful amount of sugar. In my haste I didn’t measure fastidiously. Make this the next time you’re feeding a crowd. I promise it will be a hit. And we had so much leftover. I enjoyed snacking on it all week directly out of the freezer.

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Everything I cooked

5.1.23 / Orange-Cardamom Walnut Cake, version 1

5.2.23 / Lemon-cardamom-walnut cake, version 2

5.3.23 / Spinach scramble; a pot of Red Kidney Beans; beans with sauteed spinach; orange-cardamom-walnut cake, version 3; Italian sausage with roasted vegetables (Mina Stone, Lemon, Love, and Olive Oil)

5.4.23 / Orange-cardamom-walnut cake, version 4

5.5.23 / Spinach frittata; Orange-cardamom-walnut cake, version 5; Bolognese (Alison Roman)

5.7.23 / Crispy Maple Pancakes (Alison Roman); Grilled Lamb Chops with grilled asparagus, cauliflower, and salsa verde

5.8.23 / Zucchini scramble; Primavera Pasta w/ zucchini, eggplant, and cabbage

5.9.23 / Chicken Cacciatore (Rachel Roddy)

5.10.23 / Zucchini scramble

5.11.23 / Peperonata (Rachel Roddy); Vinegar Chicken Thighs with Farro (Alison Roman/Dining In)

Rachel Roddy’s Peperonata with Alison Roman’s Vinegar Chicken with Farro

5.13.23 / Spinach frittata; Anchovies & butter on toast

5.14.23 / Scrambled eggs with English muffin; Seeded Breakfast Loaf (Alison Roman); Grilled skirt steak with little parsley potatoes and asparagus

5.15.23 / Tuna Salad (Alison Roman)

5.16.23 / Peperonata with an egg nestled into it (Rachel Roddy)

5.17.23 / Cauliflower Pasta (Carter Were’s Broccoli Pasta recipe but with cauliflower)

5.18.23 / Tuna Mayo Rice Bowl with arugula (Eric Kim)

5.19.23 / Chicken Cacciatore (Rachel Roddy, My Kitchen in Rome)

5.20.23 / Blackberry scones (Alison Roman); Italian Sausage and seasonal vegetables (Mina Stone, Lemon, Love, and Olive Oil)

5.21.23 / Leek & Cheddar Scones (Alison Roman)

Scones, before and after!

5.23.23 / Rice Bowl with sweet potato and arugula

5.24.23 / Pasta Salad with Sundried Tomatoes (Alison Roman)
5.25.23 / Slow-roasted salmon with tomatoey lima beans (latter recipe from the Rancho Gordo Bean club newsletter)

Roasted Salmon, alongside lima beans in a tomato sauce from the Rancho Gordo Bean Club

5.27.23 / Mint Chip Ice Cream Cake (Alison Roman)

5.28.23 / Caprese Salad; Wedge Salad; Burgers and Italian sausage on the grill

5.29.23 / Broccolini, Potato, and Sour Cream Frittata (recipe to come)

5.30.23 / Spring Pea and Asparagus risotto

Asparagus and English Pea Risotto