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What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
my local fish shop is closing at the end of the month, so it’s seafood until the end of the month.
last week i made a really quick puttanesca with snapper on the side. puttanesca is probably my favourite pasta dish.
tonight i think i’m going to make a thai curry with cod, green beans, courgette, yams, etc.
tomorrow i’ll likely do something with prawns.
Aw, it's always a little sad when a local shop closes.
I don't cook with seafood much, but if you're looking for ideas: have you ever done maple-glazed salmon? We keep the glaze super simple, just maple syrup, salt, pepper (though you can build on that).
that is a very Canadian dish :) Any chance you're west coast by way of Brazil?
I'm finally getting back into salmon after years of being sick of it. Growing up we'd have salmon every week, if not more than once a week. I'm definitely going to do way more fish now that I'm in the cycle. Its just a great protein.
That yellow curry w/ prawns instead of cod, etc was such a quick and perfect recipe.
Ahh, Canadian yes, but neither west cost nor brazil!
I should give yellow curry fish a try, recipes look pretty straightforward and I keep wanting to incorporate more fish in my diet.
haha i thought brazil only because you like green olives on pizza.
i’m in the same boat with wanting more fish. t&t has a lot of decent fish and stuff. i never get meat there, but i got some really nice flat irons yesterday.
let me know how it goes with this recipe. i found it to be trivial… almost too quick for me :)
Both of those dishes sound incredible!
Do you have a recipe you like for the puttanesca?
I had chatGPT rewrite my mess... and this is what it came up with
Here’s your puttanesca, rewritten like it was pulled straight from the pages of the New York Times Cooking section after a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep. Let’s make a mess. Let’s make it divine.
Velvet Puttanesca for Pasta or Fish
This version leans on technique and pantry staples, balancing funk, heat, and depth. It’s a one-two punch of briny umami that clings to pasta like it was meant to live there. No cheese. No fuss. Just a kiss of anchovy, a slap of caper, and a hug of tomato. personal note: I would never write this
Ingredients
Method
its important to season as you go, but be light with the first half because the olives and capers will bring over a lot of salt
1. Clear the Air
Start a small pot of 1:1 water and white vinegar, uncovered, on a back burner. It will quietly capture the funk and keep your home from smelling like an old sailor.
2. Boil & Salt
Bring a wide, shallow pot of water to a boil — about 1.5 inches deep. Salt it like the ocean. This is for the pasta.
3. Set the Stage
Heat a non-reactive pan or wok over medium. If you’ve got a wok and gas, use it. This sauce wants high edges and hot spots.
4. Build the Flavor
After a few minutes, drizzle more olive oil directly onto the tomato paste and stir. You want the paste to look a bit scorched in places — deep rust-red and streaked with oil. The texture should be thick, almost like paint.
5. Drop the Pasta
Add your pasta to the salted water. Cook it about 1 minute less than the package says — you want it toothsome, ready to soak up sauce. note: a little before al dente
6. Finish the Sauce
Toss in your capers and olives, stir it all into that oily, anchovy-laced tomato base, and let it burble. Taste it — it should be intense, but in a good way. note: include a splash of brine from the capers
7. Marry It
When pasta’s nearly ready, use tongs to lift it straight into the pan. No draining — the clingy, starchy water is part of the sauce. Toss and stir until everything comes together into a silky, emulsified coat. note: add more pasta water to get the texture right
8. Final Touch
Crack some black pepper over the top. Maybe a hit of lemon zest or parsley if you’re feeling fresh. Plate it with confidence — I like a ladle swirl, but a tangle is just as good. Top with panko breadcrumbs (no cheese!) and the parsley.
For the bread crumbs, I really like Muddica Atturrata -- a classic condiment. Just toast all of this together in a pan.
If you're doing brussels sprouts, this is pretty much what I do every night. Trim and halve them, get a pan going with some olive oil or another neutral oil, give them a good sear and a little oil on top along with some salt. I use diamond, so I can be pretty generous with it. Anyway, let that go for a few minutes then give it a splash of caper brine and slap it in the oven. Once its done (15m or so) toss it with capers, lemon, pepper, and bread crumbs. If you're going to incorporate this into the sauce, skip the last toss and put it in the sauce while the pasta is in there resting.
For the fish, I just did salt, lemon, and parsley and broiled it. Nothing crazy. Ultimately, don't follow any of the measurements for this -- just eyeball it and go with your gut.
hahaha, I love it. Thanks for putting in the effort!
As a total aside - I find GPT's code switching hilarious. I have it write a good number of am professional emails and support grant work, which is fulfills with no nonsense, curt content. I asked a quick question about a local mountain biking event in our area and it turned into a complete BRO.
So I love that I can hear Molly Baz or Claire Saffitz roll through that opening section of your recipe.
GPT cracks me up, and scares me, but the voice it selects really tickles my fancy!
its pretty great. I like how it'll even switch up the tone based on questions regarding prescriptions vs LSD / Shrooms etc.
I throws me off whenever I happen to use it when I'm not logged in. Like when I'm logged in it's tailored to give me straight-to-the-point answers keeping things neutral, brief, and using plenty of bullet points and charts where needed. But then I use it logged out and it gives me rambling stories and massive responses full of repetition and extra fluff. Feels like two completely different personalities.
I've branched out from a loooong food rut, and made a couple stand out meals recently.
The first was a tagine/moroccan-style chicken and squash stew. Thinkingabout it reminds me, I like to keep a jar of preserved lemons on hand but should use them more. A friend introduced them to me in a simple dip of finely sliced preserved lemon (rind only) + fresh thyme in olive oil, and now I want to make that again soon.
The second was a vegan version of persian spaghetti (makaroni) using lentils in the red sauce. I tried to properly let the noodles and sauce steam on the srovestopto get a crispy bottom (tahdig) but it was only a marginal success. Still, the red sauce spices were a nice twist, and it'll be making it's way into my regular rotation of quick-ish red sauce pasta recipes.
I made Jim Lahey’s no-knead take on carrot bread for an Easter gathering at my in-laws’ place. It’s similar to Lahey’s standard no-knead loaf, but it’s a 100% hydration recipe instead of 75%, and the water is completely replaced by 100% carrot juice. You also mix currants and chopped walnuts into the dough, and top it with whole cumin seeds before baking. It was quite good and I’ll definitely be making it again! Though, I have to admit that even sub-par bread is made pretty delicious when topped with Irish butter, so maybe I need to try it again plain and see if I still like it..!
Seeing the name Jim Lahey attached to several bread recipes threw me for a bit of a loop since the only Jim Lahey I knew of was an ex-cop, drunkard, trailer park supervisor (and Canadian icon). ;) RIP John Dunsworth. :(
But TIL there is a baker/cookbook author with the same name:
https://www.sullivanstreetbakery.com/team-member/jim-lahey/
I thought the same thing forever! Before I looked into him, I assumed it was a pet name or just a cute reference to the fact that it was another person who looked a lot like the character, but nope, just a very strange coincidence
Last week I probably cooked my fanciest dish ever. My wife came back after 10 weeks of not seeing her; I made her a dish called Constantinople Beef Stew with Eggplant Pureé. She said it was one of the best tasting dishes she's ever had.
Granted, it took me almost 4 hours to make because I'm a complete amateur in the kitchen, but I was glad with how it turned out.