What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?

Now that I'm living in NYC, I've been doing weekly solo dates by going to a new restaurant to eat by myself, phone away (besides initial picture of dish) and just enjoying my own time with myself. I went to a Palestinian restaurant called Ayat here in Brooklyn and it was amazing. I had a Fattat Jaj and I'm still thinking about it. The first time I had Palestinian food was last year and it's now probably one of my favorite cuisines.

This weekend I made a beef roast. Whole picanha cooked as a roast and sliced thick - like prime rib basically. Salt, pepper, rosemary crust. Was excellent although the fat cap was a bit large, even for myself (who likes fat). Not sure if cooking it this way is a thing -- I only know it as steaks in Brazilian cuisine -- but I liked it a lot.

The next day I made steak and eggs with grits with the leftovers. I trimmed off 2/3rds of the fat cap and fried up the steaks in some of the rendered beef fat. I diced the fat trimmings and rendered them and added them on top of the grits. Eggs sunny side up.

The best part is the roast was $10/lb which is (sadly) reasonably priced for a steak-cut of beef in the US these days.

I've been on a kick this month to cut meat out of my diet, so I've been playing around with vegetarian recipes. I've had a lot of fun using the Amy's website and their products as a reference for stuff like chili mac and three cheese kale bake.

I did a French night of sorts yesterday. French onion soup, coq au vin, and fondant potatoes. The soup was actually shockingly easy, and I was doing prep for the other dishes while the onions caramelized so it didn't feel like it took too long either. Sweet, savory, and a bit salty from the sliced bread and smoked gruyere I added on top. The coq au vin was extremely tender and the reduced wine sauce with the carrots and mushrooms was great, but the chicken itself didn't have much flavor. The fondant potatoes looked very pretty and were very tender too, but didn't absorb much of the butter and stock so they were also a bit bland. Using them to scoop up more of the coq au vin sauce helped a lot. Not sure if I made some mistakes or it's just a common theme in French cooking for the sauces to do the heavy lifting for flavor.

Last thing I cooked was yesterday's "what do I have to throw in a pot" day: Spaghetti, shredded chicken, onions, garlic, baby corn, water chestnuts and enchilada sauce.

In hindsight, I should have done stir-fry instead of mixing it together in a pot. Crunchy things in spaghetti is weird for some reason and concentrating the enchilada sauce would have been tastier.

I've done mapo tofu a couple of times, I think I've got it now. I also do a chili oil and some veggies with it, it's super addictive.

I also did the short ribs from fallows, really good and not too hard, although I prepare the meat before serving because it's hard to eat in the place (lots of bones/sinew/fat) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0n2OHlBPcQ

I'm a lover of hot pot. Picking your own ingredients and making a bespoke personalized soup full of stuff you can still pull out and eat is just really appealing. But I've never cared to make it at home. It's just too many ingredients to wrangle. This is a bad thing because going out to a hot pot place is very expensive.

Yesterday I went to a place that I have kind of fallen in love with. Instead of cooking everything yourself, you take a bowl, fill it with ingredients, pay for it based on the weight (before adding the soup base), and then they cook it for you. You don't get the "hot pot stink" on you, and it's actually faster because you're not constantly adding new ingredients into the pot piecemeal. It's also significantly cheaper than your average hotpot place. I actually ended up going overboard and got enough soup for two meals, and it was still significantly cheaper than the places we normally go to.

The only downside is that they only have a single vegan broth, so I'm probably not going to go back there too incredibly often. The mushroom broth they had was very good, but it was also very strong on the earthy mushroom scent.

So, I've always hated canned food, and thankfully my family did not use canned ingredients as often when I grew up, but recently I tried Moroccan sardines in olive oil, and let me tell you they have become my favorite type of fish, I haven't tried many recipes or combinations but they go pretty well with toast and fried beans at dinner time. The oil does an amazing job diluting the fishy flavors that are normally augmented during preservation.

And the best of all is that, at least where I live, they're not that expensive compared against other brands of canned sardines I've tried in the past (which I despise).

I don't know about brands availability for everyone but if you happen to go to the supermarket and see canned sardines in olive oil from Morocco or any other west Mediterranean country, consider buying them.

I’ve noticed unforeseen benefits against bad morning breath with my homemade ginger/turmeric shots.

I've been making this spaghetti a lot. Its a variation of the family meal from The Bear, which itself is a combination or two standards: Scarpetta's spaghetti with tomato and basil, and Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with onion and butter.

This is such a simple recipe and is almost completely passive. I modified it a bit, but not much. I wrote this up for a friend who doesn't cook a lot, but I might write up all of my recipes with timing like this.

For the tomatoes, I like to only crush them with a spoon. I like a little bit of chunk. A mill is nice, but more to clean... and if you want that texture, just buy good crushed tomatoes.

I usually pair it with a salad with cooled roasted brussels, mixed greens, breadcrumbs, Macadonean feta, and a dressing of good olive oil, rich balsamic, honey, a good dijon, salt and pepper... mix it in about three minutes before service and once before plating. I really like the feta to break down and lightly coat everything. Once plated, I top it with a little of the muddica atturrata for some extra texture.

Made a simple lentil curry last week and it was excellent, so I'm definitely going to try and make one again. Trying to think of ways to incorporate lentils and beans into a more Japanese-style flavour profile, since that's largely what I eat these days - I love Indian cuisine but I'm having to ration my kitchen space these days so I'm fairly limited with what spices and grains I can make room for. There aren't all that many vegetarian protein options in Japanese cuisine besides tofu, which I love but don't want to be eating 24/7, so finding ways to get other protein sources into that sort of diet would be great. Might do some experimenting and see what I can come up with.