The Kitchen Sink: August
Cookbook cooking, honey wine and that meme from "The Wire"
The Kitchen Sink is a monthly hodgepodge of my observations on food, wine, books, L.A., and pop culture. All the things that make my world go round.
Hello from New York! I’m here for a program with fellow producers working in unscripted, and it’s been a trip staying in Manhattan, and not my usual rotation of friends and family residences in New Jersey, Queens and Brooklyn. I feel like a tourist. I am a tourist! It’s been almost ten years since I last lived in New York full-time, but that will never stop me from claiming this city as if it were my own.
Besides this New York trip, August has mostly been about writing and project deadlines, tête-à-tête’s with friends, drinking mead, and watching the entire first season of “The Wire” (I have thoughts!). Also: I’m finally cooking from my cookbooks again, which feels revelatory. Besides supporting cookbook authors and their art, what is the point of having a bookshelf of cookbooks that you never cook from?? How do you find recipes? Is it through cookbooks? Recipe blogs? The New York Times Cooking app? TikTok? Family/friends? I’m curious.
Cookbook Cooking
Originally, this post was going to be something like, “The Top 5 Cookbooks to Buy if You’re a Beginner Cook” because a lot of cookbooks as of late, are not beginner-friendly. I think it’s important to know the basics of cooking and understand flavor profiles before experimenting with, IDK, eggplant parmesan stuffed shells with a miso-dill-anchovy triple-roasted tomato sauce. I could also write a whole post about why food processors and KitchenAid stand mixers have no business in cookbooks geared toward the weeknight home cook, but that’s a deep dive for another day.
With that said…
In a fit of panic feeling the impending doom of summer produce season ending, I started adding Post-it notes in a few of my cookbooks to mark summery recipes (tomatoes! corn! zucchini! plums!) I needed to make it before September 22. This is a joke because I live in LA and “summer” extends well into October. But by then, the pumpkin, persimmon, and pomegranate recipes will dominate food media, and who really wants to talk about tart and floral apricots when it’s PUMPKIN SPICE SZN??
These are the things I think about.
So last week, I challenged myself to make a few summer-inspired dishes, two of which came from my growing cookbook collection. Here are the results:
Molly Baz’s Peach and Pickled Pepper Panzanella Salad
Cookbook: More is More
I like this cookbook. I think the recipes are more creative and interesting than her first cookbook, Cook This Book, which I also like, but reach for less when the mood strikes for inspiration.
This recipe is a riff on the traditional panzanella salad typically made with vinegar and oil-drenched tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, basil and stale bread. A perfect no-oven-required meal for 90-degree days. Peaches, however, might be the second-best summer fruit (tomatoes take first place) because there’s nothing like biting into a ripe, juicy, sticky sweet peach. And like tomatoes, peaches are a bit of a chameleon fruit, complimenting sweet and savory notes in a dish, which got me excited to taste how they would pair with pickled peppers, shallots and parsley.
I used pickled banana peppers, but pepperoncini’s would have been amazing. Patience was low last week, as I couldn’t be bothered to make an extra trip to the store to purchase ripe peaches, so I used nectarines, my third favorite summer fruit. The peaches/nectarines “marinate” in the pickled peppers and brine, along with shallots, to make this sweet, spicy and tart salad which is combined with EVOO fried bread, and plated with a dollop of ricotta cheese.
Damn, that was good.
Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread
Cookbook: Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
When I decided to make the peach and pepper panzanella salad, I was missing one key ingredient: the bread. So I made my own using this classic no-knead bread recipe that takes less than 18 hours (stay with me) to make from rise to bake. It is the easiest, most fool-proof bread recipe to exist and I’ve been making different iterations of it (some good, some bad) for years. It’s a classic recipe from one of my favorite books for beginner cooks, Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook, by former Food52 Executive Editor, Kristen Miglore.
For this recipe, I decided to be cute and sub in one cup of buckwheat flour for regular all-purpose flour, which gave the bread a slightly nutty taste and a cool slate color. Besides over-proofing the dough on its second rise, and coming out of the oven looking like an enormous river rock stone, (hence why I have zero pics), it tasted A-OK in my book and did its job in the panzanella salad.
Seriously though, this recipe produces a lovely bread if you follow the directions.
Alison Roman’s Raspberry Ricotta Cake
Cookbook: Sweet Enough: A Dessert Cookbook
This is an all-purpose cake. A beginner’s cake. A snacking cake. I ate this cake twice for breakfast: both cold and warmed up in the microwave. My friend Meghan ate it with a scoop of ice cream for dessert. The cake is versatile, and a nice back pocket recipe to have whenever the mood for cake strikes. I added lemon zest and orange blossom water, which added a citrusy zing and floral note to the cake. The recipe calls for frozen raspberries or blueberries, so you can make this cake in any season, but next time, I’m going to spring for the fresh stuff. It’s sweeter.
Recipe can also be found here via PureWow.
Mead aka Honey Wine
I have no empirical evidence to support that mead will be the HOTTEST DRINK of 2024-2025, but I can say that in the U.S., mead or honey wine, is woefully under-consumed. And that’s shame, because it’s a delicious (and boozy) beverage that tastes like a cross between a hard cider and a kombucha - but less tangy! The flavor profile comes down to what type of honey was used.
Mead is a fermented beverage made from water, yeast and honey, and sometimes with hops, fruits and spices. It’s one of the oldest alcoholic beverages, with reports of its origin in Europe and Africa, specifically Ethiopia and Eritrea. My first taste of honey wine was at an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles. In this context, the drink is called tej. Tej is similar to mead, but is fermented with the help of a shrub (gesho) rather than yeast.
I highly suggest checking out an Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurant that serves tej if you’re having mead for the first time, but let me tell you about my new favorite canned drink: High Seas Mead. It’s a sparkling mead flavored with fruits (my favorite is the Meadacolada sweetened with pineapple) and comes in at around 6.9% ABV, about the same as a hazy or traditional IPA. While High Seas Mead is fermented dry, it’s slightly sweet on the palate due to the natural sweetness of the fruit flavors found in each can.
If you’re in the market for a refreshing, fruit-forward, and lowish-ABV beverage, check out High Seas Mead.
Why everyone under 30 is drinking High Noon is beyond me.
R.E.W.D.
What I’m Reading, Eating, Watching and Drinking this week…
Reading: “How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality and the Fight for the Neighborhood” by P.E. Moskowitz
Journalist P.E. Moskowitz deep-dived into the history and effects of gentrification, focusing on four main cities: New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco and New York. This book was eye-opening and exposed how city and state governments intentionally (key word) create inequality through racist housing practices and policies (ex. redlining). While this book was revelatory, it came out in 2017 and is dated. I’d love to get my hands on a more current book about urban planning and gentrification. Reco away!
Eating: Farro with roasted vegetables, feta cheese and Gloria’s Shito.
Are we sleeping on farro? This nutty, high protein and high-fiber grain is the building block to these random bowls I’ve been consuming for quick lunches and dinners. I buy a bag of 10-Minute Farro from Trader Joe’s and let that boil, while veggies like tomatoes, corn kernels, zucchini and bell peppers roast in the oven with EVOO, salt and pepper. Once the veggies and farro are done, I bowl it up, sprinkle on some tangy feta cheese and a big dollop of Gloria’s spicy shito chili oil. When fall comes around, I will be adding butternut squash and brussels sprouts to the mix.
Watching: “The Wire” on Max
I’m embarrassed it’s taken me so long to watch this early aughts crime drama based out of Baltimore. It’s SO GOOD, and has a stacked cast: Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan, and Michael K. Williams (RIP). Season one did start a little slow for me, but soon picked up, and had me rewinding scenes because of the quickness. Last year, I watched the entire series of “The Sopranos,” and this year is “The Wire.” Taking suggestions for next year’s television pick.
Drinking: Gavi ‘Pleo’ from La Raia
This might be my new house wine. If you like GOOD pinot grigio, albariño, or Sancerre, you might love this refreshing white wine that tastes of grapefruit and apple with some floral and almond notes. It’s a light-bodied, high-acid wine that will make your mouth water and comes in at $24 a bottle if you buy from Erewhon.
I’ve been tasting a decent amount of wine lately (for ReSeArcH) and will report back with my summer favorites.
Thanks for reading!