I made Ina’s Israeli Salad from Cook Like a Pro, and it was a nice, fresh touch. I’ve made a version of this salad for years – tomatoes and cucumbers with some kind of light, acidic dressing. This salad builds on a base of homemade hummus, and adds onion (I didn’t have the red onion the recipe called for, but I did have scallions) and bell peppers. I used all of my lemon juice in the hummus, so I added a splash of white wine vinegar in the salad dressing. In addition to the fresh mint, I julienned some fresh basil, too. The whole dish was a colorful and fresh addition to the table.
In addition to sourdough baking, there’s apparently another pandemic quarantine trend, to make Chrissy Teigen’s banana bread. She now-famously traded half of a loaf of it for some romaine lettuce during the beginning of the quarantine, and I was delighted to see that the trade happened in the parking lot of an Episcopal church. I’m pretty devoted to the New York Times recipe for banana bread from Julia Moskin, but I had to give this one a try. Most banana bread, if we’re being honest, is more like cake than like bread, but Chrissy Teigen’s recipe doesn’t even apologize for it. I eliminated the coconut but kept the chocolate. It was, like most things involving a packet of instant pudding, amazing.
Last week, I merged Samin Nosrat’s buttermilk-brined chicken with the Smitten Kitchen’s Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Cabbage, with my friend Jacob’s trick of throwing in some beans under the roasting chicken with the cabbage, all to delicious results. I’m going to try it again tomorrow night, but I’m brining the chicken in whey (a byproduct of homemade Greek-style yogurt-making) instead of in buttermilk. We’ll see how it turns out! In the meantime, I’m looking over all of my Yotam Ottolenghi cookbooks for vegetable-centric recipe ideas, on the theory that we might have a meat shortage, and it can’t hurt to reduce our meat consumption even if we have plenty.
We planted a garden under the guidance of my mom, who watched my grandparents garden for years, and more importantly, reads the directions on all the seed packets I ordered in a frenzy several weeks ago. We have sprouts for broccoli rabe, red cabbage, leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, chard, carrots, and collards. I’m not sure what will “take,” but it’s used up our compost that’s been collecting for several years, and it’s given us something other than our anxiety to tend. While we wait, and even if nothing grows reliably well, we’ve continued our farm share with Plant it Forward, which trains and employs refugee farmers here in Houston. They’ve distributed a record number of farm shares in recent weeks, and they’ve kept us supplied with fresh vegetables in a safe, socially distanced way. I’m entertaining the thought of throwing some of their collards and carrots under the whey-brined chicken tomorrow night…
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The Contessa-Curessa Project 