Things I've been cooking and eating
Feat. Steak tartare, soba noodles, ice cream, and hot dogs
One of the benefits of unemployment is having much more time to engage in your hobbies, like cooking. When I left my job in April, I was working a 1-10 p.m. shift, so cooking was difficult and not that enjoyable. Now I have all the time in the world! Of course one of the downsides of unemployment is eating out less and therefore having to cook more meals at home. It's a real win-lose situation where I am both winning and losing.
(This is where I have to insert that I am actively, constantly looking for work so if you know of somewhere I could work my email is hannahfranceslynn@gmail.com)
Here I've compiled some of my favorite things I've eaten or cooked recently, and also watched because I wanted write about Top Chef. If you've eaten something good or cool, let me know in the comments! Alternatively if you've eaten something terrible lately, I would also like to know that.
Homemade shell sauce
When I was a kid, I thought shell sauce was a magical little treat. I loved watching it harden in 15 seconds and the soft snap of the shell was such a satisfying texture. As an adult, I still have all the same feelings about shell sauce but I’ve also learned the ingredient that makes it harden is coconut oil so you can just melt chocolate chips and coconut oil together (and I like to add a little salt!) and pour it over ice cream.
My friend John recently dropped off some strawberry ice cream he made (the cream king of Pittsburgh) and I poured the sauce on top and it is a truly delectable treat. As I’m writing this, I’m feeling a sudden desire to enter a homemade sundae era. Watch this space.
Tahini soba noodles
A few people who have come to my house have seen Sohla El-Waylly’s cookbook Start Here laying around and have asked if it’s worth buying and I always say “yes it’s so good I’ve made so many recipes from it,” and it’s true! I simply cannot stop cooking out of this book.
I love soba noodles (and recently developed a mini vendetta against a local restaurant called Soba which I learned doesn’t serve soba noodles??). I love that they cook fast and have a springy texture, and there’s something I find fun about dunking something in an ice bath (sometimes I just do cold water). The sauce has a ton of herbs and is tangy and delicious. I had some leftover sauce and used it the next day in a grilled cheese and it was truly beautiful.
If you have Start Here, some other recipes I've made and loved include the fruity doodle cookies, the charred lemon risotto, the future brownies, the turmeric lemon potatoes, and a bunch more I'm probably forgetting!
Fet-Fisk
After doing pop-ups for years, Fet-Fisk opened a restaurant in Bloomfield in the space where a restaurant called Lombardozzi's used to be (it had been there since 1973). I only went to one of the pop ups, and remember liking but not loving the food but also pop ups are a little chaotic. Sabine was in town for her birthday so I made us a reservation a month ago. I grew up a picky eater but have been working on outgrowing it for a solid decade now. So there are some foods I’m only trying at the ripe age of 29. I am gently getting to know seafood, for example, after a long time of only accepting fried calamari.
I tried oysters for the second time in my life (though I don’t remember the first) and liked them! Briny and delicious and oceany. There was an extremely good mushroom pasta and a butter cake with prunes. We also got steak tartare, which I’ve also never had because I’m a little afraid of raw protein. It was delicious, though, and came with fancy potato chips. I'm still a little unsettled by raw beef as a concept, and remembered when I learned about the existence of chicken tartare, which sends a shiver down my spine just to think about.
Pickled kumquats
My sister's house in California came with a lemon tree and every time I visit In say "I'm gonna make lemonade with lemons from this tree" but I never do. She also has a kumquat tree, a fruit I'm very loosely acquainted with. But they seemed like something that could be pickled so I looked up a recipe for pickled kumquats. They came out pretty good, very acidic and sharp, but I never quite figured out what to eat them with so they're probably just going to sit in her fridge for a few months.
Big Greek salad
A Greek salad is one of my ideal foods and contains only things that I love. I like Ali Slagle's recipe for Greek salad in I Dream of Dinner So You Don't Have To because she makes it into a couscous salad with lentils so you can eat just a really big bowl of Greek salad but it still counts as a real meal. It's also the recipe that taught me it's good to pre-salt vegetables for pasta salad so it doesn't get waterlogged.
Hot dogs
Summertime is hot dog time. When I was in California a couple weeks ago, I went to a Dodgers game where I tried both a traditional Dodger Dog (pork) and a Brooklyn Dodger Dog (all-beef). The dodger dog is famous because it's extra long, but the two don't really compare; the beef dog is world's better. I remember Jamie Loftus writing about this in Raw Dog but I don't remember what she wrote. I went to Kennywood last week and had my first true corndog in a while and it was excellent.
Yuzu soda and fancy little drinks
I’ve had two different Yuzu sodas recently: one from the brand Sanzo and one from Choya. Both were so refreshing and my ideal summer beverage. I don't drink a lot of alcohol but I love a special little beverage, especially if it's sparkling and citrus flavored. Other little beverages I've tried recently include passionfruit Spindrift (good), paloma and hibiscus tonic from Pigeon Bagel (very good), and a sparkling watermelon drink from Aldi (good, want to squeeze in lime).
Top Chef
If there are no Top Chef fans left in the world, then I am dead. I have been watching Top Chef since it premiered in 2006, when I was 11. I have memories of coming home from middle school and watching Top Chef by myself with my frozen macaroni. I've missed a few seasons over the years, but I'm a fan through and through. The past few years have been generous to Top Chef fans; There was an all-stars season in LA that featured some favorite contestants, there were seasons in Portland and Houston that produced great shows despite Covid restrictions (weirdly, the restrictions sometimes made for a better, more intimate show). Then there was World All-Stars, which brought together winners and finalists from Top Chef variations around the world, including France, Mexico, Thailand, and Germany. The level of talent and the intensity of the challenges made for a great season.
So then after all that, we are now in season 21 of the show and we get Wisconsin as the destination. I don't think there's a problem with picking a state like Wisconsin because I think all regions of the country have good food and interesting culinary history, but the whole season feels a bit off, partly because it feels like no one is really excited to be in Wisconsin. For example one challenge involved doing a "fish boil," something specific to Door County, Wisconsin, but even the judges didn't seem to like the challenge. The contestants don't seem as talented either, but maybe that's just because there was such high talent in World All-Stars.
Kristen Kish is doing a good job as the new host, though the change might account for some of the weirdness (Padma forever). In a recent episode, they announced the finale would take place on a Caribbean cruise, which is kinda giving "we're on a budget" considering past finales have been in France or Italy. But nonetheless, I'm excited to watch Top Chef every week, as I will be until I'm dead.