On Sunday, I carried a tote full of books to our local pool and spread them out on a lounge chair to leaf through them. Bliss!
But as 4 o'clock crept toward 5, that familiar worry crept into my thoughts, distracting me from my reading. What will I make for dinner?
Yes, dear reader, it's true. Even after months of writing this newsletter, I still ask myself this question almost daily.
Most recipes I send you start with something I "really cook."
But when I apply the rigors of recipe writing to those dishes, something inevitably changes, usually to make it less annoying for you to replicate at home.
You see, when I write a recipe, I often approach it like a stand-alone episode of a TV show. I assume you're shopping for most ingredients to make the recipe and using them up unless they're shelf stable or can last at least several days in the fridge.
I also want you to prep and cook your entire meal in about 30 minutes.
Plus, I want you to have a decent photo, so I pay attention to how I arrange the food on a plate or platter. (In my real life, my plating is a little…looser.)
The way I cook most days actually resembles a bingeable show, with a consistent cast of ingredients oriented around an ever-evolving story arch. As a story concludes, there's often a thread of continuity between the seasons. Think White Lotus.
It's an old approach to cooking made famous in our modern era with Tamar Adler's book, The Everlasting Meal.
She writes, "Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off…. Meals' ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominos. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on toast; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup, studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness. This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking."
Indeed.
This way of cooking doesn't always lend itself well to recipe writing. But if you cook or are learning to cook, you might find it interesting to see how I approach turning ingredients in my kitchen into serviceable — and maybe even delicious — meals outside of a recipe.
Now, back to the pool.
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