Three Things

Sweet corn risotto, a spinach trick, and goodbye to sunshine-stealers

Greetings friends! Hope you are having a good week. I’ve spent much of mine listening to The Road to Tender Hearts, which was recommended by both Emma Straub and my book-whisperer pal Rory on the same day. (Have you read it? What did you think?) I’m still spending more time than I’d like to lying supine on the couch, but occasionally I’ll venture out to test myself in various scenarios. For instance, a week or two ago, I learned the hard way that I’m not quite ready to sit inside a noisy restaurant. But early reservations at a restaurant with a patio and lake views? Yup, I found out the lucky-easy way that I was completely ready for The Cliff House, part of the beautiful new retreat-resort in the Berkshires. (I was specifically ready for their Tagliatelle with Jonah Crab and that NA turmeric-apple-ginger drink. Look at the color!) I wrote a little more about the restaurant in my continually-updating Berkshires Vacation Highlight Reel, but in the meantime, here are Three Things I’m excited to tell you about this week…

Credit: Rochelle Eagle

1. Sweet Corn Risotto

Epic Veg by Jessica Prescott came across my radar last week and within five minutes I had earmarked a dozen recipes I wanted to make. Prescott, a Melbourne-based author who wrote the popular Epic Salads a few years ago, has dreamed up another batch of vegetarian recipes in the way I appreciate, which is to say the fun way. There is nothing dutiful about these truly vegetable-forward recipes, they are colorful and bright but also forgiving, and the layout of the book itself — graphic and technicolor — tips it into the gift category. I can picture someone handing a beribboned copy to a host or a new vegetarian with a bundle of sweet corn from the market.

Speaking of which: The corn recipes in this book are robust and abundant! In addition to the Sweet Corn Risotto, which Prescott allowed me to excerpt below, there are recipes for Corn Fritters, Corn and Leek Hand Pies, Charred Corn with Salted Ricotta (!), Garlic Confit Butter, and a corn- and summer-veg packed soba salad that would be just right served cold on a hot night. Something tells me we’ll be using Epic Veg a lot in the next few weeks.

Sweet Corn Risotto

When developing this recipe, Prescott was inspired by the sweet corn risotto at a much-loved Melbourne spot, Cam’s Kiosk. Here’s a downloadable PDF of her version, reprinted from Epic Veg with permission. SERVES 4 - 6

Prescott's Epic Veg Corn Risotto

134KB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Note from Prescott: If corn is out of season and you want to use frozen, you can still make your stock from scratch, it just won’t be as deeply corny as a stock with the cobs in it. Alternatively, use veggie or chicken stock. A third alternative – for when corn is in season but you don’t want to make stock from scratch – is to boil a store-bought stock with corncobs in it for 30 minutes to impart the corny goodness.

2. A Spinach Trick

Obviously, my best self finds a use for every leaf, every floret, every sprout that I bring home from the market. My real self? That is an entirely different story, and even though the now legally-required compost bin in my kitchen alleviates a little of the guilt, my heart always sinks when I discover produce that is too far gone even for all my last-ditch salvation strategies. My best self would tell you that the way to avoid this is to prep everything right when you get home from the market. Rinse your (carefully sourced!) lettuce and your herb bunches, let them dry, then store in the fridge wrapped in a paper towel; wash and slice your fruit (drying it completely) so it’s ready to use for smoothies, snacking, yogurt, etc. My best self would also like to tell you about something she’s been into lately that might just barely cross the so-stupid-simple-it’s-smart line. When I buy large bunches of greens like spinach, I blanch them in salted water for one minute, then immediately cool off in an ice bath. I squeeze out all the liquid (either with my hands or by pressing the little mound against a strainer in the sink), then chop it up so it’s ready to throw into eggs, salads, grain bowls, or serve drizzled with spicy peanut sauce (recipe in The Weekday Vegetarians) for a cheater’s spinach goma ae…

…plus I love how vibrantly green it stays when I prepare it like this. EXHIBIT A: Last fall’s Quinoa Bowl, which could be easily summer-fied (it’s a word!) by swapping in cooked zucchini for the honeynut squash.

Blueberry Pancake Redemption

3. The Prison Door is Unlocked!

I hope you all subscribe to Emily Nunn’s bestselling newsletter The Department of Salad, which is, yes, a weekly bulletin that takes on the humble leafy side dish from every possible angle, including but not limited to: famous salads from decorated restaurant chefs; a treasure trove of vinaigrettes and dressings (her index currently lists nearly 100!), an ongoing discussion over what exactly constitutes a salad; and, for our purposes today, how salad can in fact be a launching point to discuss loss and regret, joy and possibility. Naturally!

That last reason is why she’s so good…and just so funny. One of her recent essays, “Fully Awake Food,” was about breaking free from the Big Name Salad Industrial Complex (Cobb, Caesar, Greek) and interpreting the classics to suit her own personal tastes. The recipe at the end is a truly delicious-looking Greek Salad Ciabatta Sandwich, but it was the non-salad stuff setting up this revelation that I screenshot and kept returning to. One of the benefits of aging, she writes, is realizing that you don’t actually have to meet expectations set for you by others or by some unnamed system, especially the things that are actually making you miserable. She writes:

Deep inside, we always know about these “things,” don’t we? We become part of a system that doesn’t really fit us, but we stay in it so long that it begins to feel familiar and cozy, like being rocked to sleep by a prison warden, so we decide to just wait and see if our worries go away.

And the next thing we know, it’s been a decade, or two. But who cares how long it takes to wake up? The important thing is to be thrilled when it happens and never look back.

It starts slowly, in small ways. You stop using a flatiron on your hair because what the hell was that all about. You stop doing giant favors for that person who never even asks how you are unless they’re asking for another giant favor. You’re in the grocery store reaching for the “healthy” breakfast cereal that tastes like pinecones and hay, and you suddenly realize that this cereal has systematically been stealing tiny pieces of your joy….

When you look back to say goodbye to the dumb prison you lived in for so long, you see that it was not a cage at all, just a few strings tied to rickety sticks, a makeshift fence you could have stepped right over all along.

I read this while I was still in the hospital, and maybe it was the drugs and the general feeling-old-and-fragileness of it all, but her words really made me stop and take stock of the various sunshine-stealing things in my life. For instance, why do I still blame myself for a faded friendship even though we were both complicit in its demise? Why do I still feel like I should try to be part of large female friend groups instead of accepting that I’ve always been way more of a small pack, one-on-one type? And since Emily brought up breakfast: When did I decide that starting the day with blueberry pancakes, possibly my most favorite breakfast ever, wasn’t a healthy or wise thing to do as a grown-up? (I have already started redeeming myself for that one with a new Saturday morning ritual.) Anyway, Emily’s essay was a healthy reminder for me, and I feel like this is now turning into a journaling prompt, but maybe it’s something you’d like to think about, too. What dumb prison should you say goodbye to? And also, when will you be making that Greek Salad Sandwich?

Have a great week!

Jenny

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