Three Things

Small plates night, grilled cabbage, an all-purpose kid elixir

Good morning! Look what’s now keeping me company as I work on your weekly dispatch! My copies arrived last week and I was so excited I even made a reel about it. For those of you who pre-ordered, a) THANK YOU and b) your copy should be arriving in exactly two weeks. The only other thing I can’t stop talking about these days is White Lotus. Anyone else watch last night’s finale? Holy moly. Here are Three (more) Things I’d like you to know about this week…

1. Small Plates Night

One of the more liberating discoveries about cooking vegetarian dinners — at least for me — has been that I no longer feel beholden to the age-old dinner formula of meat-starch-vegetable. Even so, that was the formula for a long time, and it was hard to retrain my dinner brain from assuming that meat was the anchor of the plate. The book offers several strategies for addressing this, but one of my favorites is to think of dinner as not having an anchor at all — in other words, to think of it as Small Plates Night. A lot of little tastes, and not just vegetarian, but vegetable-forward.

The book gives a few examples for what small plates looks like throughout the seasons (like above), but the decidedly non-rocket-science formula is essentially: A bean or lentil dish + at least one in-season vegetable-forward salad + bread.

I’ve discussed beans, and the bread is coming up, but this time of year, you have no excuse if a tomato-based salad is not part of the dinner spread. Something like this tomato-corn-nectarine number that we made on vacation. (The “no-recipe recipe” is also in the book)….

…Or the simplest sliced tomato salad with crumbled feta (or goat or parm or mozz; keep half of it cheese-free like this if you want to limit dairy), olive oil, sea salt, and a teeny tiny drizzle of good balsamic vinegar. (Though, now that I look at it, I think some pickled shallots would be kinda killer on that.) If nothing else, I want this book to remind you that the name of the game is SIMPLE. No one is splitting the atom here. It’s dinner. Optimize the gorgeousness on display at the late summer market right now and make it happen.

P.S. Those tomatoes accompanied crispy bbq cauliflower tacos last week. (Abby: “Can we please have these every night?”) I didn’t have cabbage to make slaw, so I shaved some market carrots instead and tossed with pea shoots and a nice creamy dressing. (My all-purpose vinaigrette with a dollop of mayo and a few dashes of hot sauce.)

2. Have You Tried Grilled Cabbage?

The week before, however, was cabbage overload in the CSA box, so I decided to chuck a few wedges on the grill. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but I was thrilled with how caramel-y and sweet and smoky the resulting flavor was. Here’s what you do: Slice a Napa or savoy cabbage in half lengthwise, root intact. Brush with olive oil, then place face down on your hot grill grates. The cabbage will get charred and melty, and after flipping it a few times and moving it around to cooler spots on the grates so it doesn’t blacken, you can serve face-up topped with garlicky-yogurt or feta, chives, a squeeze of lemon, and more olive oil. Note: I also tried this technique with small pointed cabbages, but those did not fare as well. You want the cabbage with feathery interiors — Napa, savoy — save the tougher breeds for stir-fries.

3. The All-Purpose Kid Elixir

As we head into a new school year, i.e. the season of drop-offs and pick-ups, I thought I’d re-up this oldie but goodie. I’m not sure when I discovered the power of the French-fry-and-a-milkshake ritual. Maybe it was at Shake Shack after a demoralizing defeat on the soccer field. Or maybe it was at SmashBurger after a triumphant soccer victory on the soccer field. Could’ve also been that day I had to deliver some bad news at pick-up, so figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some diner take-out waiting in the front seat of the car to maybe make that news go down a little easier. (Is that why they call it a console?) I can’t pinpoint the exact science behind this statement, but something about the chemical reaction that occurs when eating hot a French fry with a cold milkshake (preferably strawberry, sometimes one dipped in the other) generates the power to sooth, lift, fete, salve, and fill…in all senses of the word. Give it a try. (Originally published on DALS, 2017.)

Have a great week and you soon!

Jenny

P.S. Did you cook something from my newsletter, book, or blog? Please tag me on instagram. I love seeing my recipes in the wild.