Three Things

One-pot family dinner, green goddess season, Lena Dunham's new memoir

Greetings friends! Hope you are having a great week. Spring has finally arrived in New York only for some reason it’s dressed as…summer. We’re hitting the 80s over the next few days, and you will not hear me complaining about this for one minute. As soon as I press send on this newsletter, I’m heading to the park with my dog to start Rachel Khong’s new story collection. Have you read it yet? Here are Three Things I’m excited to tell you about this week…

1. One-Pot Ditalini with Beans and Sausage

If you could beam me back to around, say, 2016 when I still had young kids in the house…well, I guess the first thing I’d do is just sit still and stare at them so I could memorize their ponytails and bracelets and water bottles and what they were studying at the kitchen table and reading on the couch and giggling about on iCarly. Because five years into the empty nest thing — it’s true what they say — it’s becoming nearly impossible to conjure up the details and day-to-day texture of that era. (*Clears throat, comes back, whoo boy.) The second thing I would do is make this comforting one-pot dinner, which is so totally the kind of strategic meal I used to have in the rotation when the kids’ schedules were scrambling my brain — this one is eating after early practice, this one after late practice, maybe I can freeze leftovers for next week when we are out — and all I wanted was a dinner that could sit on the stovetop and be anything to anyone at anytime. I hadn’t planned on making such a throwback — it was more the result of a strong Pasta Con Ceci craving and then realizing I didn’t have the, uh, ceci. Then I wondered what would happen if I added a little chicken to the pot? Answer: This.

One-Pot Ditalini with Sausage and Beans

The sausage in question here is more like spiced meat crumbles, but you can see why that didn’t make a very enticing recipe name. Serves 4.

Dals One Pot Ditalini

102KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

It’s even better as leftovers.

P.S. More spring dinners for your consideration: Carolina Gelen’s Artichoke Tart (shown); Caramelized Carrot, Sourdough and Miso Soup which is waiting in the freezer as I type (#MoneyInTheBank); Veggie Burgers with a side of Chickpea Fries and Arugula Pesto or the salad that follows…

2. It’s Green Goddess Season

I want you to focus on a single leaf in that bowl above — the little gem lettuce cup that is sitting at about two o’clock and filled with green peas, watermelon radish, cucumber, and a healthy dollop of green goddess dressing. How good does that look? That dressing is all I want during nature’s-first-green-is-gold season, which is another way of saying: NOW. Spring in a bite.

Green Goddess Dressing

In a food processor (or mini food processor) combine 1/2 large avocado, 1 garlic clove (chopped roughly), 1 cup delicate herbs (like cilantro, parsley, dill), 1/4 cup chives, 2 tablespoons lemon juice or white vinegar, 1 tablespoon capers, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons water, pinch of sugar. Process until the dressing is emulsified and reaches drizzling consistency. You might have to add another tablespoon of water to get it there.

On Sunday, we had this salad alongside a simple pan-fried fish.

3. Famesick, by Lena Dunham

I loved Lena Dunham’s new book Famesick for all the normal reasons one would love a celebrity memoir — to me there’s nothing more fun than reading about someone’s rise to fame, the early years when they had no idea what was coming, the breakthrough moment, the intimate peeks behind the curtain on sets and awards shows. All of that is on full display here. She tells the entire enthralling story of Girls, starting with her SXSW-winning Tiny Furniture that put her on HBO’s radar; the way it felt to be in the center of such a huge cultural phenomenon; the play-by-play on casting Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, and Jemima Kirke as her costars; the way none of them really knew how to behave on set because for most of the cast, Girls was their first job. Dunham was only 23 years old (23!) and still traveling “with a literal stuffed toy in my suitcase” when she sold the HBO pilot, trying her best to act like she knew what she was doing. “Often between takes,” she writes, “I sat in a director’s chair wearing only a bathrobe, my unshaven legs dangling, my feet barely touching the floor, like a child who had been given control of a Fortune 500 company.” This part of the story was so much fun — I kept doing Google image searches of the actors and magazine covers and premiere parties and memorable scenes from that season — and you can tell how happy Dunham was to have found her creative calling. By the end of shooting the Girls pilot, she went from “‘This probably won’t get picked up, but what an experience’…to ‘If this show doesn’t get made my life will be over. This is the only recipe for my joy.’ It wasn’t about success or optics, it was that I could never remember being happier, feeling more hopeful or useful or embodied.”

It turns out, that’s also how Hollywood pulled her in, making the work feel so good that she’d do anything to keep at it. “Much like drugs,” she writes, “you’ll keep at it even if it starts to feel bad.” And that’s when her story becomes not so much a celebrity memoir but a memoir of celebrity itself, an honest and raw chronicle of the toll that fame took on Dunham, emotionally and physically, as she became a lightning rod for intense public vitriol and continued working herself to exhaustion “as if a fiery dragon were chasing” her. Meanwhile, she ignored the “noisy signals” her chronically ill body was sending, moving through the show-must-go-on industry that was too invested in her as a commodity to acknowledge how acutely she was struggling.

But even when Dunham is sharing the darkest parts of her life — illness, addiction, rehab, breakups, deep shame over deeply regrettable behavior — she’s such a great storyteller (and so funny) that it’s still very fun to read. It took her almost a decade to write the book* and you can tell — there is perspective and wisdom and a clear sense that she now owns her own story.

I read Famesick in print (in 24 hours!) but my hunch is that it would be amazing on audio.

Have a great week!
Jenny

*And now for the full disclosure portion of the program: My husband is the editor of Famesick. If you are worried about objectivity — I get it! — and please feel free to read The New Yorker excerpt or this review on Slate to decide for yourself.

P.S. Best thing I ate last week: The lentil filled sambosa and vegan Ethiopian breakfast (spiced spinach, lentils, chickpeas and injera) at Heat Da Spot while in DC for a quick 48-hour trip. Runners up: The Trout Amandine at Le Diplomate; the crisp hard cider sipped on a 75-degree afternoon in The Wonderland garden; An epic egg sandwich at Elle in Mount Pleasant; and a cheeseburger slider at the University of Maryland Men’s Lacrosse tailgate. Go Terps!

Thanks again for being here. If you like what you’ve read and have a second, please hit the ❤️ button at the top left or bottom left of this newsletter. It helps spread the word about Dinner: A Love Story and it also really makes my day.

For more easy, approachable vegetarian recipes, check out my New York Times bestselling books The Weekday Vegetarians and the follow-up: The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple. 🍳🌿