Three Things

A 15-minute, "halfway homemade" dinner, overnight French toast, my new favorite newsletter

Greetings everyone! Two quick things before we get to that kaleidoscopic 15-minute dinner up there: First, thanks to everyone who hung out with Adam Roberts and me on Substack Live last week to discuss Julie & Julia. If you missed it, no worries — just head over to The Amateur Gourmet Book Club for the recording. (Adam’s headline made me laugh.) Next: If you’ve ever been like, Jeez, I wish I could get Jenny a Valentine’s Day present to show her how much I appreciate all that goes into this love story of a newsletter…well, now’s your chance. I’m offering 15% off annual subscriptions (including gift subscriptions) from now through Sunday. When you are a paying subscriber, you have access to menu plans, vacation itineraries (coming soon: Rome), behind-the-scenes essays, and of course, my entire archive of recipes, which means you will never ever hit a paywall. Not on that French Yogurt Cake, not on that Old-School Chocolate Mousse, not even on Andy B’s World’s Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies, which would be pretty nice tied up with a ribbon for your Valentine, just saying! As always, thank you to those of you who already help keep the lights on over here.

And now, your Three Things…

1. Bibimbap Vegetables For the Win

On a regular basis, my friend Jodi, aka Supermakeit, reminds me how differently artists see the world. The first time she visited me in my new apartment, she couldn’t get over the two circular windows in the building’s elevator doors, which to her resembled giant eyeballs. (She made me promise to add post-it notes for eyelashes on April Fool’s Day.) I had probably ridden the elevator two hundred times by that point and had only ever seen…windows.

Then there is her studio art: Where most of us see jam jar lids and ticket stubs, Jodi sees birds, bugs, and beauty. Where we see milk cartons and old sardine tins, she sees the world’s most adorable dollhouse. And the Jodi goggles don’t come off in in the kitchen. The other week, when I invited myself to her house at the last minute, she announced that we were going to have a clean-out-the-fridge lunch, even though I had told her I was going to pick something up on the way. What do you think of when you think of clean-out-the-fridge meals? Omelets? Something involving a can of beans? Yeah, me too. Not Jodi!

Her version, at least this time around, was a veritable Avocado Toast Feast Fit for Queens featuring pre-sliced somehow perfectly ripe avocados, home-baked Maple-Oat Bread (“It’s more no-knead than No-Knead Bread!” she claims 🤔 ), a tightly curated platter of Bibimbap vegetables, a mini cheese board featuring aged gouda pieces arranged in a shingle-like pattern, little bowls of fruit, a tray of condiments. And flowers! Don’t forget the flowers! The most Jodi part of the whole thing was that when I walked in, she apologized for how odds-and-ends it looked. Imagine?! If one definition of art is making something more beautiful than it needs to be, this lunch belonged in the Louvre.

By this point you are probably wondering why Jodi just happened to have a perfect little selection of vegetable banchan (or namul) lying around, and here is where we get to the Dinner: A Love Story portion of the program: It turns out, whenever Jodi finds herself at H Mart, she picks up a container of pre-made Jinga Bibimbap Vegetables (above, left) from the refrigerated section, a trick she learned from our friend Seth. The package includes an array of seasoned/pickled/fermented vegetables like radishes, soybean sprouts, shiitakes, and cucumbers, as well as a little condiment cup of gochujang sauce. Besides exponentially next-leveling your avocado toast life, the little kit is obviously quite a find when you are craving Bibimbap, the classic Korean rice bowl topped with vibrantly seasoned vegetables and marinated meat, tofu, eggs (or choose your protein!) and tossed with gochujang, a fermented chili pepper paste.

So I picked up my own container, and then on Monday, when I came home the end of the day, all I had to do was make rice, fry an egg and: Done. Needless to say I will be adding this to my rotation of Halfway Homemade dinners. Jodi, you are a genius.

Halfway Homemade Bibimbap

Prepare white or brown rice according to package instructions. In a medium nonstick skillet fry 1-2 eggs per diner. To serve: Distribute rice evenly between bowls and top with H-Mart Prepared Bibimbap Vegetables*, fried eggs, and a good drizzle of the pre-made gochujang sauce. (Note: If you do not live near an H Mart or a Korean grocer, consider Eric Kim’s Sheet-Pan Bibimbap, another speedy interpretation of the dish.)

*Please note that anchovies are listed on the ingredient label, so the vegetables are not technically vegetarian.

2. Overnight French Toast

Nine out of ten times, when people come over for breakfast or brunch on a weekend, I’m not cooking or baking anything myself — I’ll just duck into any number of the bagel shops in my neighborhood and cobble together a basic nosh: Rugelach, bagels, lox, and cream cheese. I’ll slice some fruit and make coffee and be done with it. But every now and then, like last weekend, I’ll get ambitious and make overnight baked French toast — and I use the term “ambitious” very loosely here because even though it looks impressive, it is in fact extremely no-brainer easy. Unlike with regular French toast, this one involves no short-order cooking. You assemble the whole thing the night before, then just bake it casserole-style while everyone’s having coffee. Here’s the recipe:

Dals Overnight Baked French Toast

140KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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Who’s coming over this weekend?

3. This Week in Feel-Good Reading

Every time I read a dispatch from Julie Klam’s newsletter I feel a little bit better about the world. Maybe part of the reason for this is because my daughter Phoebe, also an enthusiastic subscriber, will fire off a bunch of texts as soon as the dispatch lands in her inbox, and they always make me laugh.

I’m worried about Debby
OMG Clarence’s mom!???
She’s been looking for Otto reincarnated!

Phoebe knows I’ll want to discuss the latest drama as if we’ve just watched an episode of Heated Rivalry. But Clarence, Debby, and Otto aren’t hockey players — they’re not even human. They’re two Boston terriers (and one chihuahua mix), and they’re recurring characters in Other People’s Dogs, a newsletter about Julie’s experience as head of intake at the Northeast Boston Terrier Rescue group. Her stories toggle between heartwarming and heartbreaking, and the job, which is 100% volunteer, sounds utterly exhausting. Last year her group had to rescue 190 dogs for various reasons — owners suffering from depression, financial stress, grave illness — and the pleas for help come at her 24/7. Earlier this month, first thing in the morning, she received an entire email in the subject line: “Puppies. My brother has five 9-week-old female puppies with papers he is currently in hospital with terminal cancer. Could you contact me asap at …” (!!!)

But it sure makes for excellent storytelling, especially since behind every dog story, is, of course, a deeply human one, too. Every newsletter explains the rescue play-by-play, featuring the latest heroics from her crackerjack (human) team who often drive hundreds of miles at a moment’s notice, plus a revolving cast of canine characters who you can’t help but fall in love with. “We had a situation,” Julie writes of two dogs on one of the long drives. “Mom and Dad were clearly very bonded, kissing each other through the crates.” In my head, I hear a voiceover: Tune in next time to find out if the team can pivot and find one home to take both. I appreciate that there is almost always a happy ending. (Yes, all seven puppies have found new families.)

Julie is such a good, compassionate writer, and she somehow talks about dogs in a way that is never gimmicky or cutesy, which is very hard to do, trust me. Take this description of her beloved old dog who died 23 years ago: “…my Otto was the Fran Lebowitz of dogs. He was as New York City as a dirty water hot dog. He took cabs, he understood elevators, he enjoyed sitting al fresco at Manhattan’s finest dining establishments.” Or when she described the search for a foster home Shelby and Mr. Dupree, a dog and a cat who were best friends: “Mr. Dupree is even an award-winning American Short Hair cat. If I can’t find the right foster, I’d like to put them into a 1970s-style detective show. Mr. Dupree wears a bowler hat and Shelby is his sexy secret weapon. Coming this fall on ABC.”

I’d watch that, wouldn’t you?

Bean says have a great week! And don’t forget to pick up that gift. 🐩 🐶 ♥️

Love,
Jenny

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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. 🍳🌿