Three Things

The hunter-gatherers go to Lisbon, another high-flavor, veg-packed dinner bowl, an A-plus cookbook

Greetings eaters and readers. I’ve returned from a week in Lisbon, which wasn’t a ton of time, but certainly long enough to be smitten by the vibrant city, its hilltop vistas, winding cobblestone streets, and magical evening light. I’ll be writing up a thorough Vacation Highlight Reel as usual, but in the meantime, as long as we are talking travel, I wanted you to know that the next Dinner: A Love Story food tour will be in…sound those trumpets…Mexico! This one will be in partnership with Taste Travels and I’ll have the what/where/whens for you very soon. (As always, paid subscribers will receive the info first.)

Back on the home front: For those of you celebrating Passover next week, chag sameach, and perhaps consider Leah Koenig’s Spinach-Matzoh Lasagna or Zucchini and Herb Kuku (swap out the flour for potato starch, 1:1) for your seder table, which are both vegetarian and eminently crowdpleasing. Others from the archives: Matzoh Ball Soup, Pavlova with Lemon Curd and Sugared Almonds, or Smitten Kitchen’s Flourless Chocolate Cake Roll, which she calls a “giant yodel.” If you’re not cooking, I’ll bet I know what your host would love as a token of your appreciation: A copy of the new cookbook-memoir, My Life in Recipes, by Joan Nathan, the legendary New York Times journalist and one of our foremost authorities on Jewish cooking around the world. And now, your Three Things…

1. A Tofu Formula Worth Memorizing

We stick to a basic formula when it comes to one-pot tofu stir-fries in our house:

Dredge tofu in corn starch (or potato starch)
Fry tofu in oil until golden, remove from pan/wok
Cook aromatics and vegetables in the same pan/wok
Toss tofu back into pan/wok, add sauce, and simmer

As you can see, there is nothing original about this method, but as with all basic culinary techniques, it’s worth committing to memory for the sole reason that it makes improvisational cooking way more likely. And sometimes way more inspiring. This was the case a few weeks ago after I discovered Lukas Volger’s Pineapple-Gochujang Tempeh. (Yes, I realize I’m really in danger of my newsletter becoming a giant Lukas Volger love letter.) Tempeh is a huge void in my vegetarian repertoire, something I’m working on, and Lukas’s recipe (and series) seemed like just the thing to make a convert out of me. But I’m apparently a toddler when it comes to this particular plant-based protein — it feels like I’m going to need “8 to 10 more exposures” before I acquire a taste for it — and the only thing I came away with on this occasion was a serious crush on Lukas’s sweet-and-funky sauce that lends the dish its glorious glaze. I knew I’d be able to slide that sauce into my basic tofu stir-fry formula, and it ended up being the kind of vegetable-packed dinner one might crave after, say, a week of one too many pasteis de nata. Here’s the recipe:

Tofu And Vegetables With Pineapple Gochujang Sauce

93.5KB ∙ PDF file

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Other vegetarian meals that “one” might crave after a week of big eating: Avocado-Cucumber Soup (above, made in a blender), Refried Bean Tacos with Kale and Mushrooms, or Beans and Buttered Leeks.

2. Pizza Night, by Alexandra Stafford

Ali Stafford’s new book, Pizza Night is a master class in cookbook writing. It’s a simple, wildly appealing concept, expertly executed. The book doesn’t only offer readers 52 pizza-and-salad combinations — one for every week of the year — it offers a ritual we can aspire to, i.e. pizza every Friday, the ritual she credits with grounding her after her parents’ divorce when she was a kid. She has a particular fondness for the pizza she grew up with — New Haven-style thin-crust pies with charred edges (she lived 20 minutes away from the original Pepe’s Pizzeria) and the “late-night dollar slices, floppy and foldable on grease soaked paper plates, showered with pepper flakes and parmesan,” but this book is about baking beautiful pies in our own homes, in our own (not brick, not wood-fired) ovens. If that sounds intimidating, remember we are talking about Ali, whose superpower has always been demystifying all kinds of baking techniques without dumbing anything down. In Pizza Night, she focuses on four main styles of doughs — Neopolitan, thin-crust, pan-pizza, and gluten-free — providing easy-to-follow instructions and timelines for how to plan your pizza nights. She’s a big believer in making the dough 24-48 hours ahead of time — they take five minutes to prep — to allow for a longer ferment. Fermentation helps crusts caramelize better in a home oven (“often a challenge”), it will brown better, and of course will taste better.

Speaking of taste! The recipes are amazing. Shown here: Fried Eggplant with Fresh Tomato Sauce, Basil and Parmesan (Salad pairing: Cherry Tomato and Cherry Salad with Feta and Jalapeños); Detroit-Style Pepperoni (Salad pairing: Veggie Platter with Romesco and Hummus); Asparagus Pizza with Créme Fraîche and Whipped Ricotta (Salad pairing: Fennel Salad with Citrus, Olives, and Parm); Clam Pizza with Garlic, Olive Oil, and Pecorino (Salad pairing: Watermelon Radish and Turnip Salad with Citrus, Chives and Pistachios).

Beautiful, right? You can find Pizza Night anywhere books are sold. Reminder: I’ll be interviewing Ali about her book on Thursday, April 25 at Rizzoli Books in New York. (Click here to register for the event.)

3. Tales of the Hunter-Gatherers: Portugal Edition

I think there are two kinds of vacationers in this world, at least when it comes to the eating part of vacation. The first is someone whose idea of relaxing is outsourcing the relentless meal-making of everyday life to hotels and restaurants. (People who fall into this category, I find, are generally people feeding younger people who expect to eat three times a day, every day of the year.) And the other is someone who stays in Airbnbs or rentals in order to experience and cook from the markets in their own kitchens. I think you can guess which one I am. For better or worse, eating plays an outsized role in the way I travel, especially if we’re exploring a country like Portugal, where neither me nor my husband had ever been until last week. (I can’t tell you how many times we caught ourselves planning dinner as we were eating lunch.) Later in the week, in my official Vacation Highlight Reel, I’ll go into more detail on the choco frito and porto tonicos, and pasteis de nata, and Lisbon restaurants and food specific to Portugal that I’m still thinking about a week later, but for today’s purpose I wanted to discuss a dining strategy (maybe even a somewhat obvious dining strategy) that seems appropriate for any vacation anywhere. I call it the hunter-gatherer method and it simply involves dipping in and out of markets (and bakeries and butchers and fish markets and wine stores) as we go about our day, picking up things that look good for dinner. If we’re lucky we can hit a farmer’s market (in Lisbon, we went to the one in Principe Real, open on Saturdays and Tuesdays), but it’s just as often the local grocer around the corner from where we are staying, or a food hall to pick up something pre-made, like the scarlet-colored boiled prawns that we ate one night with a white-asparagus-fava-bean salad and a glass of white from the Douro. By definition these dinners have to be simple — we don’t want to cook anything that requires more than olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe a squeeze of lemon — and they end up being the dinners I enjoy the most when I travel, whether we’re in Lisbon or Maine or Rome or South Carolina or Switzerland.

WAY more on Lisbon coming soon! Have a great week,

Jenny

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(🥬🌿Or pick up a copy of the first Weekday Vegetarians if you’re behind on your homework. Thanks for the support! 🌺🥬💚 )