Three Things

A hearty veg breakfast tortilla, easy asparagus dinners, and a trick for having more meaningful conversations

Greetings eaters and readers! How’s everyone doing? Before we get to the writing portion of the program here, I have some video news for you, live and otherwise. To begin with, last week I participated in a Substack Live chat with Gentle Foods’

Christina Chaey

, and we talked about the ways we use food to take care of ourselves, her cool analog kitchen timer that’s meant for kids, but is also great for cooks whose fingers are usually too sticky to mess around with iPhone timers, plus lots of recipe talk, of course. We had such a good time, and if you missed it, you can catch the whole thing here. Next, many of you joined me a few weeks ago for the class I taught at Milk Street’s Online Cooking School. I “taught” two DALS classics in the class — Avgolemeno which offered a lesson in tempering, and the Cabbage-Kale-Tofu Salad with Avocado, Peanuts and Citrusy Dressing from The Weekday Vegetarians, which I think of as the World’s Most Wholesome Dinner. I’m pleased to announce that the class is now available to download. (When you complete your purchase, you’ll receive an order confirmation email that includes the link to download the recording and the recipes.) Lastly! Mark your calendars: next Tuesday, March 25 around noon (exact time TBD), I’ll be in conversation with Big Salad’s

Joanna Goddard

. The topic is “How to Make a Big City Feel Like a Small Town” but I’m sure we’ll talk about a million other things…

Lastly lastly (I mean it this time)…My kitchen got a happy mini-makeover — those dead daffodils serve to optimize the before-and-after reveal — and I’ll be sharing details on Friday, along with all my planning notes and design inspiration. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe here.

Here are your weekly Three Things…

1. Game Day Breakfast Tortilla

It was way back in December when, for a story called “The Best Dishes in America,” Melissa Clark weighed in with the memorable breakfast tortilla she ate at Ocotillo in Portland, Maine. Clark described the tortilla like this: “The local himeji mixed with maitake mushrooms are meaty and chewy, and perfumed with cumin, garlic, and black pepper. The soft scrambled eggs provide a fluffy textural counterpoint to the crisp potatoes…the real whammy is the housemade salsa macha, a brick-red drizzle explosding with toasted chiles, nuts and seeds.” How amazing does that sound? I couldn’t get it out of my…mouth mind for months, and in the absence of a plan to get to Portland, I kept re-reading her description and plotting a way to create it in my own kitchen. The moment arrived the other weekend when we were watching Man U lose (again), and we were craving something hearty and brunchy. I used chili crisp instead of salsa macha, and shiitakes instead of himeji, but overall a success given the aforementioned texture contrasts and explosions of bold, earthy flavor. Here’s the recipe PDF:

Dals Breakfast Tortilla

121KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

2. Is it Asparagus Season Yet?

Here in New York, we have to wait a little longer before I’ll start spying those pretty, fat stalks at the market, but if you happen to find yourself in luckier circumstances, allow me to present a few asparagus-themed recipes for your spring cooking pleasure. The Asparagus Pizza with Boursin and Pickled Shallots wins big in the category of Quick Crowdpleaser, and you’ll find it on page 189 of The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple. The “One Year Ago” iPhoto function has been torturing me with shots of the 2024 food we ate in Portugal, where spring arrives earlier than it does here on the Eastern Seaboard. Exhibit A, that photo of a White Asparagus and Fava Bean Salad, drizzled with a Lemon-Dijon Vinaigrette. There is also Julius Roberts’s Asparagus Tart with Whipped Herby Ricotta that I made approximately a hundred times within a span of three weeks last spring; and Susan Spungen’s Bucatini with Pea Pesto, Ricotta, and Shaved Asparagus, a simple, elegant pasta that is perfect for weeknight dinner guests.

3. The Secret to Meaningful Conversations

Last year, we were having dinner out with friends we hadn’t seen in a while — a couple — and after updating each other on our families and jobs, and while we were waiting for dessert, I asked one of them “So are you watching any good TV series these days?” I’m always in search of my next show, plus I really do look for any excuse to go deep on White Lotus. But his response surprised me. He kind of laughed and said, “Come on, we don’t have to go to the TV conversation already do we? We’re better friends than that.” If that sounds offensive, it was utterly the opposite — he’s one of the more likable people we know, and even though I truly did want to know the answer to my question, I appreciated in the moment that he was looking for more than small talk — he wanted to make the most of the time he had left with old friends, and have more meaningful conversations.

The truth is, it can be hard to force meaningful conversation, especially when you don’t know someone very well, or you’re tired and beaten down by the headlines, and all you want to do is get the temporary escape high from talking about how much Sam Rockwell’s cameo in episode 4 reminded you of Christopher Walken’s monologue in Pulp Fiction. (Right??) But of course, you don’t need me to remind you: It’s those moments of meaningful conversation that make us feel better, more connected, more seen. Happier. I thought about all this while I was reading Supercommunicators, by Charles Duhigg the other night. In it, there’s a chapter devoted to a specific kind of conversation— the “How We Feel” conversation — that teaches us how to talk and listen more deeply and, by extension, develop a real emotional connection with people. The chapter is built around University of Chicago psychology professor Nicholas Epley, who has dedicated his life to researching this topic, and at one point Epley discusses how a simple reframing of regular small-talk questions can make a big difference in the quality of connecting. If you want to have a successful conversation with someone, he says, you should ask them to describe how they feel about their life rather than the facts of their life. Here are some examples of common questions that can be taken to the next level that way:

Where do you live? Instead ask ➡️ What do you like about your neighborhood?
Where do you work? ➡️ What’s been your favorite job?
Where did you go to college? ➡️ What was the best part of college?
Are you married? ➡️ Tell me about your family?
How long have you lived here? ➡️ What’s the best place you’ve ever lived?
Do you have any hobbies? ➡️ If you could learn anything, what would it be?
Where are you from? ➡️ What’s the best thing about where you grew up?
Are you watching the White Lotus? ➡️ Why do you think you like this show so much?

Just kidding on that last one — sort of. But you can see how a simple reframing of the question would lead to something maybe more personal than, say, “How cool was Aimee Lou Wood’s glittery eye shadow?” Interesting, right?

Have a great week,
Jenny

P.S. I’m hiring!

Attention college students: I’m hiring a part-time intern for summer 2025. Here are all the details, and the deadline for applications is April 15. ❤️

If you liked this post, feel free to click the ❤️ button. It makes my day and also helps spread the word about Dinner: A Love Story. Thank you, readers and eaters!

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