Three Things

The spring-iest dinner for friends, a viral egg recipe, and where I eat on the Upper West Side

Greetings eaters and readers. I had a New York weekend for the books — we saw Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste perform at BAM, picked up flowers and vegetables at two separate spring-has-sprung Greenmarket visits, turned those vegetables into dinner for our friends Adam and Craig (more below), went to a festive meaning-to-try restaurant (above) for my birthday dinner with two old friends 🥳, and even found myself dragging Bean (and Andy) to an extremely high-energy Boston Terrier Meet-Up at Riverside Park where she met about thirty other bonkers Bostons, including a six-week-old puppy named Suki. (I can’t believe I am that person now. Although, I also totally can.) In reading news, I am loving The Family Dynamic, by Susan Dominus, whose byline you no doubt already know from the New York Times Magazine where she’s a staff writer — among a million other things, she wrote the story on menopause that blew up every group chat last year. In this book, she goes deep on families where multiple members have achieved extraordinary success, and lucky us, she’ll be joining me for a chat on Substack Live next week to talk about it. Details coming soon, but in the meantime, please download the Substack app which will allow you to join. (When you enable notifications, the app will notify you when we’re live. Just tap that, and you’re in.) Lastly, crucially, I’m making “fish presents” tonight with flounder and spinach and tomorrow, probably a bowl of paneer and mango curry. Will you join me? Here are your Three Things…

1. Anatomy of a Spring Dinner for Friends

Usually, if I know people are coming over for dinner, I have some sense of what I’m going to cook for them ahead of time. For the week leading up to it, I think about menu possibilities on my morning walk and it makes me feel the way probably most normal people feel when they are doing yoga or meditating or calling up memorized poems. But last week, I found myself in an unusual place: It was only a few hours before our friends Craig and Adam were coming over for dinner, and the only plan I had in my head was “something very springy and green.” I knew asparagus would figure into it somehow, but that was the extent of it and I was a little panicked. I wrapped up work at about 2:00, then headed downtown to the Union Square Greenmarket (NYC perk: There is always a greenmarket open somewhere) to see if inspiration would strike.

Turns out it’s ramp season. I know as a “food person” I’m supposed to go all bananas over this, but the truth is, my first reaction seeing them was more comfort than excitement, as in There are some things you can actually count on in this world. Imagine! I picked up two bunches, then walked a few yards over to the vendor who sells buckets of every imaginable lettuce and leaf. I loaded up on gems, baby arugula, and a deep purple mizuna. At the next, I threw in a variety of golden and red beets, a purple onion, chives, and a bouquet of mint that would’ve looked very sweet in a bud vase. Weirdly, I could not find a single stalk of asparagus, so I headed nine blocks north to Eataly (second perk of NYC: If there’s no greenmarket, there’s always Eataly) where I had more luck, and where I also grabbed some fresh ricotta, prosciutto, and two Meyer lemons that were so beautiful I thought they were fake. A menu was starting to take shape in my head: An asparagus-forward pasta with some kind of minty pesto, plus a colorful salad with shredded raw beets and a ramp-y vinaigrette. It pained me to think about slicing into the lemons, but I thought maybe one would work in place of an orange slice in a Negroni or even a gin and tonic…

Back at home I set to work, realizing I had most of what I needed to make a version of Susan Spungen’s Bucatini. I washed my lettuce. I whirled the ramps into pesto. I chilled two stopper bottles of water into the fridge so I could have them on the table and not have to worry about filling and re-filling water glasses. I decided to make the ramp vinaigrette by whisking a scoop of the ramp pesto into my standard all-purpose vinaigrette. Starters would be what I already had: pistachios, gherkins, a hunk of Parm, plus those dozen or so slices of prosciutto. Andy came home from work with a bottle of white, and assembled our Negroni ingredients, including one of my still-life-worthy lemons. Adam and Craig showed up with a beautiful Adam-made ricotta cake for dessert so it all came together, deliciously, if improvisationally. The only thing I forgot was to take photos of the final dinner. This always happens to me, but luckily we had leftovers of everything, and I snapped that photo up top the next day. (This is why the beets look a little wilty, but you can get a sense of how riotously green and colorful it was.) If I hadn’t run out of pistachios, I would’ve crushed some and sprinkled them all over the salad for a little texture.

In summation, here is the menu with links and how-tos:

Starters & Drinks: Negronis (1:1:1 Gin + Campari + Vermouth; garnish with Meyer lemon instead of orange), chili-roasted pistachios, Trader Joe’s gherkins, a hunk of Parm, about a dozen pieces of super thinly sliced prosciutto. (No crackers or carby things that steal precious stomach real estate.)
Main: Bucatini with Mint Pesto and Asparagus, Mixed Green Salad (gem/arugula/mizuna) with Ramp Vinaigrette (one scoop of ramp pesto in this dressing)
Wine: An Italian white like this beauty
Dessert: Adam’s Raspberry-Ricotta Cake (Alternatively, if you don’t feel like baking: Pistachio and Strawberry Gelato with Almond cookies would work, too)

Feel free to cut and paste the entire line-up and let me know how it goes. 💚

2. This Week in TikTok Recipes

Just kidding, I’m not on TikTok — but doesn't that sound so much better than “this week in Instagram reel recipes?” Either way, these Korean mayak marinated hard-boiled eggs with their 45 million views, have been haunting me ever since they showed up on my feed. It’s the kind of thing that almost makes me angry — like holy sh*t HOW does the algorithm know me that well. I just had two of them with a big pile of pan-fried shredded cabbage (if you know you know) drizzling their marinade over the whole operation. A-plus lunch.

3. Where I Eat/Shop/Coffee/Takeout/Cocktail on the Upper West Side

Forgive me broader readership, but I’m going hyper local today for the last of your Three Things. Over on Dinner: A Love Story, the original blog, I’ve started to compile a list of restaurants, coffee shops, markets, and bars in my neighborhood (the Upper West Side, mostly the West 70s and 80s) and while I sincerely hope you benefit from the list, I confess my motivation is selfish: I cannot believe how often people text me We’re going to a show at Lincoln Center, where should we go for dinner? Or Where should I take the kids before the Museum of Natural History or I’m meeting a friend for lunch on the UWS, any recs? So now I can just send the link and be done with it! If you live in the neighborhood (or even if you don’t!), particularly in the 90s or 100s, please feel free to comment with your own recommendations. I’m still new here and learning everyday. P.S. Similar to my Where I Eat in Westchester post, this will be a list I plan to regularly update, so keep checking in.

Related: Where I Eat in New York beyond the Upper West Side.

Have a great week,
Jenny

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🥬 🍅 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. 🍳🌿