Three Things
A five-ingredient dinner, soup for my mom, book news
Greetings eaters and readers. Hope you had a nice weekend. My friend Lygeia and I had an A-plus New York mini-date last Saturday: Dumplings in Chinatown at Deluxe Green Bo, followed by a quick visit to the Nick Cave exhibit at the Jack Shainman Gallery, an intense and dramatic show anchored on three enormous bronze statues. The gallery itself, the new one in Tribeca, with its soaring marble columns and Italian Renaissance Revival coffered ceilings, was an essential part of the experience. In other, more on-the-ground news, this Thursday, March 13, at 4 p.m. ET, as part of a ”Live Video Food Festival,” on Substack I’ll be co-hosting a live event with Christina Chaey, who writes the wonderfully compassionate newsletter Gentle Foods. We’ll be talking about our careers, our approach to food writing, our most popular recipes, and whatever else comes up. The chat is for everyone, whether you have a paid subscription or not, but you’ll need to download the Substack app to join. (When you enable notifications, the app will notify you when we’re live. Just tap that, and you’re in.) Lastly my publisher told me yesterday that The Weekday Vegetarians is now in its seventh printing, which made me very happy, and also reminded me that I haven’t cheffed up the Crunchy Cheesy Bean Bake in a while. That’s on tonight’s line-up and here are today’s Three Things…
1. Mother Sauce!
Happy book birthday to Mother Sauce, Lucinda Scala Quinn’s delicious and loving ode to her mother, grandmother, and Italian-American nonnas everywhere. Besides inspiring some mad dog-earring (from the Savory Easter Pie to the Creamy Lemon Spaghetti, to the Sunday Sauce to the Orange Olive Oil Cake with Whipped Ricotta, omg I can’t 😩) it inspired me to dig out my own grandmother’s lacey linens to see how I can work them into a regular old Sunday supper. (But first maybe I need to find my iron.) Look how beautiful:
I also loved this tip in the introduction, probably because I’ve been engaged in a quarter-century-long battle with my husband over the amount of food we should prepare every.single.time people come over:
Feed Everyone Prepare as much food as you can afford to make every time you cook. Offer everyone seconds. And be prepared for last-minute guests: Don’t turn anyone away from your table. Another seat or two can always be squeezed in. There should always be enough to feed another mouth or for leftovers to save for another meal or snack.
I think I’ll be framing that and hanging it in my kitchen. I’m definitely on Team Lucinda, or at least aspire to be! Are you?
2. Beef Barley Soup for Mom
Ever since I moved to New York, I’ve gotten into the habit of swinging by any one of the eight million neighboring bakeries or specialty grocers or old-school Jewish delis before driving a half hour north to visit my personal favorite Italian American mother, my very own. I’ll pick up her/our favorite Yellow Bell Farm eggs with the golden orange yolks (they are still somehow in stock in my neighborhood) or a black-and-white cookie from William Greenberg, and always at least one or two pints of Beef Barley Soup from Zabar’s or Fischer Bros. on 72nd St. She’s grateful for all of these gifts, but it’s the soup she requests the most often — like many of us, when she comes home from work, she doesn’t feel much like cooking, and prepared soup is an easy and nourishing way to solve that particular problem.
Over the weekend, though, just as I was about to make my Beef Barley run for her, I realized that except for the beef, I probably had everything I needed in my own fridge to make the soup myself. I cross-referenced a few recipes online, packed my Dinner: A Love Story Tote (🙌) with provisions, loaded Bean into the car, swung by the butcher, and set off to maybe the most familiar place on earth: The kitchen of my childhood, the place where, for 52 straight years, my mom reads her New York Times and Wall Street Journal every morning, and the place where she cooks dinner every night. When I walked in on Sunday, she was on the phone with Joan, her best friend from college, roasting a chicken to bring over to my sister’s later that night. I unloaded my groceries, dug out a soup pot, and we do-si-do’d around each other as I browned the beef and chopped my vegetables with the chef’s knife I brought from home. (I love you, Mom, but your knives are horrendous.) When the barley was done simmering in the pleasingly bright tomatoey broth, I packed it up in a few deli containers for the freezer, but ladled out one bowl for her lunch — that’s her holding it for her annoying food writer daughter in “the right light” while Bean napped in the sun. It was a good day.
3. Five-Ingredient Dinner
Who else loves Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce? I had been curious about it for a while — mostly because of its packaging — and finally picked up a bottle a few weeks ago after Christine Muhlke mentioned it in her newsletter. Ever since, the deeply sweet-and-savory sauce has been slowly working its way into my rotation — last night I was cooking for one and made a version of the gingery-cabbage-tofu bowl I can’t shut up about, finishing with the sauce, and I gotta say, I’ll be doing that again very soon. Here’s how I made it: In a skillet or cast iron pan, brown your protein (tofu, chicken, beef, pork, egg) over medium-high heat until cooked through then, using a slotted spoon, remove from the skillet. Add a little neutral oil (depending on how much fat has rendered from your protein) and maybe a dash of sesame oil, then add sliced onions, one minced garlic clove, a tablespoon of minced fresh ginger and a few generous handfuls of shredded cabbage. Cook until the cabbage is caramelized and wilted. Stir protein back into the cabbage and drizzle in barbecue sauce to taste.
Have a great week!
Jenny ❤️
P.S. Love all the love for last week’s Cookies That Blew My Mind. Please send photos my way if you have them: Jenny@dinneralovestory.com
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Some people are telling me that there are two downloadable PDFs included after the Beef Barley Soup story. Please make sure to click the one that says "DALS BEEF BARLEY." The other one is my breakfast tortilla apparently (I don't see it on my own screen), which you're welcome to download and cook from as well, so long as you're expecting that and not the beef barley soup :) Enjoy!
"I love you mom, but your knives are horrendous" = extremely relatable, haha! This would be an excellent name for a very niche cookbook.