Three Things

Braised meatballs and polenta, leafless salads, a cool, feel-good thing to do with friends

Greetings readers and eaters! What’s for dinner tonight? I’m thinking black bean empanadas with pickled onions, veggie fried rice, or crispy Okonomiyaki-style cabbage fritters. I hope you all had a great weekend — after a sort of insane fall with work travel, college visiting, and sports spectating (not complaining!) we finally got to spend all three days in our neighborhood like bonafide New York locals. We puttered around at home, escorted Bean to the Riverside Park dog run, roasted up a harissa chicken for ourselves on Friday night, went out with friends a few blocks away on Saturday, and wandered over to Central Park on Sunday to cheer on the NYC marathoners. Also, not that you asked but…

…I have zeroed in on my go-to egg-and-cheese sandwich in the neighborhood — Daily Provisions just absolutely nails it. They put the egg on a mini poppy-seed roll that is not too big and not too bready (crucial), and the drippiness of the egg’s golden yolk, along with the meltiness of the white American (not cheddar! Also crucial!), is perfect every. single. time. For those of you who don’t live in New York, I’m sorry! For you, here are some tricks for making a solid egg sandwich at home! And now, your Three Things including those meatballs up there….

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1. Braised Meatballs with Polenta

Don’t tell Great Grandma Turano, whose namesake meatballs have been the default in our house for decades, but we’ve been silently betraying her for the last year and half. It all started when I read about Anna Francese Gass and her grandmother’s meatballs, featured in Gass’s 2019 cookbook Heirloom Kitchen. The recipe has roots in Calabria, and calls for braising the meatballs in a simple basil-garlic infused tomato sauce. In other words, there is no browning the meatballs before they simmer, a step in Great Grandma Turano’s recipe (and in my own Abruzzi-hailing mom’s recipe) that I had always thought was crucial for imparting depth and flavor. Well, I’m sorry to say that the first time I simmered up a batch of Anna’s, I was so pleasantly distracted by the addictively tender texture of the meatball that I didn’t notice anything missing at all. (And I didn’t even use the fatty veal-beef-pork mixture Gass called for — I almost alway go with ground dark turkey.) Last weekend, though, feeling heavy with guilt about ignoring our own heirloom meatballs all this time, I decided to apply the braising technique to the flagship recipe, and served the resulting tender, saucy meatballs over creamy polenta. So freaken good, omg. I think even Great Grandma would’ve been ok with it. You can get the recipe over at Dinner: A Love Story.

2. It’s Mandoline Season

I don’t want to say I skip green salads altogether in the winter — I definitely eat a lot of those mediocre “spring mixes” — but I’m always happier with a leafless winter salad made from thinly sliced raw vegetables. (Dinner Rule #24: Always one fresh, aka bright, thing on the plate.) I bought the compact, efficient Benriner mandoline after watching Lauren Radel, food stylist extraordinare, reach for it constantly at my cookbook shoot, and it’s made such a difference in overall ease. (My previous mandoline, now on a Goodwill shelf somewhere, was prohibitively large and clunky.) I’ve used the mandoline with fennel, zucchini, persimmons, and radishes, but a shaved beet salad is my favorite. These above are Badger Flame beets from Row 7 (you can use what you find at your own market, obviously) that I topped with blood orange sections, paper-thin red onion slices, chives, good olive oil, the tiniest drizzle of champagne vinegar (could also use white wine vinegar), and flaky sea salt. Ever since Sicily, I’ve become a real sucker for the combination of oranges, fennel, and red onion.

P.S. The yogurt-harissa dressing in The Weekday Vegetarians is so good with shaved beets and carrots. P.P.S. More leafless salads.

3. Friends and Benefits

There are two ways I consistently catch up with friends: I either go for long walks with them, or we go out to eat. It’s been this way ever since I left office life, and especially so once I became an empty nester — the organic run-ins with friends at school events and pick-up or on game sidelines disappeared almost overnight, which was hard. Now, however, I might have a new get-together activity to add to my short list. Last week, Natasha Pickowicz — award-winning pastry chef, community activist, author — organized a bunch of cookbook and restaurant people to take a few volunteer shifts at Gods Love We Deliver, the beloved New York charity that delivers homemade meals to people too sick to cook for themselves. There were about three dozen of us and we were helping GLWD get ready for Thanksgiving, understandably one of the busiest delivery periods of the year. Turns out there is something very therapeutic about snapping on latex gloves and getting into Mindless Assembly Line Zone, scooping the exact amount of baked pasta into a dish, placing loaded trays onto conveyor belts at a consistent clip, and doing my best to avoid Lucy and Ethel’s fate. (That clip never fails to deliver. Never.) But the best part about the afternoon was meeting new people and connecting with others I hadn’t seen in a while. When I came home I found myself reaching out to organize my own friends for shifts. Maybe you already know this, but I kind of love the idea of catching up with someone while also doing something good for the community. Anyway, you’ll be hearing more about this from me in December, but for now, you can check out volunteer shifts on their website. You have to register the first time, but once you’re in the system you can just sign up and pop in whenever. A big shout-out to Natasha for the inspiration.

Have a good week,

Jenny

Phoebe’s roommate’s father (shout-out Warren Djerf!) made the spinach-artichoke pizza from The Weekday Vegetarians over the weekend. Maybe you should too!