Three Things

Welcome-home dinners, tofu shawarma, a very special Irish soda bread

Greetings eaters and readers! This week, one of my daughters is swinging through town for a single night on the way to spring break with her college friends — I’ll take what I can get — and I’m in the process of struggling with a delightful dilemma: What should I make her for dinner? A roast chicken, whether classic or harissa, will never be wrong; or “fish presents” with sweet potatoes and a light coconut curry sauce; or maybe Brothy Beans with home-baked bread. (My other daughter — cooking for herself abroad this semester — has taken to stirring slow-roasted tomatoes into those beans, and I’ve been meaning to try that out all month.) As for vacation reading, my spring breaker is going with American Pastoral (definitely in her mom’s all-time Top 10) and Skippy Dies because The Bee Sting was already checked out of the school library. Here are Three (more) Things I’d like to tell you about this week…

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1. Tofu Shawarma Dinner Salad

Since discovering the oven-roasted chicken shawarma recipe (<gift link) from the Times in December, I’ve made it a half dozen times — sometimes for company, sometimes for an easy Sunday dinner, sometimes with homemade yogurt flatbread (page 222 The Weekday Vegetarians), sometimes over rice with yogurt sauce and mint. The recipe, with nearly 20,000 reviews, is wildly popular for a reason: It always delivers. Unless, of course, you’re vegetarian or a weekday vegetarian, or someone who has maybe had one too many pork dumplings in Chinatown over the weekend and is possibly looking for a reset. That’s when one might think about swapping in tofu for the chicken, using the same spices as the Times recipe, but adding corn starch to ensure some crucial crispy edges. One might also think about tossing that tofu with greens and feta and radishes, throwing in a few pita chips for good measure and great texture.

P.S. I’m experimenting with northern light this week, which everyone tells me is the best for food photography, but I’m not sure how I feel about it.

You can find the recipe for Tofu Shawarma Dinner Salad over on Dinner: A Love Story today.

Frenchette Bakery: Definitely scored high in Beli (photo credit: Adam Roberts)

2. Are you on Beli?

I was honored to talk about some of my go-to Upper West Side restaurants in Sarah Copeland’s “Where to Eat in NYC” guide, where some way more legit New Yorkers (Peter Som, Andrea Gentl, Jessie Sheehan, Doris Josovitz, Camille Becerra, Leah Koenig, and April Johnson) weighed in with their favorite places in the five boroughs. I’ve only lived in the city for six months, but I know enough to know that I don’t know anything — New York is SO HUGE and made up of so many different New Yorks that it can feel almost unknowable. But, of course, I try. As soon as I read Sarah’s story, I entered all the new-to-me restaurants from the list on Beli. Do you know about this app? Google tells me it’s been around since 2021, but it was my 22-year-old restaurant-and-food-loving niece, Alison, who first introduced it to me last spring. Beli helps you track the restaurants you’ve been to and want to try, and it’s not just a New York thing or a city-person thing. It lets you review, archive, and map virtually any restaurant in the world, save it under various categories (bakeries, wine bars, ice cream, cafes, etc), then automatically ranks your favorites. There’s a social media component to the whole thing, too — a feed that tells you the places your friends have bookmarked or been to — but I rarely use that part of it, except to see what my niece is up to. I rely on the app in two very important ways: to remind myself about new places I’ve been meaning to check out forever (I can be very lazy about venturing beyond my old standbys) and to look up nearby spots (coffee, pastries, markets) in real time. Cool, right? Check it out here.

3. Warm Irish Soda Bread (with or without Tequila)

If you’re ever wondering what food gift is appropriate for someone who is going through a rough patch, the answer is there is no wrong answer. In the weeks after my father died, I was the very grateful recipient of several babkas, a few pints of matzoh ball soup, bagels and smoked salmon, a bottle of purple (!) gin, boxes of dark-chocolate-covered marzipan, and Levain cookies. (Dessert was my father’s love language.) But there was also that one afternoon I walked into my apartment to find a gift bag waiting for me on the counter — inside was an excellent bottle of tequila and a warm loaf of Irish soda bread, home-baked by Jeni, one of my oldest, dearest friends who now lives two blocks away from me. I immediately sliced off a piece and spread some Kerrygold across the top. Is there anything better than warm bread with good butter? I’m asking that seriously. I don’t know if there is.

The soda bread recipe was from her mom, Rosa — that’s Rosa’s handwritten recipe card — who we lost in May, and who I’ve written about many times in this space. The funny thing is, I don’t even really like Irish Soda Bread. I mean, I’ll eat it if it’s in front of me, but I often find it too dry or too dense, and I don’t really seek it out, even this time of year when I know authentic, home-baked loaves abound. Maybe it’s personal, maybe it’s because of the circumstances under which this one was delivered, maybe it’s because it conjures Rosa and my dad — two of the greats — but this one was different. Crispy and buttery around the edges…its sugar-dusted top…I froze half the loaf in slices so I could enjoy it for the next few weeks, too, toasted and warm with butter whenever I wanted. Here’s the couldn’t-be-simpler recipe in case you can’t read Rosa’s handwriting. (Related: A Care Package Formula.)

Irish Soda Bread
I like that Rosa wrote on the card “Irish Soda Bread is supposed to be round.” Mine arrived in a 9-inch loaf, but according to her notes, it sounds like it could also be made in two 8-inch rounds.

Mix together:

1 egg
4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup raisins
2 cups buttermilk

Add batter to a greased 9-inch loaf pan and bake at 350°F for 1 hour. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.

Have a great week!
Jenny

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