Rough & Ready Recipes: #1
What I made last week
Last week we got Covid. It wasn’t fun and I was disappointed to miss out on summer hangs with friends and potential work and being outside and yada yada. It was a classic lesson in slowing down, leaning into rest, and practicing patience while you recover. Grateful to have our health now and be back to reality!
While I was sick, I binged all three seasons of Hacks, half-watched the first two seasons of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and fell into a YouTube clickhole that consisted of farm living in Azerbaijan vlogs and luxury camping in Korea. But I also made a few things in the kitchen when my energy and wellness permitted.
Here are those things along with what I am lovingly calling my RRR series - Rough and ready recipes, not perfectly measured, but a light walk-through on how to recreate these dishes if you feel called to.
A year (or more) ago, Garrett and I went on a date to Crudo e Nudo in Santa Monica. If you live in LA and haven’t gone, I suggest you do. They have gorgeously plated fresh oysters, a variety of crudos, natural wine, and creatively prepared colorful seasonal produce. (Yeah, I’m a fan). I decided I needed their caviar nachos, but alas, would have to make them myself considering the circumstances. I pickled some red onions and cucumbers, chopped some herbs, and loaded up potato chips with creme fraiche and healthy spoonfuls of salmon and flying fish roe. It was perfect and I was happy.
The next morning, I used the pickled cucumbers from the night before, some leftover rice cooked in a homemade miso broth, the roe, an avocado, and soft boiled eggs to make a really delicious breakfast bowl. Talk about RRR (reducing, reusing, recycling)!
Quick Pickled Red Onions:
1 large red onion, thinly sliced or mandolined
1/2 cup of boiling water
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 teaspoon salt
Directions: Place your red onion slices in a jar or deep container and cover with boiling water and vinegar. Add more of both as needed to cover/submerge onions (I typically keep them 1:1). Stir through the salt and sweetener and cover with a lid. Let sit for 15-30 minutes. Allow to come to room temperature before refrigerating.
Quick Pickled Cukes
3 persian cucumbers or 1 slicing cucumber, thinly sliced or shaved on the mandoline
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup of cold or room temp water
1 tablespoon honey or maple
pinch of salt
*optional - 1/2 tablespoon furikake
Directions: Same as above for red onions!
I make variation of this Mushroom Walnut Bolognese very often. It’s a tried and true classic. Clients love it, and it comes together relatively easily! So it’s a win for everyone involved. Sometimes I use tempeh (that recipe is on my OG website) and sometimes I use red lentils. Moral of the story - this is a versatile dish that can showcase different vegetarian protein sources and wow both meat-eaters and veg heads alike.
I do something kind of sacrilegious when I make this recipe and use the food processor to finely chop all the veg. You do not need a food processor to make this, and the fine chop you can get manually makes for wonderful texture. Anyway the recipe…
Mushroom Walnut Bolognese -
1 cup toasted walnuts (you can toast these yourself by placing raw walnuts on a pan over medium-high heat and tossing them to golden brown)
1 punnet (8 oz or so) of baby bella or crimini mushrooms
3 carrots, peeled
3 celery stalks
1 yellow onion
5 cloves garlic
a healthy glug (and potentially more, do your thing) of olive oil
1 15 oz jar of your favorite store-bought sauce (I like Rao’s or Michael’s of Brooklyn)
a splash of a fuller bodied red wine or balsamic vinegar
1/2 tablespoon of smoked paprika
salt and pepper, to taste
*optional - fresh basil or chives to top
your favorite pasta, cooked according to package directions (save 1/2 cup of pasta water to stir into the sauce)
Directions: Finely (and individually) chop the onion, celery, carrots, garlic, mushrooms and walnuts. Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat and add your olive oil (enough to lightly coat the pan), and onion, celery, carrots, and salt and pepper. Sauté the veg until the onions turn translucent, then add your chopped garlic. Cook for another 5 minutes, then add in the chopped mushrooms, walnuts, and smoked paprika. Allow the mushrooms to release some of their liquid and get a bit brown, then splash in a bit of red wine or balsamic vinegar to deglaze the pan. Add in your sauce, bring to a simmer, lower the heat, and then cover. Cook for 45 minutes to an hour, tasting and adding salt and pepper, as well as your reserved pasta water along the way.
Serve over pasta, on a bed of spinach, topped with herbs of your choice and a pad of butter or sprinkling of parmesan if that suits your fancy.
Brat Summer Popsicle -
No measurements whatsoever, just vibes. All blended together and frozen in silicone popsicle molds. This would also just make a delicious smoothie
frozen peaches
frozen mango
frozen passion fruit
banana
vanilla
a small knob of ginger
very generous few handfuls of spinach
milk of choice
protein powder of choice
pinch of salt
*optional - sweetener (honey or maple) to taste
I had quite a few ripe peaches staring at me every time I walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea for myself. So I figured I’d use them to make a galette that I could enjoy with said cup of tea.
I used this recipe. I used coconut sugar instead of cane sugar, and added cinnamon in the filling. I didn’t have anything to make a whipped cream, nor did I have any vanilla ice cream, but it was absolutely delightful with just a dusting of powdered sugar.
Please let me know if you try your own version of any of these recipes. Happy playing-in-the-kitchen to you and yours!
Loved every recipe! I’ve never thought about making my own popsicles before but they look delicious and easy to make. Hope you’re feeling better :-)