Mochi donuts
Last week I felt ravenously hungry all the time, which was logistically annoying but kind of fun. Usually when I feel anxious my stomach is a mess and I eat bland, sad meals that require as little time and effort as possible to prepare. But for some reason all my addled mind could focus on last week was procuring, preparing and eating delicious food. I ate some weird things and some excellent things, and I cooked a streak of dinners that were actually good, not just edible or edible-plus, for maybe the first time since the pandemic started.
Back in April, when everyone else was in the sourdough phase of lockdown, I was experiencing the total opposite impulse. Big cooking projects that took lots of time in the kitchen were the last thing I wanted to take on, because my kids were with me almost all the time, often trying to kill each other or drawing on the walls or demanding that I cut up an apple, open a yogurt, fill up a sippy cup, you get the picture. Cooking anything I didn’t already know how to make involved keeping the tab of the recipe open in my brain while stopping and starting the process 87 different times. I looked at everyone else’s elaborate baked goods and canning projects on Instagram with a kind of detached, impersonal awe. The mental stamina they were displaying was not in my wheelhouse. My wheelhouse, in addition to … wheels? … contained a large supply of boxed mac n cheese and a stir-fry from Cook’s Illustrated that I’ve been making approximately once a week since 2005.
But last week I had a ton of nervous energy that had no obvious outlet because reading and writing were way out of the question until the results of the election were clear. Enter: cooking! Eating!
The two most delicious things I ate last week were things I definitely did not cook. One was a millet mochi donut from Win Son bakery, still warm from the fryer. As you know I have celiac so I haven’t eaten anything close to a “real” donut since 2011, so maybe if you can eat gluten this wouldn’t be as much of a revelation, but to me it was so good I almost started crying. The texture was perfectly chewy, not gummy, like the best butter mochi cake. Whatever was on the outside had a perfect salty-sweet-umami balance. Maybe it was just salt and sugar and a tiny bit of fishiness from shrimp-containing things also being fried in the same oil. Does that sound gross? It was out of this world perfect. I would like to eat one every day for breakfast with a giant ceramic cup of perfect-temperature black tea.
The other treat was also breakfast: a “classic” bagel sandwich from Greenberg’s Bagels in Bed-Stuy, which is doing an amazing job with their COVID business - all orders are online, and you pick up from a window. For some reason the Greenberg’s gf bagel is closer than any other to replicating actual bagel taste and texture, which should also be chewy (but not gummy), and the ratio of cream cheese to lox is correct (tons of lox, just enough cc). This is also something that no one could eat every day because it’s pricey and luxurious and more conducive to a nap than a productive morning, but in my dream life I would alternate it with the donut, chased with a cup of lukewarm deli coffee in a paper cup.
Two of my successful dinners involved using actual recipes: this spicy slow-roasted salmon was featured in the NYT cooking newsletter, which I read religiously even as I love to dunk on Sam Sifton’s folksy fly-fishing, perpetually-grilling-a-duck-breast ways. It isn’t spicy so much as “spiced,” which is good, because that meant Raffi condescended to eat it.
I also made this butternut squash “posole,” which I make with homemade broth and lots more spice and lots more time, so that the chicken totally falls apart into shreds. It’s a good one to remember for when you’re over the other squash recipes in your repertoire. My children did not go anywhere near this. Between them, they have consumed a dozen hot dogs since Saturday.
Also twice last week we had salads made with the last our of Rock Steady CSA lettuce mix, which was so ethereally beautiful, tender and crisp, I already know that no lettuce I have til next summer will be able to compare. As Rachel Samstat in Heartburn once bragged, I have once again reached the point where I can’t make a bad vinaigrette — a real mood. It never lasts, but it’s good while it lasts. Btw, this was my first year with this CSA and I am a big fan. If you live in NY check and see if they have a pickup site near you — and reach out if they don’t, because they are still adding them, I think.
Oh, and on election night, just to give my liver something additional to deal with, I made cupcakes from a King Arthur gf box mix (my go to) and successfully improvised buttercream frosting, even going so far as to haul out the KitchenAid stand mixer that Keith bought me for my 30th birthday to buy time (three years) on the wedding clock.
I look forward to continuing this streak, if I haven’t just jinxed it. Food! Have you heard of it? Good stuff!!
Bonus: while cooking, I listened to both of Anjelica Huston’s memoirs on audiobook, which is certainly the best way to experience these literary works (I remember a line about how the “Pacific is such a peaceful name for such a tempestuous ocean” that even she couldn’t fully sell). There are lots of richly atmospheric descriptions of beautiful hotel rooms, gardens, horses, dogs, and other famous people.