Just One Recipe: Second Breakfast, Issue 3
Hi! Welcome back to Second Breakfast, an intermittent newsletter written by me, Meghan McCarron. Two reminders: This newsletter is free, and you can unsubscribe anytime here.
Ever since I learned to roast a vegetable, I have followed the "buy what looks good at the market and riff from there" approach to cooking. This is a great approach for putting food on the table every day. It's a not so great approach if you're sick of everything you know how to cook. I've been riffing for so long my improvisations have lost their spark.
I've never been much of a meal planner, or god forbid, a meal prepper. If I cook up a batch of lentils on Sunday, I end up eating the things I'm sick of, only now with some lentils I made on Sunday. What I needed is some new material. So on Sunday I pick one new recipe — just one — for the week. Not a recipe I'll call up on a search engine or the Times app when I contemplate that ground lamb I impulsively defrosted. Not a recipe I'll read idly on my phone or in a cookbook and tell myself I'll remember as "inspiration." A recipe I will shop for and not deviate from in any way.
It's been so freeing. There's one less decision to make, and I'm no longer stuck with my own idea of "what looks good." Keeping it to one recipe also means the week isn't loaded up with projects. I can still spend Sunday buying too many dips at the farmers market and later tell my partner dip: it's what's for dinner.
I've made so many amazing things: Filipino-style chicken wings from Cathy Erway's Sheet Pan Chicken. Kay Chun's delightful cabbage rolls. Mint masala roast chicken from Asha Gomez's My Two Souths. And several great recipes from Meera Sodha's East, including the chile tofu above, which is her adaptation of chile paneer. It was so sweet and spicy and addictive I ate a bowl immediately after making it, hours before dinner.
Even better, all my familiar riffs have been restored to their proper place as Things I Already Know How to Make. I have sauteed those greens with garlic a thousand times, and I will do so a thousand times more, because that's how I make greens cooked and tasty, and that is good enough.
Other Meghan Updates
I turned in my novel draft to my agent! Thank god! Now I never have to think about it again, right?
A Few Favorite Reads
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Douglas Wolk on reading every Marvel comic
Taken in isolation, these are peaks without mountain ranges. Their dramatic power comes from their context.
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Tejal Rao on Gusto Bread, one of my favorite bakeries
Most recently, I tore and fried the last of it in olive oil, then built a sort of panzanella using pomelos, soft herbs and tinned smoked trout. At every stage, in every state, the bread had something to give.
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Dayna Evans on whole grain flours and the people obsessed with them (count me in)
Over the rushing sound of the Neshaminy Creek, on an icy but bright day in December 2020, Fran Fischer showed me a 200-year-old millstone that her family had recently unearthed in the creek. It appeared to have been cracked during use, and its unwieldy shape made it look prehistoric. She pointed out a teenage bald eagle flying overhead that had recently gotten trapped inside their chicken coop.
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Stan Robinson profiled in the NYer (!)
A typical Robinson novel ends with an academic conference at which researchers propose ideas for improving civilization. He believes that scholarly and diplomatic meetings are among our species’s highest achievements.
Just a Good Video
When I was feeling down my partner and I watched this whole thing (33 minutes) while discussing which pastries we were most excited to eat. I think this says more about my mental state than the quality of the video, but maybe a dough sheeter is your ideal ASMR, too.
Thanks for reading to the end. If you're not subscribed, you can do that below. And I'd love to hear about recipes you're loving, so I can try them next.
—Meghan