De Cecco Sleeps with the Fishes
Hi, and happy almost-new-year! Are you ready to see 2020 out the back door? I bet.
Take a deep breath. If you celebrated Christmas, touch the good memories, admire them, re-wrap them gently in tissue paper and put them away for future use.
Shake out your hands and put the work behind you, too. Christmas is such a lot of work—always more than I remember. It’s good work, but work nonetheless. An exertion of the emotions, the body, and inevitably, the wallet. It’s nice to get back to normal afterward. I always forget that, too.
You don’t have to have made any special resolutions to want to start reining things in a little, foodwise, as December shades into January. The cookies, the roasts, the drinks, the sugar-plum-spiced everything have all taken their toll.
I also tend to forget, after a long spate of festive time, what a more parsimonious, easeful style of eating would look like And then I remember that the answer is always beans.
Whatever the answer is for you, you’ll find dozens of ideas at Trivet Recipes to keep you fueled up into January and beyond.
If you’re craving a return to simplicity, check out dishes like this vegan (yet creamy) kidney bean soup from Gourmanedelle. Randa Nutrition’s balsamic beet hummus would be great as the foundation of a light meal. And an inviting gorgonzola-lentil salad from Our Plant-Based World is the perfect make-ahead main dish.
If these kinds of recipes sound good right now, the “healthy” tag at Trivet Recipes isn’t a bad resource, either.
If you are not ready to say goodbye to luxe menus just yet, we got you. It is never a bad time for Swedish meatballs, like these by Not Entirely Average. And you could eat well for several days on a London broil from On Ty’s Plate, made using the reverse-sear method, which you should really know about if you’re into steak, even a little bit (and read on in this newsletter for a mini-interview with Ty herself).
And then again, there are recipes like this one—braised Moroccan chicken thighs with chick peas, from Cooking Chat—that have a foot in both worlds.
Finally for now, welcome to all the new members who are using and posting to the site. If you’re enjoying Trivet Recipes, feel free to share it with a friend, or all your friends. If you’re an Instagram user, don’t forget you can tag posts with @triv.et and/or #triv.et, for a chance to be featured in our feed. (Not to mention a certainty of being featured in our hearts.) And thank you. This has been a lot of fun so far, and we at Team Trivet can’t wait to tear the wrapper off the new year to come.
In this edition of the Trivet newsletter, we’re catching up with Tynia Peay of On Ty’s Plate, a blog we’ve been enjoying since before Trivet Recipes was even an idea. A home cook specializing in Southern-style comfort food, Ty’s recipes are easy to love and accessible to make.
Hello, Ty! What are you most excited about in the kitchen these days—is there something you're working on mastering, or just enjoying a lot?
I’m most excited about turning my favorite recipes into healthier versions. I’m preparing to share a few of them early next year, but I’m diligently working to healthify traditional soul food and holiday recipes for next fall.
Has the pandemic changed the way you cook?
If nothing else, 2020 has shown me that life is precious and we can’t take it for granted. Good health has to be preserved. I’m looking forward to sharing those healthier creations so that people can enjoy life longer and still eat good food. As for shopping habits, they are pretty much the same. I believe in a moderate stockpile of necessities. I also have many recipes and tips for making meals work with missing or unavailable items, so I would have to say that the pandemic has forced me to flex those muscles.
You grew up in Maryland, and you're based in Baltimore now. Is there anything distinctively regional about your cooking or your approach to food, as you see it?
I am Baltimore-born and raised. Baltimore has a unique food culture that is centered around staples, Maryland blue crab being one of the main ones. I’ve shared a few of my favorite regional recipes with my readers like my cream of crab soup, crab dip, mini crab cakes, and a few others not involving crab. But overall, I share recipes that I’ve learned and created for my family.
You’re a mom, and there is a “Kid-Friendly Recipes” section on your site (very helpful!). Do you have any tips on cooking for picky kids?
Being a food blogger and a person known for cooking well (I’ve dabbled in catering for small parties and made full meals for close friends), it’s often assumed that my kids love everything that I make. Well, that’s not the case! I have two of the most finicky eaters to cook for, a teen and a now-preschooler. Betwixt two terrors, I often joke. I am always juggling who doesn’t eat what whenever I’m making a meal. To avoid my own personal meltdown, I came up with staple recipes by cuisine that I know everyone will eat even if it’s not their favorites. My build-your-own salad bar tutorial is one of those recipe ideas that help picky eaters take charge of their plate. My youngest will eat most of anything I allow him to help me make or choose on his own. I also ask them directly which foods that I cook they like best and I make those things pretty often. Then there are times that I simply lose and end up making PB&Js!
Find Ty at On Ty’s Plate, or on Instagram or Pinterest. You can also check out her profile and recipes on Trivet Recipes.
Lastly, do you like bucatini?
The spaghetti-length pasta with the hole in the middle has taken the noodle-loving world by storm, maybe in part due to Bon Appetit’s deeming it, in 2018, “the best long pasta.”
And yet it was more than this, as reporter and bucatini fiend Rachel Handler discovered, that accounted for the profound shortage of this favorite pasta on the shelves of American stores this year.
In her report for the Grub Street blog, Handler unravels some serious international regulatory pasta intrigue. Specifically, it seems that someone—but who?!—has it out for De Cecco brand pasta, in particular. Handler’s examination leaves some loose ends, so I’m hoping for lively developments in the comments section.
Would it be worth renting a car to drive to a store in New Jersey, or possibly Pennsylvania, to buy bags of dried pasta? For bucatini, we considered it.
See you in a couple weeks,
Katherine