If I'm cooking solely for myself I like to make a half-rye bread with a good chewy crust, and I like to have a slice of it topped with a crunchy mustard and nicely firm but not overcooked scrambled eggs. Alternately, I'll dry-fry green beans until they are blistered and semi-charred and then stir-fry them with garlic, ground meat of some sort, and some of the fermented broad bean and chili paste called doubanjian, and eat that with rice.
If I'm cooking for others, I like to roast a chicken and make pommes fondantes and some sort of interesting salad. Everyone loves it and it's dead simple.
Or, since I moved to within a stone's throw of some of the best shrimp fishing in the USA, I'll pull out the molcajete, grind up a sauce of parsley and lemon zest and shallots and olive oil and lemon juice and some garlic and maybe some other green herb I have around, very gently poach some shrimp (that were swimming a few hours prior) in a mix of good butter and olive oil, pull the shrimp from the oil/butter, drain, douse them in the salsa verde/gremolata/whateverata, let them think about their life decisions for 15 minutes while I make a salad and slice some good bread. Similarly dead simple and everyone loves it. Also I do this with a mild white fish, like triggerfish or some sort of flatfish if it's the season, when I have guests who are not shrimp fans.
And I love to pull out some really rich chicken stock -- the kind that is still pretty much jellied at room temperature -- steep a bunch of greenery in it as I bring it up to temperature so it has some bright veggie flavors, then grab a few eggs and some good cheese and turn it into stracciatella. Serve it with some grilled (oil, rub with garlic clove, salt-sprinkle) bread. In the summer, a plate of sliced tomatoes gets the salad job done. At this time of year, probably a little dish of escarole with lemon juice and oil and black pepper and salt instead.
I feel so seen. As much pride as I took in being a pastry chef, the question, "what's your favorite thing to bake?" alway irked me. It's like asking an actor what's their favorite show to act in. Maybe they have a favorite, but more likely it is the act of performing that they love, not one specific scene. Obviously, people usually have good intentions and are just trying to show interest, but I can definitely identify with struggling to answer.
I believe someone said this below. At least for me, it depends on the occasion and number of people. If it is for me by myself, I will sear thinly sliced zucchinis to be snuggled in half of a roasted spaghetti squash. Tri-color extremely baby tomatoes scattered on top with arugula and rose in a crystal glass. But if it's for a larger crowd, ossoc bucco does it for me...if only to marvel at my 13 qt. Le Creuset in orange. Love your post.
Yeah, I tend to make it less and less because it's getting harder to find veal. I get all the ethics stuff about veal, but I owned a farm with about 750 animals and the thing is to make all of them experience an amazing life. People used to say, I want to die and come back as a chicken on Carolyn's farm. They even said, "Why does the chicken cross the road? To get to Carolyn's farm." HaHaHaHa!
Projects meals that take time. Trying to make guanciale just for bucatini, a decent cubano, reuban, or pastrami on rye. Moles on occasion. But where everything that can be made at home, is - homemade mustard, sauerkraut, long brined, boiled or smoked meat, of course, bread, etc. It’s probably why I appreciate your writing so much. Even if I can’t make your food as-is because I’ll never find the ingredients (affordably), it is inspirational.
Last Sunday I made veal tongue for a couple of friends. First time! It took a long bath in cold water for over a couple of hours and then bubbled slowly for 4 hours. I cut it in long cubic pieces and tossed it in the pan for a minute in order to get it a little crunchy on the surface. I served it on a bed of mashed pumpkin with mostarda and some cabbage. I topped it with some salsa verde and here we go. It was delicious!
I'm with you on this one..my "speciality" tended to be whatever was on the menu at the time asking. My favourite thing to cook right now is probably chilli. Mainly because I know both my kids will eat it.
Speciality... now there’s a word that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. My speciality is whacking my elbow into doors whilst carrying trays of fragile garnishes and slipping on oil patches.
I can't render these out with anything like your prosaic style style Will, but in no particular order: Chicken and spring vegetable risotto, osso buco, highly marbled steak sliced thinly over a leafy salad, pizza in the wood oven, and bread the next morning. Ok, the last two have to be done in the right order.
Like you, I don't have a signature dish, but I do like to make dishes to practice technique; for example, I like making puff pastry, even though I blatantly don't have 'pastry hands' (I have hot hands, and melt the butter all the time). I also like trying different cuts of meat to experiment. But there is one dish I like to cook, and that's the famous Sichuan aubergine dish (it's called 'fish fragrant' in Chinese). I first tried it in a restaurant in China, and absolutely loved it, and asked if they would share the recipe. They told me to come back the next day before service, and when I went there the following day, the chef cooked it for me in front of me. He refused my offer to pay for the ingredients, and told me to teach my friends back home how to cook the dish. It was an unforgettable act of kindness, and each time I make this it brings back fond memories, and optimism that humans, regardless of nationality or cultural difference can always find something in common. And food is a great unifier of humankind!!
A simple supper: roasted salmon with a maple rub atop quinoa mixed with mini heirloom tomatoes, avocado blue cheese crumbles and maple cider vinaigrette.
For friends, long lost or new, blueberry molasses cake. Or basically anything with wild Maine blueberries.
Thanks for asking! It’s been fun to read your subscriber’s responses!
Blueberry molasses cake sounds intriguing. And I love blue cheese with salmon. I used to make a terrine with confit salmon and roquefort and serve with piccalilli if I remember.
I read many food-related newsletters, but you are the only author / chef who has asked what his readers enjoy cooking and eating. Thank you for this kind questioning of and interest in your readers!
For a long lost friend, I would make an apple galette following Deborah Madison's recipe from the New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The flaky crust is made with pastry flour and the apple mixture includes preserved lemons, pine nuts and calvados.
For a main dish, I would make a vegan spanakopita in a cast iron skillet using the recipe from Mississippi Vegan by Timonthy Pakron. This dish is made with fresh collards, fresh dill, pine nuts, onions, garlic, green onions, lemon juice, tofu, spices and phyllo dough. Remarkably, it freezes very well and reheats superbly.
As far as traditions, both of my parents, now deceased, grew up on farms during the Great Depression. They did not have enough to eat as children. As a result, when they had kids, they made sure there was always plenty. My dad raised cows on many acres as a hobby. At any given time, we had beef from a full cow in our freezer and frozen blackberries we had picked in the summer. He bought grapefruit, oranges, apples and tangerines by the crateful. My mother shopped for produce at the curb market, which is what the farmers market was called then. She made almost everything from scratch and we had freshly squeezed fruit juice every morning.
Now, each weekend, my wife and I create a list of recipes for the week, then we shop at the farmers market and the grocery store. On days when neither one of us has the wherewithal to cook and we don't have left-overs, we enjoy orzo and edamame with butter and salt.
I love those memories. Thank you for sharing. The dishes you describe also sound perfect.
I willl look into the apple Gallette recipe as I love Calvados, perhaps a little too much. I once worked in a restaurant in my first Head Chef's position where the maitre'd would bring me an espresso after lunch and would duly arrive with a bottle of 1935 Calvados to add. Good memories, though I do wonder how he managed to cover his bar stock levels.
I am only a “mum” cook, but I do have a Uni degree that incorporates food science - so I really “get”, on a gut level, your love of ingredients and process.
Yes also to the neurodivergence- the crashing bottleneck of words and ideas when asked a single question with a myriad of potential answers, and the reultant incoherent responses when put on the spot. And the ability to - in your own time - construct a written response that perfectly encapsulates a response.
Why should you have a signature dish? Why should you have to pick one thing? Just necause someone asks a question doesn’t mean thatyou have to squeeze your experience into the narrowness of answering IMO!
I love imagining the taste that I feel like on a day, checking out the garden for herbs, the fridge and the season and what’s shining in the shop, and then enjoying the process of cooking in response. I love learning about old recipes, those that really understood why.
I am forever learning to *love* to cook bc as a busy mom I *have* to cook. But I love to eat and eat well, so I scratch cook most days all of the meals. I haven't hit the "perfect" recipe yet but my dream is to put the most amazing rabbit pot pie onto the table alongside some ferments and a large carafe of a shrub of some sort. Or hire someone like you! 😁
I love chow mein, but I fear I may have never tasted a true version. I'd love to know how your Grandmother made hers one day if ever you feel like typing.
For her beef chow mein, the key is to use really good beef in small cuts sautéed in butter with chopped celery and onion. Lots of soy sauce. I cheat somewhat (with help from La Choy) for vegetables and noodles. It takes a long time to prepare with an iron skillet since we did not have a good wok. Simmering a long time enables a rich gravy sauce which, in our Pennsylvania Dutch house, was served with a topping of crispy noodle alongside (and over) mashed potatoes. Really good comfort food!
If I'm cooking solely for myself I like to make a half-rye bread with a good chewy crust, and I like to have a slice of it topped with a crunchy mustard and nicely firm but not overcooked scrambled eggs. Alternately, I'll dry-fry green beans until they are blistered and semi-charred and then stir-fry them with garlic, ground meat of some sort, and some of the fermented broad bean and chili paste called doubanjian, and eat that with rice.
If I'm cooking for others, I like to roast a chicken and make pommes fondantes and some sort of interesting salad. Everyone loves it and it's dead simple.
Or, since I moved to within a stone's throw of some of the best shrimp fishing in the USA, I'll pull out the molcajete, grind up a sauce of parsley and lemon zest and shallots and olive oil and lemon juice and some garlic and maybe some other green herb I have around, very gently poach some shrimp (that were swimming a few hours prior) in a mix of good butter and olive oil, pull the shrimp from the oil/butter, drain, douse them in the salsa verde/gremolata/whateverata, let them think about their life decisions for 15 minutes while I make a salad and slice some good bread. Similarly dead simple and everyone loves it. Also I do this with a mild white fish, like triggerfish or some sort of flatfish if it's the season, when I have guests who are not shrimp fans.
And I love to pull out some really rich chicken stock -- the kind that is still pretty much jellied at room temperature -- steep a bunch of greenery in it as I bring it up to temperature so it has some bright veggie flavors, then grab a few eggs and some good cheese and turn it into stracciatella. Serve it with some grilled (oil, rub with garlic clove, salt-sprinkle) bread. In the summer, a plate of sliced tomatoes gets the salad job done. At this time of year, probably a little dish of escarole with lemon juice and oil and black pepper and salt instead.
Everything that you suggest sounds perfect. I'll pack a bag.
I'll call my fish guy and we'll go out with the boat one morning.
I feel so seen. As much pride as I took in being a pastry chef, the question, "what's your favorite thing to bake?" alway irked me. It's like asking an actor what's their favorite show to act in. Maybe they have a favorite, but more likely it is the act of performing that they love, not one specific scene. Obviously, people usually have good intentions and are just trying to show interest, but I can definitely identify with struggling to answer.
I do try to answer but find it very difficult. Im glad it's not just me.
I believe someone said this below. At least for me, it depends on the occasion and number of people. If it is for me by myself, I will sear thinly sliced zucchinis to be snuggled in half of a roasted spaghetti squash. Tri-color extremely baby tomatoes scattered on top with arugula and rose in a crystal glass. But if it's for a larger crowd, ossoc bucco does it for me...if only to marvel at my 13 qt. Le Creuset in orange. Love your post.
Osso buco. Now that is something very very special. I've not made that for a year or so.
Yeah, I tend to make it less and less because it's getting harder to find veal. I get all the ethics stuff about veal, but I owned a farm with about 750 animals and the thing is to make all of them experience an amazing life. People used to say, I want to die and come back as a chicken on Carolyn's farm. They even said, "Why does the chicken cross the road? To get to Carolyn's farm." HaHaHaHa!
Projects meals that take time. Trying to make guanciale just for bucatini, a decent cubano, reuban, or pastrami on rye. Moles on occasion. But where everything that can be made at home, is - homemade mustard, sauerkraut, long brined, boiled or smoked meat, of course, bread, etc. It’s probably why I appreciate your writing so much. Even if I can’t make your food as-is because I’ll never find the ingredients (affordably), it is inspirational.
Wow. Simply wow. Real cookery, that of being able to create your own ingredients. This is what I try to learn nowadays.
Last Sunday I made veal tongue for a couple of friends. First time! It took a long bath in cold water for over a couple of hours and then bubbled slowly for 4 hours. I cut it in long cubic pieces and tossed it in the pan for a minute in order to get it a little crunchy on the surface. I served it on a bed of mashed pumpkin with mostarda and some cabbage. I topped it with some salsa verde and here we go. It was delicious!
Divine. Adventurous as well. The flavours are truly delicious.
I'm with you on this one..my "speciality" tended to be whatever was on the menu at the time asking. My favourite thing to cook right now is probably chilli. Mainly because I know both my kids will eat it.
Speciality... now there’s a word that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. My speciality is whacking my elbow into doors whilst carrying trays of fragile garnishes and slipping on oil patches.
😂
Another love letter, from your heart to my kitchen. Thank you Will.
You are very welcome Michie.
I can't render these out with anything like your prosaic style style Will, but in no particular order: Chicken and spring vegetable risotto, osso buco, highly marbled steak sliced thinly over a leafy salad, pizza in the wood oven, and bread the next morning. Ok, the last two have to be done in the right order.
All sounding completely delicious.
Oh the oxtail of my childhood in South Africa ❤️
Oxtail. Up there with the greatest of ingredients.
My South African mother-in-law taught me to make oxtail in a pressure cooker! Absolutely the best recipe!
Like you, I don't have a signature dish, but I do like to make dishes to practice technique; for example, I like making puff pastry, even though I blatantly don't have 'pastry hands' (I have hot hands, and melt the butter all the time). I also like trying different cuts of meat to experiment. But there is one dish I like to cook, and that's the famous Sichuan aubergine dish (it's called 'fish fragrant' in Chinese). I first tried it in a restaurant in China, and absolutely loved it, and asked if they would share the recipe. They told me to come back the next day before service, and when I went there the following day, the chef cooked it for me in front of me. He refused my offer to pay for the ingredients, and told me to teach my friends back home how to cook the dish. It was an unforgettable act of kindness, and each time I make this it brings back fond memories, and optimism that humans, regardless of nationality or cultural difference can always find something in common. And food is a great unifier of humankind!!
A simple supper: roasted salmon with a maple rub atop quinoa mixed with mini heirloom tomatoes, avocado blue cheese crumbles and maple cider vinaigrette.
For friends, long lost or new, blueberry molasses cake. Or basically anything with wild Maine blueberries.
Thanks for asking! It’s been fun to read your subscriber’s responses!
Blueberry molasses cake sounds intriguing. And I love blue cheese with salmon. I used to make a terrine with confit salmon and roquefort and serve with piccalilli if I remember.
Now confit salmon and roquefort terrine is something I would love you to share here...!
I read many food-related newsletters, but you are the only author / chef who has asked what his readers enjoy cooking and eating. Thank you for this kind questioning of and interest in your readers!
For a long lost friend, I would make an apple galette following Deborah Madison's recipe from the New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The flaky crust is made with pastry flour and the apple mixture includes preserved lemons, pine nuts and calvados.
For a main dish, I would make a vegan spanakopita in a cast iron skillet using the recipe from Mississippi Vegan by Timonthy Pakron. This dish is made with fresh collards, fresh dill, pine nuts, onions, garlic, green onions, lemon juice, tofu, spices and phyllo dough. Remarkably, it freezes very well and reheats superbly.
As far as traditions, both of my parents, now deceased, grew up on farms during the Great Depression. They did not have enough to eat as children. As a result, when they had kids, they made sure there was always plenty. My dad raised cows on many acres as a hobby. At any given time, we had beef from a full cow in our freezer and frozen blackberries we had picked in the summer. He bought grapefruit, oranges, apples and tangerines by the crateful. My mother shopped for produce at the curb market, which is what the farmers market was called then. She made almost everything from scratch and we had freshly squeezed fruit juice every morning.
Now, each weekend, my wife and I create a list of recipes for the week, then we shop at the farmers market and the grocery store. On days when neither one of us has the wherewithal to cook and we don't have left-overs, we enjoy orzo and edamame with butter and salt.
I love those memories. Thank you for sharing. The dishes you describe also sound perfect.
I willl look into the apple Gallette recipe as I love Calvados, perhaps a little too much. I once worked in a restaurant in my first Head Chef's position where the maitre'd would bring me an espresso after lunch and would duly arrive with a bottle of 1935 Calvados to add. Good memories, though I do wonder how he managed to cover his bar stock levels.
Yes to this!
I am only a “mum” cook, but I do have a Uni degree that incorporates food science - so I really “get”, on a gut level, your love of ingredients and process.
Yes also to the neurodivergence- the crashing bottleneck of words and ideas when asked a single question with a myriad of potential answers, and the reultant incoherent responses when put on the spot. And the ability to - in your own time - construct a written response that perfectly encapsulates a response.
Why should you have a signature dish? Why should you have to pick one thing? Just necause someone asks a question doesn’t mean thatyou have to squeeze your experience into the narrowness of answering IMO!
I love imagining the taste that I feel like on a day, checking out the garden for herbs, the fridge and the season and what’s shining in the shop, and then enjoying the process of cooking in response. I love learning about old recipes, those that really understood why.
And yes also to Shepherds Pie.
Now I am off to look up “pommes aligot”.
☺️
Very glad that you agree. I hope you found the aligot.
‘Scuse all the typo’s above! 🙄 😂
I am forever learning to *love* to cook bc as a busy mom I *have* to cook. But I love to eat and eat well, so I scratch cook most days all of the meals. I haven't hit the "perfect" recipe yet but my dream is to put the most amazing rabbit pot pie onto the table alongside some ferments and a large carafe of a shrub of some sort. Or hire someone like you! 😁
Rabbit, ferments and a shrub. A delight. I'll bake the bread.
Pommes aligot forever
And ever.
Chow Mein recreating my Grandmother’s recipe from the boyhood memory of watching
I love chow mein, but I fear I may have never tasted a true version. I'd love to know how your Grandmother made hers one day if ever you feel like typing.
For her beef chow mein, the key is to use really good beef in small cuts sautéed in butter with chopped celery and onion. Lots of soy sauce. I cheat somewhat (with help from La Choy) for vegetables and noodles. It takes a long time to prepare with an iron skillet since we did not have a good wok. Simmering a long time enables a rich gravy sauce which, in our Pennsylvania Dutch house, was served with a topping of crispy noodle alongside (and over) mashed potatoes. Really good comfort food!
Sounds utterly delicious as I sit here trying to write with tea and biscuits.