My favorite cookbook of the fall, a new love of blue cheese, fast and yummy things on rice
and feeling a little bit burnt out...
I’m feeling a little burnt out. Not horrible, “I can’t go on” burnt out. Just tired, things feel like a slog, burnt out. This fall has been a doozy with lots of moderate illness going through our family, sad craziness in the world, and a lot of hard, continuous work on the League of Kitchens cookbook. And I feel worn down. But there’s still a ton I need to do in these next few weeks, so I’m trying to take things hour by hour, day by day, task by task, one foot in front of the other.
And since I can’t really take time off until the holidays, I’m also trying to find small ways to rest and take breaks throughout my day and to find small pleasurable things to incorporate into my day to day life. Like baths. I love baths, and I rarely take them because it feels like they’re too “elaborate” and they take “too long”. But this is really crazy because a bath takes like 15-20 minutes, even a leisurely one, and they require no special effort besides turning on the faucet. I bought some new magnesium flakes to try putting in my bath, which are basically like a higher quality epsom salt. I’m going to try them tonight, and I’ll report back. I’ve also been trying to prioritize sleep and meditation, and I’ve been buying small amounts of expensive cheese, lol. (See below.)
But I want more ideas! What kinds of small pleasures do you weave into your lives?
Something Tasty I’ve Been Eating
My Dad gets really obsessive about foods, and for a period of months or years, my mom will have to buy or make that food over and over again until he moves onto his next thing. Most recently, my Dad had to have a salad everyday that included salad mix, cut up red grapes, and goat cheese. When my parents lived in Korea for two years, when they were at home, my Dad basically ate only rotisserie chicken, sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper, prosciutto (from one fancy hotel bakery), and “milk bread”—a funny mix of things to eat while living in Korea, but I think it was his way of dealing with eating Korean food the rest of the time. In my childhood, most of his food preoccupations were diet related, I realize in retrospect—low fat cottage cheese with Splenda, nonfat yogurts with aspartame, and Raisin Bran with low-fat milk and Splenda. Pretty much anything with Splenda on top.
I tend not to get obsessed with single foods, maybe in response to my Dad, but sometimes I do get into one thing, or one food combo, that I want to eat everyday, and for the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself craving and then making and eating the following, either as part of breakfast or lunch: a slice of whole wheat sourdough toast (from Bread Alone), smeared with grass-fed butter, fig jam, and blue cheese.
I’ve always felt kind of neutral about blue cheese, which is funny, because I feel like it’s actually a pretty divisive food—people either love it or hate it. In the past, I would enjoy it, from time to time, in a salad or dip or on a cheese board, but it was not something I sought out. But recently, I’ve really been craving and enjoying blue cheese! I don’t think I realized it before, but it’s intensely savory and full of umami. And when you eat it with butter and fig jam, the butter cuts some of the intensity, and the fig jam adds a really nice sweet contrast.
As I’ve written about before, I’m a big Fresh Direct fan, and they have a fabulous cheese department. The last few weeks, in each week’s grocery order, I’ve bought 1/4 pound of some expensive artisanal cheese, which ultimately only costs $5-8, and it’s been a fun and pleasurable treat to look forward to. Last week I bought their Carles Roquefort AOP, which is a raw milk artisanal blue cheese from France, and it’s incredible—my favorite blue cheese, so far.
I was telling my friend Ariane about my new love of blue cheese, and she said that she has also recently gotten into blue cheese after feeling kind of ambivalent about it! We were trying to figure out why this was and what it means that we’re both suddenly craving blue cheese! The only thing we could come up with is that maybe our bodies are craving the beneficial bacteria (which I discovered there are a lot of) in blue cheese? Or maybe there’s some sort of connection with winter? I was thinking about how eating Stilton is a very traditional part of the British holiday season.
But whatever the reason, I highly recommend this combo!
What I’m Reading
I buy a lot of cookbooks. At this point, I think I have close to 1,000, which is a little crazy considering we live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. So it’s a form I know well and love. Last week when I was browsing books at the Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, while Sylvie was at her dance class next door, I came across a cookbook called Company: the Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others by Amy Thielen, and I was intrigued. I bought it and started reading it and was surprised to find how much I liked it. Like really liked it. Like I think it’s my favorite cookbook that was published this fall!
The author lives in rural Minnesota in the woods, and the book is about what she cooks, and how she cooks, when she hosts people at her home—whether it’s a 6 person Saturday night dinner or a 20 person gathering. She grew up in the mid-west, and the book is grounded in her experience of living there. But she also lived in New York City for many years, working as an editor at Saveur and cooking for a lot of fancy chefs, like David Bouley and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. So she combines a deep experience of professional cooking with a “down home” sensibility focused on real home cooking.
She’s also a really good writer. And reading through her menus and looking at the photos, it made me want to live in the country and host lots of parties and dinners. (I know I can do that in Brooklyn, but the photos in the book definitely have a certain cozy country romance.) The book is both practical and aspirational, and I feel like there are quite a few recipes I want to try.
A big part of the pleasure of the book is the world it creates and conveys, and the photos are central to that. When I checked to see who had photographed it, I was happily surprised to see that it was Kristin Teig—the wonderful photographer of our cookbook! I guess I really do love her photos!
Here are some atmospheric faves:
Don’t these photos make you want to move to Northern Minnesota??
What I’m Cooking
I’m back to recipe testing for the League of Kitchens cookbook (I’m doing retests of a few recipes as part of the editing process), which means that for the meals I’m not testing, I want to do something super simple.
A few newsletters ago I wrote a list of fast, yummy things I like to eat on toast, and I thought that this week, I would write the corollary list—fast, yummy things to eat on rice (usually short-grain Asian style rice). I realize that looking at these two lists, there’s actually quite a lot of overlap, which is probably not too surprising.
Key to this meal strategy is having a rice cooker. Every Asian and Asian American family has one, and I grew up with a 10 cup rice cooker that had hot rice 24/7. For about 15 years we had a 3 cup rice cooker. We just upgraded to a 5.5 cup Zojirushi rice cooker, now that our kids are older and eating more. The best thing about getting an “advanced” rice cooker, like one from Zojirushi, is that you can program it. So you can put in rice and water in the morning, and program the rice to be done at 5:30pm, which is just so helpful. The rice cooker then keeps the rice warm until you’re ready to eat it—I will generally let rice stay on “warm” for about 24 hours, before moving it to the fridge.
One nice thing about making rice bowls for dinner is that you can customize them fairly easily, so Sylvie can have one set of toppings, Vivian can have another, and Dan and I can have what we like. If there is rice already in the rice cooker from the previous night, it’s also a fast, easy, satisfying lunch for myself when I’m working from home.
I’ll usually do a mix of the various items I’m listing below, depending on what I have in the fridge and what I’m in the mood for. But generally, I’m a topping maximalist, and I’ll put on all the toppings I can find.
Fast, Tasty Things on Rice
A fried egg, a “jammy egg,” or a raw egg yolk. Pretty much every rice bowl I ever make has some kind of egg on it (unless I go the canned fish route). Eggs and rice are the perfect complement, and eggs are such a fast and easy way to add protein. A fried egg gives you a bibimbap kind of vibe. That’s Sylvie’s favorite. I love a raw egg yolk mixed into piping hot rice, with soy sauce, and some toasted, crumbled seaweed (plus other stuff—but I like that as a base).
Canned fish, like canned sardines, salmon, smoked oysters, and cod liver. I’ll generally drizzle some soy sauce on top of the fish, and if I have the energy, sprinkle on some slivered scallions.
Kimchi. We always have a jar of kimchi in the fridge (I like the Bing Gre brand), and as a half Korean person, it’s hard for me to have white rice without wanting to add some kimchi. It’s also a nice way to add some probiotics to the meal.
Seaweed. I like to have a package of toasted seaweed with my rice, either crumbled into it or as a wrapper in which to put some rice with other toppings. That’s how I grew up eating gim—the seaweed snacks that are so ubiquitous now that most people eat straight, like chips. I also like the “Eden Shake” gomasio from Eden foods, that’s a mix of seaweed, toasted sesame seeds, and dried pickled perilla leaves. Sometimes I’ll sprinkle that on top of the rice. Seaweed is a great source of minerals, and I try to make it a regular part of my diet.
Avocado. If I have an avocado on hand, I always add a few slices to the bowl, usually with a drizzle of soy sauce and a sprinkle of non fortified nutritional yeast on top.
Sautéed greens. If I have some spinach, romaine lettuce, cabbage, or bok choy in the fridge, I’ll slice that up and do a quick sauté in some olive oil or butter. And then I’ll add a little soy sauce. Or sometimes, I’ll mix a little white miso paste with some water, and then mix that into the cooked greens at the end.
Cucumber. If it’s in the warmer months, I’ll slice up some cucumber and add that to the bowl. Sometimes I’ll make a simple sauce with soy sauce, rice vinegar, maple syrup, and a touch of toasted sesame oil, and toss the cucumbers in that. Depending on how I feel, I might also make a version of that sauce for any of the above listed toppings.
Salmon roe (ikura) or flying fish roe (tobiko). Just a small spoonful of either makes a bowl of rice extra delicious and festive feeling. This is Vivian’s favorite rice topping. Fresh Direct sells both at a fairly reasonable price. (And no, I’m not getting paid by Fresh Direct!) All kinds of fish roe are also extremely nutrient dense.
Natto. I feel like I should write a whole thing about natto in a future newsletter, because it’s delicious and misunderstood. It’s a kind of Japanese “stinky” fermented soy bean that has a ton of umami and is really good for you. The key to natto is preparing it correctly and eating it with the right accompaniments. I think I’ll leave it at that and write more about it in the future.
Leftovers. If there are any leftover hot dogs or chicken or cooked vegetables of most kinds, I’ll cut them up and reheat them and add them as a topping.
What do you like to eat on rice? Leave a comment and let me know!
Thank you so much Lisa, so glad you enjoyed Company! I can't wait to see the LOK cookbook out in the world! Wishing you a wonderful new year :)