Impossible Burgers & Impossibly Good Beans
Hello friends and family!
So I didn’t end up posting a Dinner Diary last week. This was in part because I ended up working a longer stretch of cafe shifts than I’m used to and got too tired to think about cooking or writing, and in part because of July being its hot, sticky July self. It’s impossible to imagine turning on the oven, so we’ve been doing lots of salads and grazing nights—last night, for example, I had egg salad on crackers and a bowl of cold grapes. Not the most riveting fare, I’m afraid.
What are all y’all eating on these sweltering summer nights? I find myself dreaming of cooler fall weather, complete with cozy pots of vegetable soup, spiced apple cider donuts, and pumpkin everything. While we twiddle our thumbs and wait for autumn to arrive, let’s review a few highlights from last week.
Sunday 7/2/23
Mediterranean quinoa salad
This was another copycat recipe from the cafe where I work, with a few tweaks. Quinoa, chopped cucumbers, halved grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, and feta cheese all tossed in some leftover lemon vinaigrette and sprinkled with a confetti of fresh parsley from my wee chef’s garden. In order to give the quinoa more flavor, I cooked it in some bean cooking liquid (I have a possibly absurd stash of reserved bean broth in my freezer) instead of plain water. Love to layer my flavors. I like to think of flavor as a tower I’m building from the ground up, and the more scrap materials I have at my disposal, the higher the tower can go. That’s why I never throw away flavor. Stack ‘em to the heavens!
I wasn’t super hungry because I’d been snacking in the kitchen while experimenting with a new recipe for the baby (salmon chickpea fritters—she liked it! Hey Mikey!) and this was a perfect light summer-evening salad for the occasion.
Monday 7/3/23
Big Salad: red, white, and blueberry edition
Anne had requested a Big Berry Salad, and it just worked out to be the right colors for Fourth of July Eve. Baby spinach with this balsamic vinaigrette, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, feta cheese, sliced almonds and some “rotisserie chicken.”
Rotisserie chicken is in quotes because what I purchased at the grocery store was this product called Perdue Shortcuts Rotisserie Chicken Strips, and—shockingly—it did not deliver the promised “sweet and smoky flavor.” It tasted like chicken, is about all I can say about it. This was my first time buying pre-cooked chicken breast and I don’t think I’ll do it again. I guess it’s true what they say: there are no shortcuts to any place worth going. Do they say that? Next time I need some cooked chicken in a hurry, I’ll go to Kikiriki on Central Ave and get one of their real deal rotisserie chickens, which are always revolving tantalizingly in the front window. (Fun fact: “kikiriki” is Spanish for cock-a-doodle-do. Want to know how to make rooster noises in Bengali, Croatian and Japanese? I got you.) Where was I? Right, the berry salad. Other than the meh chicken, the salad was delicious.
Tuesday 7/4/23
Vegetarian cookout
We drove up to my sister Abbey’s house in the Hudson Valley for a chill vegetarian cookout—Impossible burgers, tater tots, and Bush’s baked beans (Lydia, this one’s for you: roll that beautiful bean footage).
For dessert, Abbey made adorable little cherry-blueberry pies and, just for me, a few mini graham cracker crusts filled with a gloppy-sweet concoction that I loved as a kid—cherry cream cheese pie, which mostly consists of sweetened condensed milk and cream cheese. It’s like cheesecake with none of the subtlety, and guess what? It’s just as delicious in 2023 as it was in 1996. Anne called them “Southern throwback pies” and I genuinely love that descriptor. That is what they are.
Back on the subject of beans, I have to tell you about the pot of cranberry beans I cooked when we got home from my sister’s. I had never cooked cranberry beans before, but these turned out delicious. I’d soaked them overnight, then simmered for about an hour with salt, some smashed garlic cloves, a bay leaf and a strip of kombu. Kombu is this magical dried kelp which contains an enzyme called glutamic acid that tenderizes the beans and adds a lovely umami depth; it’s also a nutritional powerhouse with iodine, iron, calcium, Vitamins A & C, and trace minerals. Powerful stuff.
This was my first time cooking beans with kombu, and it kind of knocked my socks off. The beans cooked faster than I expected them to, and came out surprisingly tender, with a savory depth that was giving me smoky notes. It almost tasted like I’d cooked the beans with a pork bone. Anne took a few bites and said, “These beans are amazing. You have to tell the world about these beans.” So here I am: just a girl, standing in front of the world, asking it to love beans.
Friday 7/7/23
H-Mart shrimp and veggie stir fry
Anne really stepped up to the (dinner) plate this week while I’ve been working more often, scooping up a bountiful haul at H-Mart and cooking a couple of excellent meals. Tonight, we feasted on this beautiful stir-fry of shrimp, baby bok choy, garlic scapes, tiny mushrooms, and this really fun deep fried tofu, which soaked up the savory sauce like bouncy little sponges. Anne served this masterpiece over fresh Shanghai noodles, and I was so hungry, and so grateful.
Saturday 7/8/23
We were tired! We ordered the chicken Florentine pizza from Pizza Masters on Central Ave, and it was just what we needed. Shout out to Pizza Masters for consistently knocking it out of the park with the perfect crispy, chewy crust. We made a little side salad for balance, even though this pizza did have spinach on it and therefore we could’ve skated by on a technicality. Is this what being a responsible adult feels like?
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That’s it! I’ve missed writing for y’all. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you’re cooking, eating, or daydreaming of these days. This week, I’ll work on getting back into my regular rhythm with meal planning, cooking and writing. Until then, I’ll say a fond kykkeliky and cucurigu.
XO,
Hannah
Where does one find kombu?