365 Days of Food

Roasted butternut squash with tahini sauce. This, from the Jerusalem cookbook by Ottolenghi and Tamimi, has the colors and texture to make it a good choice for a Thanksgiving dinner. It reminds me of peanut butter and it’s just as delicious, except the squash ends up a bit smushed together and shapeless. To make the…

Catalan fish soup (suquet de peix). It starts with a base of tomatoes and garlic cooked in olive oil. In Catalan that’s a sofregit (pronounced so-fruh-geet, or a sofrito in Spanish; Wikipedia has a good list of the different ways to make a sofrito by country and region.) The more distinctively Catalan part of it…

Tomato soup with too much cheese cooked inside it, reminding me of a mozzarella stick. We had it at a bar on the way to see The Big Short, a movie about the Wall Street traders who made money betting against the housing market. These ruthless individuals liked to eat at Nobu (both in NYC…

Sloppy joes. I ate them as fast as I could so I could finish reading the second volume of the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. The other night I fell asleep reading it and ended up half-awake convinced that everything in the book was real — and who’s to say it isn’t? I don’t think…

I brought a bottle of vermouth back from Spain and waited to open it until oranges were at their peak flavor, because what you do is pour it over ice and garnish with orange peels and olives. I added a dash of orange bitters. A true aperitif, vermouth is what you drink first. Vermouth is…

Spicy risotto with tomatoes, which we received as a gift. It was cold enough to be Minnesota outside and I came home really wanting soup, but we had no ingredients and I was running out of ideas. All you do is cook onions in butter, then open the bag and add the rice mixture, stirring…

Grocery store steak sauce, made with something called “natural flavor (contains soy).” I thought I could taste lime along with cinnamon, but neither are among the ingredients. Rather, along with tomatoes and vinegar, there is molasses, tamarind, and grated horseradish roots (and HFCS). To me it tastes like Australia, or at least it’s my culinary…

Roast chicken. I rarely cook this successfully, and I think it’s because food safety is the top priority when it comes to chicken even if taste goes out the window. And to cook it evenly, it’s also advisable to let the chicken rest on the counter until it gets to room temperature, but this step…

Three-fourths ounces each of gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lime juice, shaken and strained into a martini glass. It’s called The Last Word and the ingredients were a Christmas present from friends. (Photo: San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2012.) >> January 11 << January 9

Granola bars. I spent the day in a meeting at a nonprofit and had skipped eating breakfast because I’d assumed they would at least have muffins. They did not have any muffins. Sometimes there’s a romance in social services organizations that meet in windowless conference rooms or church basements and won’t splurge on any extras….

Lamb burgers. I used dried mint and dried thyme, although I could have picked some of the latter from my herb garden, where the parsley finally died but the rosemary and thyme are still going strong. I soaked the frozen bread crumbs in water, though I’m not sure if I should have, and made the…

Loosemeat sandwich. This variation calls for mixing ground beef with five tablespoons of sriracha. Then you add one egg, half an onion, three garlic gloves, and an eighth-tablespoon of soy sauce, stirring it all together and cooking it all at once. I served it with corn tortillas instead of hamburger buns, which I can recommend….