Stuff I've Been Cooking - April 2025

It takes toum to make a thing go right; it takes toum to make it out of sight.

Recently on this Substack I was breathlessly extolling the virtues of homemade toum, and since then I’ve been slathering the garlicky spread on pretty much anything I can find. That’s the foundation for two of the highlighted dishes today. They may seem almost un-newsletter worthy, but I assure you they are surprisingly tasty (and just good inspo for anyone who has extra toum on their hands).

Cacio e Pepe… e Toum!

The other night I really wanted to cook myself dinner, but I was also feeling incredibly lazy. There must be a word for when you’re paradoxically lethargic and motivated at the same time. Letharvated? Either way, I needed a dish that gave me the satisfaction of being productive without the effort of being, well, productive. Enter cacio e pepe. The classic Italian dish comprises only four ingredients (pasta, butter, pepper, cheese); so it was the perfect choice for my slothy vibe.

Shout out to Flour+Water, who sent me a whole care package of pasta. This isn’t an ad, but I *am* kind of obsessed with this brand.

I don’t know what went wrong - I think maybe my parmesan was meh or my seasoning too conservative - but the cacio e pepe really didn’t have a tremenous amount of flavor. I adjusted though, adding more cheese and salt until things actually became decent. It was good enough for a late night Wednesday meal, never to be addressed again.

The night I dug into my leftovers, and to my dismay they were even duller than before. Pasta does that, which is annoying, and the idea of having to futz yet again to get this stupid dish into fighting form seemed really frustrating. Ah, the perils of letharvation! What if, I asked myself, I just added toum?

I’ve had the toum of my life, and I’ve never felt this way before. Yes, I swear!

I’m probably not the first person to scoop a giant dollop of toum into their pasta, but I *am* the first person to write about it on this Substack, and I am here to declare that this was not just a gamechanger, but maybe even a life changer. Okay, I won’t go that far, but wow, the addition of the Lebanese condiment exploded my humdrum pasta into something crave-worthy. And why wouldn’t it? Toum is merely garlic, lemon, and oil, and all those things are tremendous friends to parmesan and pasta. I would go so far as to say they’re not just friends but friends with benefits.

I am heretofore henceforth furthermore nevertheless an official fan of cacio e pepe e toum. I suspect the toum trick could apply to many Italian pastas for a nifty Middle Eastern crossover moment, but the only one I can truly speak to is cacio e pepe. I encourage others to follow. (And if you do, please tell me how it goes in the comments below!)

A Simple Lunch Sandwich with Toum

The toumsploitation continued with a sandwich so simple (borderline sad), it barely deserves mention. But mention it I will.

When it comes to weekday lunches, I will often get into a sandwich pattern. A humble turkey sandwich requires virtually no thought, effort, or time to make, and it keeps my evil, inner-snacking self from emerging for the rest of the day.

I have a standard approach: 2-3 slices of honey roasted turkey topped with a slice of cheddar and a mixture of mayo and sambal olek, all served on whole wheat. It gets the job done, and the sambal olek keeps things more interesting than your standard mayo or mustard.

Well, my daily sandwich is a carefully orchestrated affair; so you can only Imagine my horror when last week I waltzed up to the fridge and discovered I was out of cheddar, arguably my favorite element of my daily masterpiece.

Now, a turkey sandwich sans cheese is perfectly acceptable… but also not acceptable at all. Turns out the only sandwich cheese I had in the drawer was American (and before you roll your eyes: I always have American on hand for emergency grilled cheeses and breakfast sandwiches - which IS a thing).

Was I going to do this? Turkey and American cheese? The answer, of course, was yes.

Sadness? Or opportunity?

Since I was already remixing my standard sandwich, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and completely rethink the process. I swapped out the mayo and sambal with toum and zhoug for a Middle Eastern dash of sexiness (and also, I have two large jars of these homemade condiments that need to be used). I knew they would play well together, but what I wasn’t expecting was the alchemy that happened with the American cheese. Somehow the garlic zing of the toum and the herbaceous bite of the zhoug conspired to bring out notes of flavor I had no idea even existed in that floppy piece of dairy product. A revelation!

Over the course of the week, I tried this combo three or four more times to make sure my reaction wasn’t merely a function of me being hungry. Each time - delicious!

So there’s your inspo for the week. Next time your sandwich situation is feeling a bit sad, and you just happen to have these ingredients, try it out!

Cod Liver Dip For Two

We have a supermarket chain here in LA called Jon’s, which can best be described as a Russian / Middle Eastern / American hybrid grocer with a dash of Mexican thrown in to boot. In other words, it’s the best. I always emerge with some random item, and most recently, it was cod liver. I experimented with this luscious tinned fish last year when I explored a few funky dips, and now I was ready to dive in again.

And so I went back to the realm of dips. What if, I contemplated, I made the funkiest fish dip possible? Conveniently, my friend Sylvia was in the throes of assembling a smoked fish dip herself, courtesy of the Kismet Cookbook, so I motored over to her place and joined in on the fun.

When it comes to a funky fish dip, you really have to go wild. To that end, I placed a full tin of the cod liver, a few anchovy fillets, a spoonful of capers, lemon juice, and a scoop of mayo in a blender. What an exciting combo! But alas, the blender merely flung the components against the side of the glass jar. It was anticlimactic. I scooped everything into a bowl - which is what I should have done all along - and finally a dip emerged.

It was… amazing. There was funk to be hand, but the real star was the brininess, which is no surprise given the capers and anchovies. The original plan was to bring this concoction to a party later that evening, but my little experiment had barely yielded enough for two people, let alone an entire group (hence the blender difficulties). What else to do other than gobble it up ourselves?

So that’s what Sylvia and I did. We dragged several crackers or chips (in the ecstasy I don’t even remember what vessel I used) through the dip, with moans of delight following. But then we really took it up a notch: we added salmon roe. YES. An undeniable dip. Perfection. Glory. Joy.

The only downside to this multi-fish endeavor was that it did yield such a small amount. I plan to formalize the recipe for my someday cookbook, and hopefully there’s a decent way to give it volume. Even if I double everything, it would still be a small batch; so I need to play around and see how to scale it up without sacrificing flavor.

The other concern I have is putting in too much cod liver. Turns out it’s teeming with vitamin A, and one can only have so much vitamin A before doing bodily harm. (Read about vitamin A poisoning in this totally horrifying, gripping, and riveting historical tale.) But I’m sure two tins of cod liver are fine. Right?

Oyster Mushroom Larb with Sticky Rice

Meera Sodha’s cookbook Dinner is about to make its US debut any day now, and as I’ve boasted mentioned before, I managed to get my hands on it MONTHS ago in London, where it’s readily available. Regrettably, I’ve had all this time to flaunt my American access to the book, and yet I’ve only cooked two paltry dishes from it. What’s even the point of getting a book before everyone else if you don’t brag about the things you’ve made from it? (disclosure: I think almost all the recipes are available on The Guardian website, which means I never had Sodha-privilege in the first place.)

Recently, I was craving a clean, vegetarian meal, and I knew Dinner would guide me in the proper direction. In this way, my hope to eat clean dovetailed perfectly with my desire to cook from a book with limited regional availability.

Enter Sodha’s mushroom larb, which isn’t even on the Guardian website (Does that mean I’m basically the only person in America who can cook this recipe?? Wow. Wow.) Making it was a breeze (and also very fun). First I whipped up some sticky rice in the ol’ rice cooker. Then a simple dressing: shallots, makrut lime leaves, chiles, sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce.

And then the fun part: the oyster mushrooms. “Tear the mushrooms into 2cm-wide lengths,” directs Sodha; and so tear them I did. I suppose a knife would have worked fine, but it wouldn’t have been as tactile or animalistic as using my hands. What a primal delight!

I then seared those scraps over a high heat, added them to the dressing, and served with the rice.

Did this dish taste like a larb or have its texture? Not really. But it was very larb-adjacent, and that’s all I really needed. Sweet, hot, sour, biting - all the things I adore about larb I found here. I especially enjoyed the texture of the jagged mushroom pieces, alternatively chewy, soft, and squeaky.

It all tasted very lovely that first night, but it was the next day when the mushroom larb really came into its own. A classic case of “let the flavors marry,” this dish truly evolved for the better over time. It’s a keeper, and I can’t wait for you all to see the recipe (SOMEDAY).

UPDATE: I’m horrified to announce that Dinner has been widely available in North America since April 1st, thus shattering my entire ability to gloat about early access. A staggering loss for me. (but seriously it’s an awesome book and you should probz get it.)

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What have you been cooking lately? Leave your recommendations in the comments, and if you haven’t subscribed, please consider! I’ve set a goal of 10k followers, and I think we can do it!