Stuff I've Been Cooking - July 2024

A wonderful kielbasa, some fishy spreads, and one very surprising pie.

You guys. I started writing this entry in May, but then I baked a fish and totally forgot about it. As luck would have it, the other day I noticed I had a draft saved in my Substack writer dashboard, and lo and behold - a half-written NBD Fancy! No need for it to languish in limbo. So, without further ado, here is a time capsule of me from a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

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I was going to start today’s newsletter with some pithy words about how I’ve been neglecting my kitchen lately and how that makes me sad, but then I looked at my iPhone photos and discovered that I’ve been the victim of a misinformation campaign. A misinformation campaign by me, for me. I have in fact… been cooking! I think my confusion stems from a cabbage I never roasted, and somehow that guilt evolved into me kicking myself for not cooking enough.

Welp, at the moment, there are three beets roasting in the toaster oven; so I’ve officially turned this ship around. Now let’s talk about what I’ve made lately.

Crustless Chocolate Cheesecake

Passover was just last week, and I had the extreme privilege of cooking a mini seder for my parents in New York. I made some reliable fare: gefilte fish, Molly Baz’s pastrami chicken, Andy Baraghani’s smashed potatoes, etc. When it came time for dessert, I wanted something easy to whip up. A stunning idea came to me: what if I made my favorite chocolate cheesecake, the one I’ve made a thousand times since childhood?

Now, one of Passover’s major brand identities is that leavened bread is verboten. This, understandably, could be a challenge with cheesecake, which has a big ol’ leavened crust. I decided I would investigate some matzoh-based crusts (instead of the standard graham cracker go-to), but they were uninspiring.

Then, an idea. What if I baked the cheesecake WITHOUT A CRUST? The filling is the best part; so what could go wrong? And so I made the cheesecake batter, poured it into a pie dish and cooked it. Fast forward a day later after some obligatory chilling in the fridge (the cheesecake, not me). I inverted this concoction onto a platter in hopes that it would look like a flan. A novel idea, for sure. But also, it was in that moment I realized I could have just made flan.

This was a fun experiment; albeit flawed. The crustless cheesecake tasted very good, but its signature creamy texture was absent. In its place was, ironically, a standard ricotta cheesecake texture — ever so slightly crumbly, sort of firm, dense. Yes, this version felt more like cheesecake than it normally does, but unfortunately, this was a downgrade for me, if only because I’m in favor of the original’s creaminess.

I chalked the firmer texture up to a few things: the batter having direct contact with the hot, glass dish. Also, I did cook it 5 minutes longer than usual, which may have been a mistake. Nevertheless, the cheesecake got the job done, but next year: flan.

Crisped Potatoes

Speaking of those Andy Baraghani potatoes, I’ve made them about three times over the past 6 weeks. They may be my #1. Hard to say. Potatoes can be so glorious in so many forms. I won’t prolong this since I’ve written about them before, but if you want to read further thoughts, check out my first ode to them here.

Hasselback Kielbasa

Kielbasa cooked over a bed of onions, fennel, and pepper — can’t go wrong with that. But then make a homemade honey dijon and lovingly slather it on the links while they roast? It’s sausage heaven. I’ve made this with both beef and turkey kielbasas. Both versions turned out wonderfully. Is it any shock that the recipe hails from Ina Garten?

Notably, I made this initially with my friend Sylvia to celebrate our other friend Andrea visiting Los Angeles, and although the recipe calls for divvying everything up onto two sheet pans, we just piled it all onto one, and it turned out perfectly. Rave reviews all around, including from Andrea’s sons.

Lemon Shaker Pie

Alison Roman loves a whole lemon. This pie lets her go rind-wild to her heart’s content. A lemon Shaker pie (or Shaker lemon pie, depending on whose recipe you’re reading) turns unpeeled lemon slices into divine citrus greatness in a way that I was honestly not ready for. For Alison’s version, we slice lemons paper thin, but since I have no mandolin, I did my best with a knife (my rounds were probably about as thick as a hard book cover).

Next, we seed the slices and let them macerate in a mound of sugar for 2+ hours, resulting in a gooey, delicious puddle of lemon sweat. Eventually, the slices and the sugar and the accumulated juices are mixed with four eggs and a scant 1/4 cup of flour before being poured into a pie shell and baked for about eighty minutes.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this strange pie. There were so many rinds! But wow, it works. This is one of those recipes where baking truly feels like magic. In goes a heap of slices, out comes a creamy multi-dimensional lemon treat. The peels provide intense pops of citrus (let alone gentle texture), but the sugar keeps everything in check. This pie is a surprise.

And also let’s not overlook the minimal ingredients and effort. It’s so easy! The hardest part is rolling out the dough, which I’m honestly not very good at. But I did it! My only quibble with this recipe is that Alison Roman has us garnish the top crust with lemon slices. Unlike the innards, these rinds don’t soften and melt into a beautiful mush. They instead become chewy and truthfully annoying to negotiate. The slices atop the pie look pretty, but I would skip them next time.

Nevertheless, I doff my bonnet to the Shakers!

Funky Dips

Hello, this is Ben from June. Or maybe it’s July by now. But as I mentioned earlier, I never finished this post. I did, however, leave a cryptic note to myself: “funky dips.” I don’t remember what these dips were, but we can all agree they were funky.

OH! FUNKY DIPS!

The only photographic evidence I have of said “funky dips.”

I just remembered the funky dips, and YES they were in fact very funky! In late March my friends and I had a caviar party, and in the spirit of things that are fishy and Eastern European, I made two dips. Funky dips, as it were. Actually, they were more like spreads than dips, but let’s not get too in the weeds about this.

First, from the Ukranian cookbook Budmo!, I made “Famous Odessa Forshmak.” It involves white bread soaked in cream, herring fillets (not pickled but instead packed in oil), an apple, a hard-boiled egg, minced shallot, butter, and vinegar. I had no idea how this would turn out, but I knew it would be polarizing. I loved it. Fishy, tart, oniony - it’s nothing I would ever bring onto a plane (and neither should you).

Next on the funk express was cod liver pashtet from Kachka (one of my all-time favorite cookbooks). This spread took the fish funk up to a ten in a way that I absolutely adored (and many others at the table politely pushed away). The pashtet is made with canned cod liver, which author Bonnie Frumkin Morales describes as “the most rich and decadent tuna fish salad you’ll ever try.” She’s right.

Here we put the cod liver, half an onion, 1 hard boiled egg, and some salt in a food processor and then blend until smooth. It’s about as easy as it is fishy, which is to say - very. That’s a good thing for me. I was a big fan. If memory serves me, only one other person at the table seemed to actually enjoy the pashtet, and honestly, it was definitely too aggressive for a caviar night. But enjoyed with some horseradish-infused vodka (which my friend and fellow-pasthet enthusiast Sylvia provided), this dip - and the forshmak - were fabulous.

My parents read this newsletter; so hold on everyone while I speak to them directly: you would love these spreads.

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Scrolling through my phone for evidence of “funky dips,” I found several more interesting food adventures. I’ll report on them shortly! Until then, tell me what you’ve been making lately. I’m always looking for inspiration!