Stuff I've Been Cooking: March 2024

A lot of squash, it turns out.

Since the latest newsletter wherein I rapturously squawked about cabbage, I’ve been in a whirlwind of chaos. There was travel, there was podcasting, there was The Traitors (aka the best show on television); in other words, cooking hasn’t been a major force in my life. Some may have reasonably concluded that after having found the bliss of roasted cabbage, I had retired this newsletter. After all, what else is there to say after you’ve made really delicious cabbage?

Truth is that while I haven’t been cooking much, I have been cooking some, and in fact, there’s a whole list of interesting experiments I need to share with you all. Here are the things I’ve been cooking since [adjusts reading glasses, looks at calendar] December? Welp, let’s get into it.

Baked Farro and Butternut Squash

I have two mandates for 2024: more vegetarian meals and more excuses to use my new Le Creuset Caribbean blue oval Dutch oven. Ina Garten’s “baked farro and butternut squash” was the perfect union of this Venn diagram. The gist of the recipe is that we cook onions in the pot and then add stock and farro and top with cubes of butternut squash. Everything goes in the oven, covered, for about thirty minutes, at which point we remove the cover, add parmesan, and continue cooking for 20 minutes more. We’re also supposed to add bacon, but that would’ve destroyed all the meatlessness of it; so I skipped it on the advice of many Food Network commenters who said this dish was perfectly lovely without it.

Welp, I certainly enjoyed the ease of this dish, especially since I made it at 12:30 AM on a weeknight. I was up late working, and the aroma of bubbling stock and butternut squash really kept my spirits high.

That being said, I encountered some issues with this dish. First, the farro needed more time than instructed, and even with a bonus 10 minutes, it was still pretty chewy. Like… very chewy.

Second, while the dish proved to be quite lovely (especially as leftovers), gosh did I miss that bacon. I could really sense what it would have added flavor-wise, and without it, I’m sad to say — and I rarely say this about an Ina Garten receip — it all tasted a little flat. This was a Ben issue though: I modified, and I lost.

Chicken with wild mushrooms, pumpkin, rice & sage butter

This is turning into a real squash moment.

Let’s go back to December. I was eager to cook from my new copy of From the Oven to the Table by Diana Henry, a book that had languished in my Amazon cart for two years before a Cyber Monday deal finally moved the needle. Diana Henry is a storied cookbook author, and after leafing through the pages of From the Oven, I was kicking myself for not purchasing it sooner. It’s incredibly gorgeous and full of many “Ben” recipes. There was salivation.

My maiden voyage with this book came via Henry’s recipe for “Chicken with wild mushrooms, pumpkin, rice & sage butter.” I think I was drawn to the recipe’s photo which features pumpkin wedges resting on their backs, charred tips pointing upwards. It all seemed so three dimensional and delicious and perfect for a December night. Plus, I couldn’t deny a dish that brought mushrooms, sage, and chicken together.

It was a fairly simple one-pot meal. Into a 12-inch cast iron pan I added chopped onions as well as reconstituted (and fresh!) mushrooms. Then I sprinkled 6 ounces of basmati rice over everything, topped with chicken thighs and pumpkin, and drizzled olive oil over it all. Lastly, some boiling chicken stock went in the pan, and everything went in the oven for 45 minutes at 400 degrees.

When the chicken was cooked and the rice was ready and the pumpkin was tender, I removed the pan from the oven and daubed little pats of a sage compound butter into all the nooks and crannies. Admittedly, this was not a healthy dish, but in my defense, it was the Holidays when we all get a little loosey goosey with calories.

The tricky thing here was that while the chicken and rice were perfectly cooked, the pumpkin was far from ready. In an effort to ape the book’s photo, I too had cut my pumpkin into semi-circles, but probably a little too thickly. As a result, the girthy wedges needed more time in the oven. I loved the idea of architectural pumpkin bringing verticality to a chicken dish, but next time: cubes.

And so, the pumpkin was problematic, but luckily, it was also easily fixed. I just pulled the pieces out of the pan and roasted them until they were ready. As for everything else - I loved it. The rice had taken on all the flavors of the stock, the mushrooms, and the chicken schmaltz. It was impossible to stop eating. Makes me wonder why I don’t cook chicken over rice more often. The sage butter, while totally decadent, did make everything taste both luxe and homey. A perfect winter skillet meal - ideal for entertaining. But again, don’t bother with wedges.

Roasted Squash with Sage Yogurt

I dipped into the squash well a second time in December to make this recipe from The Dinner Party Project, a cookbook I bought on a whim while trying to escape a pack of rabid children at Barnes & Noble. Why I thought it would be smart to visit Los Angeles’s most popular mall, The Grove, on December 23rd just to browse is beyond me. But browse I did until the kiddies drove me out of the store.

Question for Barnes & Noble: why would you ever put the cookbook section — a haven for calm and inner joy — next to the toys and games section?

Anyway, before my quiet peace was destroyed by mucus spewing hellions playing tag under the Madhur Jaffrey books, I did eye a curious title named The Dinner Party Project whose shtick is “a no-stress guide to food with friends.” I was doubtful at first - everything about author Natasha Feldman’s book seemed like a how-to-entertain guide for Millennials. But as I leafed through it, I actually loved what I saw, and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with Millennials throwing dinner parties! I don’t think?

Later that evening, as I curled up on the sofa with TDPP, I fell for its charming sidebars and litany of tips. I particularly loved its infographic on assembling a cheeseboard. Would this book be a keeper?

First test: roasted squash with sage yogurt. The whole let’s-roast-some-squash-and-dress-it-with-herby-things thing has been done umpteen times — from Joshua McFadden to Alison Roman and a million others. Was this recipe really going to break new ground? Not really. Did I care? Also, not really.

Feldman’s spin on this genre classic is a sage yogurt made with honey, Greek yogurt, and sage. We line a serving platter with the yogurt and then top with squash and gremolata. Since I also had a random bunch of radishes lingering in my fridge, I threw them in the air fryer with olive oil and salt and added them to the party.

Overall this was a perfectly fine dish. Actually it was more than fine (and I’d argue that the impromptu radish presence made it more exciting). The issue here was my butternut squash. It tasted kind of dry and MEH. This was not the recipe’s fault; this was either a bad squash or an oven issue. The squash never seemed to caramelize in the high heat - it just dried up and wound up tasting very sad and starchy instead of sweet and luscious. And that made me sad and starchy too. But luckily, the sage yogurt was great, and the zingy gremolata was a perfect accompaniment.

Maybe not a home run, but a solid double. Everyone at the table enjoyed the dish, but I knew it could be better. Don’t worry Dinner Party Project: this was a Ben issue, not a you issue.

Apple Tart Tatin

I had some apples and puff pastry in the fridge; so I decided to pull out an old favorite recipe: Anne Burrell’s apple tart tatin. A tatin is like an upside down pie. The fruit is cooked in a skillet and then topped with pie crust or puff pastry. It then goes in the oven until the dough is baked and then flipped out onto a platter looking sexy and fabulous.

I’ve made Burrell’s apple tart tatin several times over the years, all quite successfully. Her process is pretty easy: first you make a caramel, then you cook a large amount of apple wedges in said caramel, and then the rest is just what I described above. Foolproof.

I didn’t remember the last time I turned to this recipe, but I knew it had been some years — long enough that my prowess in the kitchen had improved and my instincts around baking had sharpened. What I’m trying to say is that I was going to apply my new skillset (which includes having a substack, natch) to make the best tatin… perhaps ever.

Everything went off without a hitch. The caramel caramelled. The apples appled. And the puff pastry puffed. When I pulled the cast iron skillet out of the oven, intoxicating aromas filled the kitchen. This was going to be legendary.

Once it had cooled a bit, I flipped the tatin onto a platter. The apples had turned beautiful shades of amber and mahogany while the caramel had darkened to a haunting color not unlike molasses. None of my tatins had ever looked this alluring.

Tasted like garbage.

Despite having all these newly developed Kitchen Skillz™, I had clearly burned the caramel. Did it happen in the oven? On the stovetop? I’m not sure. But the whole thing was intensely bitter. Scoops of vanilla helped, and I appreciated the unconventional flavor notes, but in the end I was just trying to convince myself that this was a happy mistake. Nope. It was just a regular mistake.

I exaggerate when I say it tasted like garbage, but based on how promising the tatin looked, anything less than perfection would feel like garbage. I was really sad about this one, but I’ll give it another whirl sometime soon. Just goes to show that no matter how many years you’ve been cooking, you’re bound to mess things up once in a while. Or twice in a while. Or five times in a while.

Hmm…. have I not made any bangers lately? Wait… wait… one last one.

Skillet Pasta with Crispy Bits

I adore Carla Lalli Music, and this one pot pasta recipe of hers is so dang good that I bought a subscription to her Substack just so I could have it in writing. Plus, it’s a perfect excuse to bust out the new Le Creuset!

Here’s the overview: cook onions, cook mushrooms, add a roasted red pepper puree, add Better Than Bouillon chicken stock, add pasta. Cook. Add parmesan. Broil. Eat.

This dish is so so good. I made it three times in three weeks. The seasoning is shockingly perfect (I believe in part because of the Better Than Bouillon - don’t stray from it), and the flavor is bold and addictive. It reminds me of all’Assassina but perhaps… better? The tomato paste (oh yeah, there’s tomato paste) and the roasted red peppers make a savory combo that’s augmented by the twin umami vessels of mushrooms and parmesan cheese. Divine.

I love love love this pasta dish. It’s firmly in the rotation. I would make it right now except I’ve already committed to a cabbage-oriented plan for tonight.

But then again… it’s not too late to Instacart some ingredients…

While I contemplate that, be sure to check out Music’s video. I doubt you’ll be able to resist making this dish too. Oh, and FYI, I used buccatini to great effect. I did have to cook it longer than the box called for, but only by about 2-4 minutes each time.

What have you been making lately?