On Master of None, making tortellini, and making television.

Massimo Botturra’s meat tortellini from Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef, finished in sage and brown butter.

Can I take a moment and say how smitten I am with the newest episodes of Master of None? We’re slowly making our way through the season–just one new one a week–and as such I feel like we’re SO behind because the various pop culture blogs I follow have already moved on to a bunch of other shows, like The Handmaid’s Tale and GLOW. (Both are really good, and I’ll be writing about the former in this space relatively soon.) Such is the internet in the age of Peak TV, but I still prefer savoring each episode on its own especially since it’s not clear if we’ll see another season of the show, much less one anytime soon. And given the ambition Aziz Ansari and his team had with this season, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be incessantly asked when the next batch of episodes would be coming because so many people burned through the current set so quickly.

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Simple and fast: spicy chicken thighs brushed with honey and apple cider vinegar.

Spicy Broiled Chicken Brushed with Honey and Apple Cider Vinegar

While usually I’m really, really on top of my meal-planning game, there have been a few errant days where not only do I fail to think of a dish before we go to the store, but I’ll realize the day that I need to cook that I have zero ideas in mind. When this happened a few months ago I started Googling to see what I could whip up with what we had in our pantry. (Protip: have a well-stocked pantry for such emergencies as these.) Pretty quickly I stumbled on a Cooking Light recipe for spicy broiled chicken thighs that looked really good and extremely easy to make, so I bookmarked it and made it that night, using onion powder for garlic powder as we had plenty of the former and none of the latter. (I’ve since rectified this, naturally.)

Sabor de soledad, runny fritatta edition.

Spring Onion Frittata on Toast

Do you have those recipes where you have them flagged for seemingly ever but never bother to make them? On my list of those was a spring onion frittata from Franny’s meant to serve over toast. The primary reason why I held off on this, I think, was poor timing–whenever I would happen to flip through the book looking for meal ideas spring onions would never be in season, and while the recipe claims you can use scallions in their place, it didn’t feel like the same sort of recipe at all. Fortunately, Michael made a stop at the Teet on his way home from the airport two weeks ago to get some groceries for dinner that night, and was very excited to show me that spring onions were finally back in season. Finally remembering this recipe at the appropriate time, I bought another bunch the following weekend because by hell or high water, I was making this dish, goddamnit. I even made a special trip to Dawson’s by my office the day I planned to make it to get some good bread and actually make toast to serve with this.

Wild mushrooms with an egg yolk from French Country Cooking.

Wild mushrooms with egg yolk.

[Editor’s note: to echo a phrase from very sage person Caitlin at Fit & Feminist, it’s very weird blogging about food right now, but self-care is important in order to not lose one’s mind. If you’re as horrified by the actions taken by the current administration this past weekend as I am, please consider donating to the ACLU or the International Refugee Assistance Project if you can to help those who are affected.]

Deconstructed dishes are not the kinds of recipes you expect to find in a cookbook focused on country cooking until you consider that deconstructions almost work best in the country, given that you’re able to find fresh produce and the like.

The idea of deconstruction as a technique both intrigues and infuriates me; on one hand, it’s fun to play with the idea of, say, deconstructing a cheesecake and then bringing it all back together in a different way which I did a couple of years ago…and then there’s things like Ina Garten’s deconstructed lobster roll from one of her traveling shows in which she presents her husband a cooked whole lobster, some rolls, and some dip on a platter and invites him to “dig in!”

Chestnut-ricotta dumplings because they are easier to eat than roasting nuts on an open fire.

Chestnut-ricotta dumplings with butter and sage

A week before Christmas we had spent a quiet (and slushy) afternoon at Dinosaur Barbecue, and then like we always do we walked over to Whole Foods in order to get some food to make for a relatively light dinner given that we had just eaten some wings and sliders. I’m not sure what came over me while we were shopping, but I saw that they had bags of fresh chestnuts and I decided then and there I’d make something with them for Christmas dinner. (I partially blame the addition of the Silver Spoon’s Tuscany cookbook for this inclination.) After doing a little research I decided that I could fold in chopped up chestnuts into my favorite ricotta dumpling recipe, and the only question remained was how to cook them.

Burrata with salsa verde and weeds as found in Enrique Olvera’s Mexico From the Inside Out.

Burrata with salsa verde and weeds

With all of the traveling we’ve been doing in the last few weeks (two weekends ago we were in Philadelphia, and then this past weekend we were in Chicago), opportunities to cook fun stuff at home have not come as readily as they normally do for us. Since I had a half-day on Friday and could work from home for it, we decided that it would be the perfect day to make dinner at home rather than go out as is our usual wont and so I went about looking for something special to make. My cookbook flipping took me to Mexico From the Inside Out, and while I came up with a fun menu for that evening, what initially drew me in was a dish I had to make for myself for a decadent lunch: burrata with salsa verde and “weeds.” (More on that in a bit.) As soon as I hit the official office closing time I shut my laptop and headed out to take the commuter boat over the harbor to hit up both Whole Foods and a local Mexican grocery store called Cinco de Mayo to get the necessary supplies. The latter was perfect for getting tomatillos and blue corn tortillas and limes in bulk, while the latter had my burrata and a few other things I needed (like a ludicrous amount of cereal to bring to work).

Tomato salad with chili, black pepper, and cardamom from Madcapra’s via Cherry Bombe issue no. 7.

Tomato Salad with Chili, Black Pepper, and Cardamom

Recently The Kitchen Witch posted about how she likes to seduce late spring/early summer tomatoes by making punchy vinaigrettes, and her Kalamata olive one would be pretty fabulous if I liked olives more. But it reminded me of a recipe I had earmarked in the most recent issue of Cherry Bombe magazine in which you make a spicy oil to drizzle over tomatoes along with some lemon juice, cilantro, and sesame seeds and so a couple of weekends ago I decided I had to make it in the name of trying something that was new to me.