Marcella Hazan would like to share something with you...
From beyond the grave!!!
It's October, this is my tres spooky subject line
I didn't take any cooking process pictures this week, so this is just a picture I took while cooking that I liked.
As you might have guessed from the fact that I write and send you this newsletter, I read an awful lot of recipes. I read food blogs from all over, but the vast majority of them share two odd deeply frustrating characteristics:
People claim that their recipes take 30 minutes to make. Almost no recipe takes 30 minutes to make. I'm sorry, it's just not possible unless you are making a burrito, and even then... risky.
Nobody ever talks about washing their produce (or cutting things, but that's ANOTHER STORY)
I bought Noah Marcella Hazan's incredible tome Classics of Italian Cooking for his birthday, and when we were cooking from it recently, I saw instructions that were so new to me: instructions on how to wash zucchini.
"But!" you exclaim. "I don't need instructions for how to wash zucchini! My zucchini are clean enough!"
They probably are clean enough—I don't bring this up because I have some fear of dying via a speck of dirt on zucchini (although actually... I kind of am) but because the physical sensation of an unexpected gritty bit in a dish that should have no grit whatsoever is... not nice.
The passion for 30 minute meals means that all sort of necessary but arguably auxiliary tasks like washing stuff, peeling stuff, cutting stuff, whatever, gets elided into the instructions, so you will see something that calls for "3 peeled diced carrots" and also says "make it in 30 minutes! weeknight dinner soooo fast!!!" But a diced carrot is not an ingredient! A carrot is an ingredient, but dicing it is a part of the recipe! The moral of the story is: anybody who says a recipe only takes 30 minutes either has the knife skills of a professional chef, is buying pre-cut produce, or is lying. I'll let you decide which.
On to the washing!
Marcella says that you should soak your zucchini for 30 minutes. That's it! So simple! And yet, and yet I have never seen a recipe that calls for soaking zucchini! I noticed the huge pile of dirt at the bottom of the bowl, and also how incredibly clean feeling my zuchs were, and since then I have been soaking more vegetables to clean them. Sometimes the old ways are actually better. I mean, most of the time... they are not, in fact lots of old ways are really really bad. But soaking the veg works, and it is much less aggravating than my usual method: angrily sticking cilantro in the sink and hoping for the best.
It's cleaner, just believe me.
Cilantro in New York is never clean. I do not know why but it is probably the dirtiest vegetable in this city. It always has actual dirt covered roots attached, and it's nasty. (Is cilantro like this in other cities? I don't remember it being so dirt-covered in portland) Today I soaked my cilantro in a bowl of cold water for 20 to 30 minutes (I actually changed the water a few times) while I was doing other dinner prep stuff, and it is way cleaner, and much less aggravating than usual. Anyway, that brief blissful moment inspired me to write this little email to you. I'm just a little bird here to say... try soaking your veg today! It won't make your cooking go any faster, but if you detest things like washing potatoes: try soaking them instead!
Anyway, I don't have a recipe for you this week, sorry, life has been incredibly hectic, and you know, kinda shitty! I have a single recommendation: soak your veggies! Don't wash! Just soak! (Or soak then wash, I don't care). If it's good enough for Marcella, it's good enough for all of us.
Okay do you want another recommendation? I guess I can do that: if you aren't putting salt into the liquid when you blanche vegetables, you should be. Just like pasta water should be (heavily) salted, blanching liquid should also be salted, albeit not as much. It makes your vegtables much perkier and tastier.
What, you'd like a third recommendation? I'm reading the YA novel I'll give you the sun currently for class, and I am really enjoying it. The way that Jandy Nelson uses language is really distinct, and vibrant, and really gives you a sense of the characters of these two teens. The 13 year old boy is obsessed with being a revolutionary and that is just hilarious to me.
Also, I completely cracked this weekend and made not one but TWO savory meal prep breakfasts (kill me), one of them was like, basically a crunchwrap filled with eggs and cheese??? Idk, if this is a recipe that interests you I can share it, just let me know. They are delightfully hand-holdable. Please watch this video on how to make a crunchwrap supreme, it's one of the funniest things I've seen in ages.
Love you, bye!