July 2021 – Cook Instead

Soba Noodles with Miso Butter, Chicken, and Cabbage

This recipe came out of a desire to cook something quick and tasty, and also use up all of my sad fridge vegetables (TM). We’ve been getting Oddbox, a service that sends surplus or weirdly shaped vegetables for cheap, which is great, but then we have to figure out what to do with everything.

The heat wave finally broke this weekend, which means I finally felt like cooking again for the first time in a long time. I had wanted to make a kind of cold peanut noodle soba edamame chicken bowl thing when it was hot, but it was literally too hot to even think about turning on the stove. We boiled water once for pasta and as soon as it was done we had to fill the pot with cold water to stop it heating up the entire kitchen.

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like cold soba noodles with a sweetish peanut sauce is both delicious and extremely obvious, by this point. I never tend to worry too much about food trends (“Quiche is so 80’s!”? whatever, Gladys, quiche is delicious.) But you do tend to get bored.

So: Miso.

Tiramisu

This week it’s a billion degrees in the UK, but luckily this is a recipe that requires almost nothing from you. This is truly a dessert for people who don’t cook – it requires no heat, and nary an egg gets cracked. If you can whip cream and dunk cookies, you can make tiramisu.

It’s also my grandpa’s favorite (along with pecan pie.) My grandpa is a man who wants at all times to be driving a gigantic 50’s-era Cadillac, chewing on an expensive cigar, on his way to a swingin’ jazz gig, or maybe the theater. The three-martini lunch was invented for this man, so it makes sense that the Grown Uppest dessert is his favorite one.

I used to hate it as a kid, and I suspect I’m not alone. It looks like a big sweet cream cake (and it is), but it’s got all of these grown-up flavors: coffee and booze and NON-sweet chocolate? What the heck is the point of non-sweet chocolate?

Well, once you grow up and get indoctrinated into the cult of enjoying booze and coffee, you find out.

Poached Peaches

Dear Everyone,

As short and sweet as the last few posts have been, this one is even shorter and sweeter, because my big fancy new project launches on Wednesday and I’ve been immersing myself in the world of the old and the weird. Come along, if you’re so inclined!

Luckily for you, you’re getting a threefer this week, because you can make three (or more!) delicious things from one simple recipe: Nigella Lawson’s Poached Peaches.

A good peach in the summertime is a thing of pure beauty – it’s basically sunshine in the palm of your hand.

A bad peach sucks. We’ve all had them.

In AP Psych we covered a study on addiction: pigeons are trained to push a lever and get a treat, but if the lever keeps giving them treats they’ll eventually get bored and stop, so the only way to get the pigeons to consistently keep pushing said lever is to only give treats at random intervals. (See also: push notifications, slot machines.)

This is how nature gets us to keep eating peaches – in the hope that between all the overripe and underripe, the sour and the mealy, we’ll get that one perfect sunshiney peach. Maybe this time, big money big money, momma needs a new pair of shoes.

Well, worry no more, my dear friends. Nigella’s cracked it. You can muscle even the hardest, weirdest peaches into a state of delectability through the simple process of poaching them in a simple sugar syrup. It is the Peach Fixer.