5 Things for Fall
Recommendations for an in-between time
Small cross-posting promo: I’m having a ceramics flash sale on Instagram stories tomorrow at 1 PM EST—I’ll have lots of mugs, one-offs, seconds, and never-again pieces. Check it out if u like! <3
Happy Monday from my kitchen table! It is squarely fall in New York, which is good because I am about to leave and need to soak up the city’s best season while I can. I’m in the throes of packing for my next residency in Germany, wondering what is an appropriate number of spice jars to bring on a transatlantic flight, and cleaning out all the weird stuff from my fridge, including a jar of Cognac cherries Brette gave me for the holidays in 2017. I’ve always preferred fall cleaning to spring cleaning—I prepare to hunker down, I clear out the space where I’ll swaddle myself all winter, paring down and fortifying. I’ve got a pot of lamb stock on the stove (more on that soon), and some recommendations to send your way. See you next week.
xoxo
marian
I’m in my pork chop era
Having entered the world of food media as a vegetarian, I have a lot of blind spots, and pork chops are one of them. I’m not sure I’ve ever cooked one before this month? They always seemed luxurious but casual, the thinking man’s (or busy man’s?) chicken thigh. I finally broke the seal this month and am a convert, going to start following clio’s lead and keep them in the freezer. I made this recipe from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee (conveniently excerpted in the Times, but I highly recommend buying the book), and loved it—high reward for very little time or effort. Though you should make sure you cook the sauce down enough:it took us longer than the recipe dictated, and you don’t want a watery gravy.
Do you have a favorite pork chop recipe and if so will you share it in the comments below?????
Empirical Spirits Can 02
A funny story, and I hope I don’t get in trouble for telling it: I did a bit of copywriting for Empirical a few years ago, and never got to try this drink even though I was trying to write about it—it’s a difficult thing to describe, in part because it’s made by a bunch of ex-noma fermentation guys who don’t want to be tied down by words like “canned cocktail.” One of the ingredients is “walnut wood.” Very esoteric! But I wish I had gotten access to a sip because I finally tried it at a party this month and my god this stuff is good, it tastes like rolling around in a vat of cherries in a pine forest. Plus, my local wine shop stocks it now, so I think it’s less difficult to find than it once was.
“D Day”, Rachel Khong
I’ve been a fan of Rachel’s writing since she was an editor (and edited me!) at Lucky Peach. She recently published a short story in Guernica about two best friends preparing for a hilariously envisioned end of the world: God sent everyone a phone notification that in a few weeks, they would all devolve into animals; each person could use their remaining sentient time to choose a new species. The story wryly imagines how our mundane modern desires might manifest into a pre-rapture month of escape rooms and parties with dick-shaped ice luges, but what has stuck with me is this line, from a scene in a movie theater:
In the darkened theater, Ruby produced the friends’ preferred condiments from her purse: furikake, sea salt, a double-bagged baby-food jar of melted real butter.
The perfect detail: a shared tradition of carefully ferrying melted butter into a movie, not one but two ziplocs, a level of preparation that will prove useless by the end of the story.
Burlap & Barrel Urfa Chili + Black Lime
I have been shopping too much over the past month—call it a coping mechanism, call it rebirth through consumption. My haul has included these spices, from Burlap & Barrell, and I’ve been really into using them together. Last night, at a dinner party, I sprinkled them over a little bowl of toum that we were using as an ad-hoc dip for some chips. They’re a happy pair, especially atop fatty soft things: the lime is puckery, the chili sticky-smoky. Would also be great over ricotta, hummus, roast chicken. I highly recommend adding them to your rotation.
Who will buy me this cat planter?
Surely one of you can just sell some crypto?
My husband makes the Kenji pork schnitzel with a light salad and it’s a perfect meal! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/dining/schnitzel.html