A different kind of year-end list
Recommendations to carry you through these last strange weeks
Hello and welcome to the last Mess Hall of the year! I’m taking next week off to go full vacation mode in Amsterdam and Berlin, and will be back in January with our next installment of Ask Mess Hall. Be sure to send your cooking questions through this sweet little Google form.
Also, annual subscriptions are discounted to $30/year until the last sun sets on 2022. This is the price of, like, four oat matcha lattes, or half of a bespoke mug. Paid subscriptions help keep this newsletter afloat, and they also get you bonus essays, exclusive recipes, and other bits and bobs each month.
End of year lists have always given me the itch. I love reading them but hate stopping in my tracks like was I supposed to be tallying all the important things in my life and/or culture for the last 12 months? So I won’t be offering you one here! What I DO want to send you out with is a list of things that might make your December brighter, regardless of your holiday plans. Consider it a grab bag of joyous loosies.
As for me I am here in Germany until Christmas Eve, when I will say goodbye to Schöppingen after a shockingly fruitful two months and head to Amsterdam for Christmas. Until then I’ll be writing, working, reading The House of Mirth, and cooking through the last of my groceries: I’m planning a hodgepodge pesto pasta salad and a potato-pea curry. No idea what we’ll be cooking for the holidays, but last weekend in Berlin we cooked a whole damn goose after spending an entire day sightseeing and drinking glüh-gin at Christmas markets, so I’m feeling appropriately festive.
Herewith, one last list for 2022. Take care and thank you all for reading this year <3
My Favorite Holiday Mains
+ Salt-Baked Herbed Salmon from Genius Recipes: This is THE holiday centerpiece for me, and has become family favorite of the Bulls. This recipe feeds a lot of people and still gives you some of the best-ever leftovers: luscious, perfectly-cooked salmon plus a pickled-shallot vinaigrette-type thing, which you can eat in a salad or sandwich or over rice for days. (This makes it an excellent option for New Years Eve). It’s super festive, impressive, and easy: you just mix up a little dressing, pat herbs and fennel into a side of salmon, and bake it over rock salt.
+ Two Feta-Brined Chickens: My preference for a holiday bird is always two chickens over anything else. This recipe is a bit high-maintenance: you’ve got to marinate the chickens in ziploc bags full of feta blended with water (CHEESE WATER, as a friend once called it); and basting them in the hot oven can be tricky. But this is the highest reward you can get from a roast chicken, and the only thing better than one roast chicken is two.
+ Braised short ribs, in general: Christmas 2020 was just me and Jackson at my apartment, which meant an aggressively relaxed day and total menu control for me. I made these braised short ribs over creamy polenta and felt such an intense elation at eating exactly what I wanted in my own home on Christmas that I allowed Jackson one (1) indoor cigarette. I’ve already written about my deep and abiding love for braised short ribs, so I won’t get into it here. On top of Lara Lee’s tamarind version, which has become my favorite, I also strongly recommend Deb’s French Onion Soup short ribs, though I like keeping the bones in and serving it as a braise instead of a soup. If you’ve got a favorite short rib recipe I demand you post it in the comments.
I am also desperate to throw a little party when I get home so that I can make Melissa Clark’s Figs and Pigs in a Blanket and Kendra Vaculin’s Rosemary-Sizzled Salami, Dates, and Pecans. Oh wait—the latter just reminded me of RENEE ERICKSON’S SAUTEED DATES which you absolutely must know about. I’m not usually a big “party snack gal” but these recipes have my German countryside isolated ass just DYING to put together a little tray of nibbles for the girlies!!
Things to Read on the Train/Bus/Plane/Couch
+ Jaya Saxena, In Defense of Recipes: Yes. yes….YESSSS!!!! You know this is my shit! I don’t only love this essay from Jaya, about why recipes are crucial for home cooks, because it quotes me; I love it because it expands on one of my favorite topics, the idea that the recipe is a mutable living essential TEXT that can teach us so much more than just “how to cook a goose”. Recipes don’t constrain us, they open up entire new worlds of knowledge! (If you, too, are obsessed with this idea, I highly recommend reading this book.)
+ I also loved this essay from Cammie Kim Lin for Stained Page News on the difference between “recipes that instruct” and “recipes that teach.” It made me eager to order her new book, (Serious) New Cook:
+ Hanif Abdurraqib on Osa Atoe’s collection of punk zines for 4Columns: I know Osa from her incredibly detailed, always astounding ceramic work—look at this BUTTER DISH!—and it’s been quite cool to discover that she’s also a writer who long published a fanzine about the Black punk experience called Shotgun Seamstress, which has now been collected into a book. I find that I over-use the word thoughtful, but it’s a word that always comes up for me with Hanif’s writing: work that makes it clear the author knows that reverence and criticism both require time, and has allowed their subject ample mental space before putting words to the page.
If you need music instead of reading material, I’ve been spending a lot of time with the new Sudan Archives and Jenny Hval records: the former is perfect walking-around music, or sitting on the bus while entering a big city music, or cooking dinner alone music; the latter is the only music with words I can currently listen to while working.
A Few Great Cookbooks For Last-Minute Gifts:
The Miracle of Salt, Naomi Duguid: Part reference book, part coffee table book, part cookbook (especially if your mom has always wanted to make her own salt cod), great photos to boot !!
Delectable, Claudia Fleming: THEE baking book of the year!!
California Soul, Tanya Holland: Beautiful, immediately appealing from page one, effortlessly interwoven with history, perfect for anyone who dreams of not living in a cold place.
Turkey and the Wolf, Mason Hereford with JJ Goode: The thinking man’s stoner cookbook, so much fun, deceptively accessible. I still need to make those lamb necks.
The Woks of Life, Bill, Judy, Sarah, & Kaitlin Leung: I’ve always adored (and relied on) this family-run blog, and I admire + appreciate the ease with which the Leungs have translated The Woks of Life into a book that’s as cookable as it is sweet and personal.
The Breakfast Book, Marion Cunningham: This book makes the perfect gift—for hosts, random family members, anyone whose guest bed you might one day stay in, your partner, your cousin about to graduate from college. A classic if there ever was one.
What a great list! Last night we debated how to handle the salmon dish for Christmas but this morning I finished the article and am scheming how to snare a few more gifts. This is probably how to stoke the fires of inflation but ... it’s Christmas! Happy Holidays to you and your family.