Entire Cucumbers, Costco Psyches, and Fried Cheese
Fried cheese + kale = a damn fine dinner
Before we get started today, I wanted to take a sec to say that I’m working on some changes to this newsletter’s format and content, and I would love to know what you want to see more or less of here. Drop a comment or holler via email to let me know how BWTM can work for YOU. Thank you!
The Lede
I got a chance to talk to the Duke of Cukes, Logan Moffitt, for AllRecipes this week. He was just as charming on the phone as he is on TikTok, and as soon as I got off the call, I had to (contractually!) eat an entire cucumber, which I dressed in a soy-sesame situation and poured over a block of silken tofu.
I’ve been working on a bunch of “We Asked…” articles for Simply Recipes, and several of them came out this week. I love this format because it’s all about tapping into the expert perspective. The most fascinating thing I’ve learned from them so far is that egg farmers recommend using older eggs for boiling and peeling. I always assume that it’s ‘the fresher, the better;’ but in this case, that’s not necessarily true. Fresh or not, I swear by steaming my eggs for peeling purposes.
For Cubby, I wrote a love letter to the Inglesina Fast Table Chair, a very practical tool for little eaters’ meal times, and I enjoyed a very poignant stroll down memory lane as I compiled all of the photos of Hazel in her chair. The Veselka onesie gave me a bunch of feels that ranged from, ‘wow I miss little Hazel‘ to ‘I sure could go for a plate of pierogi right now.’
The Read
There’s a fascinating story in the New York Times about how Costco has changed the way we shop. This quote in particular blew my mind:
Few companies have greater influence over what we eat (or wear, or fuel our cars with, or use for personal hygiene). Costco dominates multiple categories of the food supply — beef, poultry, organic produce, even fine wine from Bordeaux, which it sells more of than any retailer in the world. It is the arbiter of survival for millions of producers, including more than a million cashew farmers in Africa alone. (Costco sells half the world’s cashews.) Its private label, Kirkland, generates more revenue than towering brands like Nike and Coca-Cola.
As a kid, I loved going to Sam’s Club with my dad. We made a meal of the samples, hitting our favorites several times and occasionally even buying the products we were sampling (though I don’t remember ever eating them at home).
As a young adult, I made the switch from Sam’s to Costco, thanks largely to a membership that Dad & Ginger got for me, but the idea of a warehouse store like that, by then, had lost its allure, which I now realize was mostly tied to the promise of doing something fun and a little rule-breaky (Surely no one is meant to consume that many samples!) with my dad. For a time, though, Mr. Ganz and I had a Costco membership (come to think of it, given to us by Dad & Ginger), and I once bought an entire case of peeled chestnuts that spent the next two years reflecting back my own shame from a shelf in our basement pantry. We canceled our membership shortly thereafter.
The Feed
This week, I’ve been enjoying the tiniest chill in the air—a welcome break from the armpit temperatures of the week before. It’s got me craving stew-ier dishes, like this take on palak paneer, which is by no means traditional. I use the same basic formula for all of my palak paneer needs (which are ample), and it never fails me, so here’s a little no-recipe recipe for you:
Dice a pound of paneer, and set aside. Sometimes, I add cubed extra firm tofu or, as in the case above, chickpeas, for extra protein, but you do you. In a Dutch oven over medium heat, heat a spoonful of ghee and then saute onions, fresh ginger, and garlic until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add cumin, cardamom, curry powder, paprika, and chile powder (these are listed in descending order, so more cumin than chile powder, but just play around with the spice ratios until you find what suits you.), and saute for another minute.
Add a large bunch of de-stemmed, chopped greens (kale, spinach, mustard greens, or some mix of the three) and about a cup of water (or stock) to the pan, and cook down, stirring until the whole mix has wilted and turned a darker green, about 5-8 minutes. Use an immersion blender or regular blender to puree the greens mixture until smooth, and then add it back to the pot with 1/2 cup to 1 cup of heavy cream.
If you remove the greens from the pot to blend them, you can wipe out the pot and fry the paneer then. Or, you can fry the paneer in a nonstick skillet and then add it to the sauce at the end. Or, you can skip frying it, but when given the chance to fry cheese, you should almost always take it. Heat the paneer (and any other additions) in the sauce until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Serve with rice and naan. Leftovers make a truly incredible lunch any time in the next 5 days.
Thanks for reading. If you loved it, please consider sharing with a friend, and if not, share it directly with me!
xox
SG