Good morning! Today we have for you:
Warmth and generosity
There are so many reasons to love a recipe beyond the simple fact that, in the best cases, you end up with something delicious. A recipe can teach you something new. It can boost your confidence, maybe make you feel curious and resourceful. But my favorite thing about a recipe is that it connects you to the person who created it. Someone who has written a recipe has taken the time and energy to make you something (and, in the case of New York Times Cooking recipe developers, has tested that something over and over again). That’s an act of generosity that springs from passion and necessity. That cook is excited to tell you about an ingredient, or moved to share this dish with you. You’re looped into conversations, memories, insights. You’re invited in. With generosity and connection in mind, I invite you to take a moment to read Yewande Komolafe’s latest column, about how she found her way back to food and cooking after a severe health crisis. Yewande’s excellence as a writer and recipe developer are not new, and neither are the joy and wisdom she shares with her readers. Reading her column, I feel more fully in tune with the brilliant human she is, and moved to better connect with my friends and family. I think her new brown butter cornmeal cake — adapted from the chef Kelly Mencin of Radio Bakery in Brooklyn — is just the thing to share with my neighbors, for no reason other than that they’re great neighbors. And Yewande’s harissa shrimp with greens and feta will be a bright dinner on a cold day, warming and sustaining. Featured Recipe Harissa Shrimp With Greens and FetaMore Yewande magicPan-seared chicken with harissa, dates and citrus: This skillet chicken dinner is essentially a checklist of everything I want to eat right now. Spicy harissa and tangy citrus to cut through the winter cold; fudgy dates for sweetness; bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for schmaltzy protein; sour lime and yogurt to finish. Although the dish comes together in Thursday-night time (40 minutes), I’m going to save it for Friday date night at home. Roasted vegetables with creamy coconut dressing: I’m always looking for interesting things to do with handy-dandy roasted vegetables, and this is one of my favorite ways to gussy up those winter roots. This recipe is a good candidate for doubling with our new scaling feature, as leftovers are delicious at room temperature (read: as lunch) and could be piled on top of cooked grains for extra oomph. Vegetable maafé: Another recipe whose ingredient list is right up my alley. A stew with serious umami from tomato paste, peanut butter and a dash of dawadawa (or fish sauce)? Yes, please. Yewande calls for plantains, carrots and butternut squash in this hearty stew, though she notes that you can use any number of vegetables: potatoes, pumpkin, kabocha or any type of squash, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes or a mix of mushrooms. Kosua ne meko (eggs with pepper relish): This is the recipe that introduced me to Scotch bonnet peppers — they’re spicy, yes, but with a floral roundness that plays nicely with other flavors. (And when they’re pierced and dropped into a soup or stew, as in the maafé above, they add a wonderful kiss of heat.) The gingery, garlicky, red-oniony tomato relish you make here with however much Scotch bonnet you like — a quarter to a whole pepper; I usually do half — is so bright and so good. And if your stuffed eggs don’t want to stay stuffed, know that you can spoon the relish on top of halved boiled eggs to equally delicious effect. Strawberry jam bars with cardamom: I can’t resist a buttery jam bar, and these — with that musky, almost minty kick of cardamom — are truly irresistible. And if you, like me, cannot pass on picking up pretty jars of jam from specialty stores or on trips abroad, you might also have fun playing mix-and-match with the jam and nut elements here. I’m thinking that the doce de abóbora (sweet pumpkin jam) I brought back from Portugal, along with some almonds and the cardamom, might give these bars a wintry twist. Let’s find out. And before you goOne more from Yewande: light soup with mushrooms, the recipe that she was most excited to make when she returned to her kitchen. To help her develop a meatless version, Yewande turned to Afia Amoako, an Asante food enthusiast in Toronto who writes about Ghanaian cuisine on her blog, “Eat With Afia.” Yewande wrote that, like Amoako, she found herself drawn to the brothy, savory soup in times of illness. “As my recovery continues to evolve, so does my relationship to light soup,” she wrote. “What started as a way back into the kitchen is now part of my repertoire — not quite a remedy, but a necessary balm.”
Thanks for reading!
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