Weekly Recap - February 10th

Kitchen people tend to divide themselves into bakers and non-bakers. The non-bakers often express a healthy skepticism towards all things pastry: scales, adherence to strict rules, the light coating of suspicious white powders that tends to coat well...everything following a particularly intense baking day. But I’ve never bought into that split. Pastry satisfies my love of precision and fascination with the science and chemistry that underpin the way we eat. Everything else? Well, that lets me play, experiment, make mistakes, and explore a wide range of tastes and textures.

Sometimes you get to lean into both - and last week’s menu did just that. Clients enjoyed homemade English muffin breakfast sandwiches (what a fun little bread that was - I used Sally's Baking Addiction's recipe and am dying to put them on the menu again to experiment with the recipe a bit); coffee crumb cake (again, Sally to the rescue - her recipes never fail); sweet potato muffins and mini banana muffins. And two weeks ago I made Matt Adlard's tangzhong cinnamon buns and can I just say - I need to make these more. They are dangerously good - I may have eaten two fat ones in one sitting, cannot confirm or deny.

And aside all this carby goodness were some bangers: a heaping pile of mushrooms cooked down with red wine and aromatics to become a rich vegetarian bourguignon, served with fried polenta wedges. The polenta was made with fresh corn - even though the season has long since passed us, I can literally never resist grabbing ears whenever I see them, and the greengrocer had some nice looking ones, so - in they went. The focaccia, which had copious amounts of cheese folded inside, was meant to be eaten alongside a roasted pepper and tomato soup, which had just a touch of Calabrian chili peppers stirred in for a mild kick.

And as for this week, we’re going international, starting with a Mexican-inspired chicken and rice bowl with salsa, guac, and all the toppings. Add fresh corn tortillas from Tacos Luis in Jerusalem (truly worth it) and a jar of salsa macha for smoky heat and crunch. Then there’s my take on bun cha – Vietnam’s iconic meatball dish. I’m using ground chicken, serving it over rice noodles with pickled carrot and plenty of nuoc cham, that funky-sweet sauce that makes everything better.

I’m also switching up pasta this week. Instead of reheated noodles, you’ll get a generous container of cherry tomato vodka sauce, dried pasta, a ready-to-dress salad, and lots of cheese. Boil, toss, eat. Fresh pasta, as it should be. The final main is a vegetarian chili spooned over slow-roasted sweet potatoes — hearty, protein-packed, and deeply comforting.

For breakfast, we're going Tex-Mex with breakfast burritos - stuffed with potatoes, cheese, roasted red peppers, and scrambled eggs (thaw overnight, warm in the oven), plus sweet potato pancakes for slower mornings. And add-ons include some of the classics - chile crisp, chocolate chip cookies, and a brussels sprout salad - while adding on salsa macha, the Mexican answer to chile crisp that I can't get enough of.