Today I’m not doing anything special because there’s sick people in the house and I’m only barely over my bronchitis. Just some hamburgers tonight. Some fish and chips tomorrow with the cod I have in the freezer.
But I have been planning my Christmas Eve and Christmas meals. This year, it’s cookbook-guided all the way into the weekend, a sort of best-of-the-year, mostly cookbooks I’ve written about here already. I’m going to be using Dishoom exclusively for the 24th, with lamb chops, the chili-crab salad, the house dal, and the really interesting potato-vegetable koftas in a makhani sauce. For the 25th, I’m going to use Ivan Orkin’s The Gaijin Cookbook, with hanger steak in his teriyaki preparation, some kind of sushi prep, and one or two other dishes from the book.
Other best-of books I’ll likely use during the coming week: Andy Baraghani’s The Cook You Want to Be, Nigel Slater’s Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food (I haven’t written about that yet here, but I will soon—it’s pretty much the cookbook I’d take to a desert isle), Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles and Melissa Clark’s Dinner. A bit further out, I do have some cookbooks to put to the test: I’m going to revisit The Frog/Commissary Cookbook—another early stalwart for me that I rarely use any more—and put Sean Brock’s South to the test, a cookbook I thought I’d love but which I bounce off of every time I sit down to contemplate using it.
Also some cookies. Lots of cookies. I’m particularly eager to once again bake some spelt-flour chocolate chip cookies.
I also want to make another dive into Chinese, Southeast Asian and South Asian cuisine next year—I want to keep up what I’ve learned in recent years and keep pressing towards more comfort in composing menus on the fly or in developing some dishes I can return to at will.
A peaceful—and tasty—week to all, whatever lies ahead for you. And hey, how about that World Cup final?
Love Ivan Ramen. Gretchen and I were there late February 2020.
Thank you to our in house chef!