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I spent an intense couple of weeks in Southern California, cooking a popup at Tomat (previous post) and then doing a week-long residency at The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano. The EC is a certified organic and regenerative 30-acre farm with a café, bakery, market, and summer camp—in addition to a geodesic dome for yoga classes, film screenings, and concerts—and a couple of outdoor kitchens for events. It’s a real community hub that brings many benefits to its neighbors beyond the perfect produce. I visited back in the fall, and really connected with the place and its founder, Evan Marks.

When I was a painter, residencies were one of my favorite parts of that career: space and time to work unburdened by the concerns of normal life, with room and board provided, almost always somewhere beautiful. Space and time are the greatest luxuries, and it’s hard to overstate the feeling of validation for one’s work that comes from an invitation to focus entirely on creativity for a week or longer. The prospect of doing a residency with a kitchen for a studio and a veritable cornucopia of ingredients to play with had me salivating.

The Ecology Center’s Hearth series brings a different chef to the farm each month to explore, settle in to the pace of the farm, meet the people, and above all taste what’s happening in the fields. Then the mission becomes creating a multi-course meal for a maximum of 36 guests that captures the essence of the time and place—and the personality of the cook. The meal follows a specific trajectory: two small welcome dishes and an accompanying drink near the entrance, followed by four plated courses in their purpose-built pavilion out in the middle of the farm, and finally dessert by the fire pit back in the center of the “village.” Each of the four plated courses is supposed to draw inspiration and ingredients from one of the four quadrants of the farm: market garden, milpa, cover crops & legumes, and fruit.

Here’s the pavilion the morning of the event. You can see the Peace Dome in the background, and some of the painted arches of their trademark rainbow. Three arms of the structure are for guests; the fourth is a kitchen.

For the welcome bites, we used two of the ferments that I brought with me from home (and both of which also featured in the Tomat menu). I made a beurre monté with my green gochujang, and we spooned that onto grilled oysters. This recipe is a keeper, and it’s barely a recipe: grill oysters cup-side down until they open, pop the top shell, then spoon on a 50/50 mixture of hot sauce and melted butter. You’re welcome! The second appetizer was a miso soup made from my 10-year peaso and a dashi I simmered using yellowtail heads and bones that chef Aaron had smoked a few days earlier plus some good-quality kombu.

Madison welcomed everyone and gave them an introduction to the farm and what I had been up to, then led everyone to the pavilion for the main meal. The first course was the market garden, shown in the photo up top. As I had at Tomat, I made a sort of ricotta using fig sap and lemon juice to curdle the milk, then blended that with some yogurt to make a smooth spread. A schmear of that anchored an array of the stellar produce coming out of the fields, with each vegetable cooked in a different way to add a variety of nuances to the dish. Rather than drone on and on, here’s a quick list:

• Summer squash simply tossed in a little olive oil and salt and grilled

• Baby white turnips tossed in oil & salt and roasted hard in the pizza oven

• Fennel browned hard and then braised in the ricotta whey

• Peapods blanched in lightly salted water

• Carrots brined overnight and then smoke-roasted on a bed of dried herbs & herb stems

• Scallions fermented in whey for 3 days

• Beets fermented in brine, then nixtamalized in a 1% lye solution, then cooked rescoldo-style overnight in the embers of my fire pit, then marinated overnight in a blackberry chamoy sauce

• Purple radishes cooked alongside the beets in the fire pit embers and then fermented overnight in the beet brine, to which I had added some koji

Spooned over the top you can see some of my trademark burnt fig leaf vinaigrette, made by blending charred leaves with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, a little honey, and the strained solids from the peaso soup. Everything shone pretty brightly, but those beets were one of the best things I’ve made in some time.

Next up was the fruit quadrant. They get incredible yellowtail, so after Aaron butchered it we served it three ways: raw belly, shio koji-cured and smoked loin, and then simply grilled. The first two cuts we plated with just a bit of good oil and salt, and the grilled portion sat atop this aguachile I made that I’m also pretty proud of. It was unorthodox, but it really worked—and the members of the crew who know whereof they speak all gave it a thumbs up.

I made some butter for the dessert, so naturally I had buttermilk from that. I also had the brine from fermenting Fresno chiles for my famous chile oil that we used the previous evening on one of the Peace Pizza offerings. And when Angel, one of the cooks who helped me, roasted a pile of sweet peppers I made sure he saved the juice when he peeled and seeded them. Those three ingredients, combined at 100% of their total yields, made the base for this aguachile. To that I added a bunch of passionfruit, since they were beginning to ripen, a little honey to balance the acidity, and salt to make it all pop.

The garnishes included thinly sliced kumquats and Nardello peppers, plus grapes that I fermented in brine for three days and blueberries that I pickled with lemon juice, honey, and a bit of salt. The result had a ton of complexity, ample heat, and flattered the fish really nicely.

After that we moved on to the legume and cover crop portion of the meal. I kept this one super simple, because (as I said when I introduced the dish) “Beans are glorious and we should all eat more of them.” I stewed a big pot of their Southern Red (I think I got the name right) beans after soaking them in brine for 48 hours in a few simple aromatics and a bunch of my white bean miso. We charred a pile of Romano, yellow wax, and green beans over the fire and draped them over the top with bronze fennel fronds and flowers. Simple can be profound when you’re working with perfect produce.

The last savory course was the milpa quadrant. For this we stuffed the roasted peppers with a polenta made from their incredible red flint corn that I cooked with my milpa miso, some local goat cheese, and a test batch of a vegan cheese I made using the solids from their regular almond milk production. We heated the stuffed peppers up in the smoker, then Irving grated aged Monterey Jack over them and we plated them on a schmear of charred eggplant (also in my fire pit) purée surrounded by a simple sauce made from their passata seasoned with fresh basil and some good oil. We topped each one with a tempura squash blossom and some torn basil.

Madison ushered everyone back to the fires near the dome for dessert. I had made a big batch of herbal sun tea that day, using verbena, several kinds of mint, and orange flowers and leaves, and after straining it we sweetened it with a bit of honey. The dessert was some of their excellent soft serve in jars with fermented plum-honey syrup, fresh berries, and sandwich cookies that Veronica and I made (and which Irving heroically stepped in to bake and assemble) made from breadcrumbs with rosemary and lavender and filled with a mixture of powdered sugar and butter that I made after infusing the cream with almond and orange leaves and some verbena.

Many, many thanks to Evan and Jonathan for inviting me, and special gratitude to Aaron, Veronica, Irving, Angel, and Ethan for helping me make this meal, and to everyone else in the café, bakery, and office (especially Madison and LJ) for all their help, kindness, and generosity. They all made my week an incredibly fulfilling one, an experience I hope to repeat soon—because this meal wasn’t all that we worked on together.

Here’s a quick video I shot during the meal:

Also, give Matt Reamer a follow. He did a great job with the photos, just a few of which I used in this post.

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I first ate at Tomat last October, when I was out in LA cooking for Fun House. The meal made an impression, as did Natalie & Harry the owners. They ferment all of the things, as I do, and they share my conviction that food should be constructed entirely from scratch using unimpeachably excellent products, and that byproducts need to be used in imaginative ways to create new building blocks and condiments. Above all, the flavors cohered beautifully, with all the depth and detail that I look for—and there’s not a shred of pretentiousness present anywhere on the premises.

Harry and I began talking about a collaboration a while back, and since I was coming out to do the residency at the Ecology Center we scheduled it for the weekend before that. The idea was that we’d take their regular menu and modify it based on some ferments that I brought from home and some whims that seized our imaginations. We ran it down on the Tuesday morning, sketching out all the changes, and then met at the Santa Monica market the following morning to buy a bunch of gleamingly fresh produce.

Thursday and Friday I showed up and prepped, assisted by their wonderful team, making a couple of moles, a special XO sauce, a big batch of paratha-scallion pancake hybrids, a pot of ricotta, and a few other things. Saturday it all came together in the special one-time menu. I shot some phone pictures at the pass, but I missed a bunch of dishes. It’s not easy to fully document the output of a restaurant kitchen when you’re also cooking in that kitchen.

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You can find my series about laminated flatbreads at the following links:

• Scallion pancakes

• Paratha

• Msemen

This was Harry’s smoked salmon terrine with a dashi gelée (made from a dashi he whipped up using local kombu and a fish carcass that had been hanging over the fire for a week or so). He added some pickled grapes and amazing rye-fennel short crust crackers that were modified versions of their galette crust.

This is the duck dish, with gorgeous grilled-smoked breast sitting atop schmears of two moles: theirs and mine. I made mine with the 3-year milpa miso I brought (nixtamalized sweet corn koji, kabocha squash & its seeds, tarbais beans) plus tomatillos, scallions, and meyer lemons that I charred in their pizza oven, sesame seeds, dried apple skins, copious spices, guajillo and ancho chiles, and avocado honey.

This made for a fun contrast, and for what it’s worth 100% of the guests who ventured a guess correctly identified which was which. I’m not sure what that says about me except that sour bitterness appears to be my brand. Harry used the solids left after straining my mole to flavor the whipped butter they served with their trademark (and utterly incredible) barbari bread.

Next up, the surf & turf. Beautiful dry-aged tuna and beef—tuna brushed with beef fat, beef brushed with anchovy garum—and four condiments: my 10-year green peaso, my green gochujang, a combination of two things that I can’t remember, and hot English mustard. I’ll be writing about the gochujang later. My claim to fame with the peaso is that I made and named it before the Noma book came out. It’s honestly extraordinary how fresh and bright it still tastes in its tenth year.

Here’s Harry’s jeweled rice topped with a dollop of the XO sauce I made from their pantry & fridge: pancetta, dried whelks, tons of alliums including charred green onions, their scallop gut garum, sherry, black vinegar, avocado honey, and rendered bone marrow fat. This did not suck.

Dessert one was their masa cake: soaked in apricot syrup, frosted with crème patissière, and topped with a mixture of fresh mango and mangoes that we fermented with salt and spices for two days. The mango sorbet and crumble alongside were phenomenal, thanks to Lila the pastry chef.

This is a sublime flourless chocolate situation with candied cacao nibs, whipped cream with mezcal, and a dessert mole that I am very proud of. The whole dish worked incredibly well as an homage to chocolate’s Mesoamerican origins and traditions.

I didn’t manage to photograph a bunch of others, but this should give you an idea. Many thanks to everyone who came to eat (including some old and new friends), and of course to Nat, Harry, and the whole Tomat crew for a wonderful week of great ideas and great cooking.

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I wasn’t expecting this meal to happen, which makes it all the more appropriate for a Pantry Raid feature, wherein I show you how to do a lot with a little. Staying at my brother’s, both of us jet-lagged, we found ourselves uninterested in going out for dinner. He’d been away for two weeks so there wasn’t much to work with, but after a quick inventory of fridge, freezer, and cupboards I had what I needed to make this frankly glorious pasta—so good I’ll definitely make it (or versions thereof) again, but deliberately next time and with a few more fresh ingredients.

Thai and Italian don’t initially seem like they have a lot in common, but all cuisines have more similarities than you think once you get under the hood and poke around with an understanding of how flavor works. Penne with shrimp and tomatoes sounds super-Italian, and I could have just left it at that. But the presence of some declining but still-viable aromatics in the back of the fridge dictated this marvelous mashup.

The point of this series is showing you how to make a proper meal out of random staples and leftovers, but also to illustrate how sometimes limitations can engender greatness—new and brilliant combinations that only arise because that’s what you happened to have. This was one such occurrence. My brother was kind of stunned at how good it was, and how much he enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast. As I said, this one’s a keeper that I would absolutely make for a crowd with minimal changes.

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First off, I was a guest on my pal Rebecca Echevarria’s radio show Meant to Ferment this week. It’s available on the WGXC archive for listening any time at that link (you can stream or download it). We had a fun discussion centering on the importance (and ease) of approaching our cooking with a goal of minimizing f…

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This is an old Roman trick, I think, though only because I learned it there, from my dear friend Rachel Roddy. In any case, it’s pure genius not only for the efficiency of its execution but also its profound comfort food texture and depth of flavor—all in a decidedly summer-weight dish that positively begs to be eaten al fresco with a glass of something pink and chilly. Like so many of the other favorites I feature here, it’s more a method than a recipe, and therefore can include all sorts of vegetables depending on what you have on hand.

I don’t even know what this is called. I’ve never seen it in a restaurant. It may just be a lazy home cook weeknight saving throw, but if that’s the case it’s the apotheosis of that genre: unbeatable flavor, ready in the time it takes to boil pasta, and needing just one cooking pot and one serving bowl. I know, right? Why is this trick not common knowledge? I don’t know, maybe it’s too heretical at first glance but glaring culinary lacunae like this are what I’m here to fill, good people. Rules are made to be broken, as long as you understand how to break them creatively.

Read on and have your pasta game forever improved. This ranks right up there with my grilled potato technique, which I know a couple of subscribers made recently. They were utterly delighted by its ease and deliciousness. As for the pasta, it’s even easier: executable in the moment with minimal prep. I’ve also got several variations for you so you can quickly make it your own, which you will very much want to do.

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Thank you to everyone who tuned in live—it was heartening to see such a great turnout and get the sort of intelligent, engaging questions that our subscribers are famous for. Once Rich gets settled in Japan, we’ll be doing more of these. Stay tuned!

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I don’t know why it isn’t more common to cook potatoes on fire. Potatoes are many people’s favorite vegetable—maybe even favorite food—but even though they often accompany all manner of grilled meat, they almost never see a grill themselves. This is an easily remedied tragedy of omission, and I’m here to give you a couple of key tips to ensure that your grilled potatoes succeed. When they do, they’re absolutely stunning. This dish is so good that I actually had the temerity to serve it to the great Francis Mallmann, the potato’s most famous apostle, when he came to my house a few years ago. He went back for thirds.

New potatoes are coming in where I live, and their small size makes them perfect for this treatment, but you can apply this method to potatoes of any shape, size, and color. It’s not quite as simple as tossing potatoes on the grill, but it’s not complicated. You just need the knowhow. Besides the three steps to perfect (and foolproof) grilled spuds, I’ve got a few suggestions for ways you can use them (besides simply serving them, as in the photo up top).

This isn’t a recipe, though I give details. It’s an easy, life-improving technique that I have perfected and which you can master in one attempt. You will never look at potatoes the same way again, and your friends and family will marvel at your savant-like skills with this most humble and popular of vegetables. And best of all, your grilling game will take a giant step forward, in ways that can include other roots and plants. Let’s get to it!

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While citrus can’t survive our winters here in the northeastern US, we’re lucky to have some pretty wonderful substitutes that grow all over the place. This little tart uses two of them, both of which grow on trees—spruce tips and sumac bobs—plus maple syrup from a third tree, hence the name. I’m not going to tell you that this tastes exactly like key l…

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Remember when I told you to save the stems from the herbs you dried? This scallop dish here is what I want you to use them for. It doesn’t have to be this exact dish, of course, because the method works beautifully with all sorts of seafood. You should absolutely add it to your repertoire, especially since it can easily be transposed to the grill for splendid summer experiences.

Apart from the great flavors you can get from herb stems, it’s good to cook this way because it gets you in the habit of thinking differently about the parts of various ingredients that you’re accustomed to throwing away. There’s a lot of flavor in the things most people chuck without a second thought. Retraining ourselves to use them is a crucial step to becoming a better cook, sure, but also toward doing more with less—which has real, positive benefits to your bottom line given how much groceries cost.

This dish breaks down into three parts: the initial treatment, the final cook, and the sauce—which closes the circle beautifully. I’ll go through each one so you can apply all three techniques individually or collectively to the protein of your choice. This all came together in less than 15 minutes, and holy cow was it enjoyable to eat. Summer is the season for edible flowers, so I also have some tips on how to combine shellfish with flowers in spectacular ways.

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I become fonder and fonder of tough perennial herbs with each passing year. Beyond their wonderful culinary uses, they also tend to be aggressive spreaders that more than hold their own against less desirable local plants, making for low-maintenance beds. As I slowly replace areas of lawn with perennials, plants like oregano and mint and their many relatives rank among my favorites for sending grass packing.

Besides the several types of thyme I’ve planted, there’s also a lot of wild thyme in my yard, which unlike many wild plants actually benefits from mowing because it has such a low profile (except when it’s flowering). I love watching it slowly spread to take over more and more of the sunniest part of the yard. It’s a little harder to process than the thymes in the herb beds because I have to separate out the grass and clover, but it’s not complicated and I love having it around. And the bees love it too, so I skip mowing that area while it flowers.

I’m right on the edge of being able to grow rosemary outside as a perennial. Lavender barely holds on against the warmest wall of the house, and I’m going to keep trying to spread it around as I find places that it can survive (and as our winters get warmer). But for now, my rosemary lives in the pot where it’s been happy for going on five years now I think. Sage survives, but cannot be said to thrive around my house. My four sage plants all made it through the hard winter, but they have some recovering to do.

When you combine all of these herbs (and sometimes several others), you get the justifiably famous blend known in French as herbes de Provence, which means “herbs from Provence” in French, which they speak in France, which is where it’s from. But it works wonderfully in dishes from all around the Mediterranean and beyond, which is why I generally make a big jar of it rather than keeping, say, my oregano and thyme in separate jars. If a dish wants thyme, it’s a safe bet that it’ll benefit from the addition of some oregano and rosemary too.

Not everyone has the space and time to garden the way I do, but the thing about herbs is that you can grow them almost anywhere, including in a pot on a sunny windowsill. The herbs on this list make great houseplants—they look pretty, and you can brush your hand against them any time for some instant aromatherapy. And when you grow your own, you can customize the blend based on your taste, or do as I do and let the ratios of the available plants dictate the blend each year.

Each herb dries differently, and needs a little care to get it to the perfect place where it can be combined with the rest for maximum effect. I’ve got all that info, plus a few other handy tips to get you started in the slow-paced world of herb drying. I’ll also tell you which common ingredients I leave out, and why. If you do grow harvest, dry, and combine your own custom mixture I promise that you’ll notice the difference—and you’ll reach for the jar a lot when you’re cooking.

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The garden is starting to shift into high gear, so every day brings new treats and treasures. I grow June-bearing strawberries, so called because they do all their fruiting during this month—which is super handy if you’re looking to harvest a large quantity in a short time so you can make a bunch of jam and then move on to other crops. Today was day three of ripe fruit, and each day will bring more for the next couple of weeks before they start to taper off.

Garlic scapes are also happening, and tons of herbs and other greens, and rhubarb is still going strong. Salads are a given, so for the main dish I focused on these new arrivals, thinking about how to show off their qualities in ways that would work well with this lamb from the freezer. Lamb loves garlic and herbs, and most fruit can make an excellent accompaniment for meat if you handle it right.

I want to talk a bit about the concept of building layers of flavor, and specifically creating flavors that rhyme. The dish in the photo was simple: a lamb chop on some rice. The details, though, made for a deeply satisfying meal where flavors appeared in multiple forms and amplified each other, creating a marvelously vivid experience. None of this was high-wire cooking, either—no fancy techniques or time-consuming prep went into this. Just some thought, and attention to those details.

Here’s what I’ll break down for you today, so you can make a version of this miracle in your very own kitchen:

• A super-simple way to dramatically enhance rice of any type

• These phenomenal 5-minute pickled strawberries

• Outside-the-box spice thinking (a.k.a. what’s that pink dust on the lamb?)

All of which adds up to one of the more exciting and satisfying meals I’ve made in some time—on a weeknight, in about 25 minutes.

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This dish, apart from being beautiful to look at and very good to eat, is absurdly easy to make. It’s comprised of three components: the cabbage, the chutney, and the sauce. The last two come together while the cabbage cooks, which takes about half an hour. There’s flexibility on all three fronts, meaning it’s easy to make substitutions while still keeping the character (and ease) of the dish intact, and you’d be hard pressed to find a healthier plate of food that’s this pretty and delicious. It’s even vegan, though it doesn’t have to be.

This will make converts of people who think they don’t like cabbage, or who think that meat belongs in the middle of every plate. You can also use each of the three parts of this dish independently for all sorts of other applications because they’re fabulous and highly adaptable. Magic, I tell you! I hope all of these enter your repertoires, because this is the sort of trifecta (easy, delicious, and very healthy) that I specialize in.

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Morel season is finished where I live, but it lingers gorgeously in this confit, a variation on Andrew’s method which in turn is of course a riff on the age-old method for preserving duck and other meat by slow-cooking it in fat and then storing it somewhere cool so the meat remains encased in solid fat, safe from microbial depredations for long periods. Pre-refrigeration, confit worked beautifully as a safe way to keep meat around all winter long. The reason we still do it today is that this method also makes food taste incredibly good, whether it’s duck legs or mushrooms.

Morels take exceptionally well to it, as do chanterelles—which I covered in this post. While I used my wonderful parm rind oil for the chanterelles, and pure duck fat for a recent batch, these morels got a different treatment. Olive oil made up the bulk of the fat, but I had a couple of others on hand and they added tremendous depth of flavor. And I also added more varied aromatics. The result is insanely tasty, and will work with just about any mushroom, including plain old buttons (though since they’re available year round I generally use this method for wild, seasonal types). Having said that, though, what this method does to humble button mushrooms must be tasted to be believed.

These variations show how versatile the technique can be, depending on what you have and where you might want to steer the flavors for future uses. They’re all stunningly good—I did it differently each time because I had different ingredients on hand. As long as you understand what matters in terms of flavor and safety, you’ve got freedom to play around. Later this week I’ll show you what I think is the greatest possible use for these preserved treasures.

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This Pantry Raid series digs into the possibilities that arise out of limited options in the cupboards, freezer, and maybe the back of the crisper drawer when supplies are running low. It’s always easy to make wonderful meals after a big shop, but it can be challenging to assemble something compelling when we’re overdue for a resupply. So far I’ve written up methods for ma po tofu and a killer clam sauce, plus the definitive guide to a perfect vegetable stir-fry using pretty much any vegetable.

The key to being a great home cook is knowing how to adapt and improvise, using available ingredients to create meals that might be a bit unorthodox but deliver excellent flavor and nutrition. The path to that kind of highly useful greatness lies in understanding the role that each ingredient plays in a given dish, and therefore what might be substituted, or how a dish might be modified out of necessity and still deliver the pleasure and sustenance we ( and those we may cook for) all desire.

Enter pasta e fagioli, a nutritious and fortifying dish that’s also extremely flexible in terms of what goes into it. You might encounter people who swear that it must be made a certain way, or with a particular kind of bean, or a specific shape of pasta. I am not one of those people. Also, if I required that level of exactitude from you it would defeat the purpose of this open-ended approach to creating an excellent dinner out of whatever you’ve got on hand. Whatever form your legumes, pasta, and other ingredients take, my fabulous formula has got you covered.

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***Reminder***

To celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday, yearly subscriptions are 20% off for the month of May—including gift subscriptions. Paid subscribers make this publication possible, and I’m so grateful for all of your support. Join us for recipes, techniques, and intel that you simply won’t find anywhere else—including live video classes. I…

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***Reminder***

To celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday, yearly subscriptions are 20% off for the month of May—including gift subscriptions. Paid subscribers make this publication possible, and I’m so grateful for all of your support. Join us for recipes, techniques, and intel that you simply won’t find anywhere else—including live video classes. I mostly write about my original inventions and discoveries, not just versions of dishes that already exist all over the web. Most of the good stuff is behind the paywall, because I’ve spent 20 years diving down every culinary rabbit hole I can find, bringing back priceless knowledge that will make you a better cook. Not AI slop, real information for real humans cooking real food.

I want to continue this series with an underrated example. Msemen (also known as rghaif) are standard fare in Moroccan homes, usually but not exclusively for breakfast and mostly served in a sweet context with jam, honey, or amlou: almond butter mixed with honey and argan oil. They’re flaky, chewy, and filling—which is why they’re a staple for pre-dawn sustenance during Ramadan.

Previously in this series I’ve described the similarities between scallion pancakes and paratha, and msemen owe their layers to a similar method, though with a nice twist that imparts a distinctive character. It’s different enough to warrant some exploration, and once you get these down you’ll have a pretty comprehensive grasp on how laminated breads work—whether you’re sticking with tradition our making up your own variations. That’s my favorite facet of cooking: finding commonalities between cuisines so you can understand how food works on a fundamental level and then tailor it to suit your taste.

In any case, it had been a while since I made these, and I have to tell you that the one in the photo and its sibling vanished with extraordinary quickness. They’re so very good. I have made and eaten a lot of pancakes in my life, both crêpes and flapjacks, and I can say with total honesty that msemen are a superior breakfast food. They’re also totally kid-friendly and not much harder to make than pancakes. No excuses!

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***Reminder***

To celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday, yearly subscriptions are 20% off for the month of May—including gift subscriptions. Paid subscribers make this publication possible, and I’m so grateful for all of your support. Join us for recipes, techniques, and intel that you simply won’t find anywhere else—including live video classes. I…

Read more

***Reminder***

To celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday, yearly subscriptions are 20% off for the month of May—including gift subscriptions. Paid subscribers make this publication possible, and I’m so grateful for all of your support. Join us for recipes, techniques, and intel that you simply won’t find anywhere else—…

Read more

***Reminder***

To celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday, yearly subscriptions are 20% off for the month of May—including gift subscriptions. Paid subscribers make this publication possible, and I’m so grateful for all of your support. Join us for recipes, techniques, and intel that you simply won’t find anywhere else—including live video classes. I mostly write about my original inventions and discoveries, not just versions of dishes that already exist all over the web. Most of the good stuff is behind the paywall, because I’ve spent 20 years diving down every culinary rabbit hole I can find, bringing back priceless knowledge that will make you a better cook. Not AI slop, real information for real humans cooking real food.

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Spring is in full swing here, and that means greens aplenty here at ToB HQ. To celebrate, I want to hip you to a delicacy that represents one of my absolute favorite ways to dispatch an armload of tasty leaves. Erbazzone, a.k.a. scarpazzone, is a vegetable pie popular throughout Emilia-Romagna and parts of Liguria. This is real cucina povera—traditionally it’s made from the stalks of chard and beets (the least desirable and therefore cheapest parts) mixed with some green onion, grated parmigiano, and minced lardo or pancetta (if available or desired), sautéed together and then baked inside a simple crust. Spinach and wild herbs were also frequently used in various combinations depending on the season. Like all peasant food, it’s a recipe with lots of leeway depending on whatever greens you have available.

My chard is still small, but last fall’s spinach is about to bolt so I cut a bunch of that. I cut several kinds of chicories, also regrown from the fall planting, and the sylvetta arugula which volunteers more enthusiastically than any other plant in my garden. I love it so much, especially this time of year when it has an almost fatty flavor that balances its sharpness. Most of the dandelions around here have flowered, but I found some younger ones that hadn’t yet so I yanked those too. I also grabbed a couple of scallions, also overwintered, and snipped some young borage leaves and various herbs (oregano, thyme, sage, and parsley).

For the crust, traditionally it’s a super-simple short dough made from flour, water, and lard—though many versions call for both lard and olive oil or just oil. I’ve worked out a great version that can use either, or butter, or even coconut oil if you like, and it comes together in about a minute flat. You can also use a classic pastry-style short crust like my grandmother’s Best Crust in the World if you want a gorgeously perfect and flaky option.

Erbazzone is usually baked in a rectangular dish and then cut into squares. It’s magnificent eaten hot from the oven, but cooled off and wrapped it’s a fantastically portable sandwich-type thing that’s perfect for picnics and lunchboxes alike. So make a big one for dinner, and then send everyone off to work or school the next day with a gleaming slab of green goodness. Or make this for an event or pot luck situation, since it’s a crowd-pleasing sheet pan dish that scales up really well.

OK, let’s learn how to spin gold from some greens, some herbs, some flour, and some fat.

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This one’s pretty nifty, and has a lot to recommend it. Besides how darn tasty it is, it also comes together really quickly and also looks elegant enough to serve at a party. There are three parts to this: the mushrooms, the rice, and the sauce. You’ve got flexibility with all three, so I’ll tell you what I used and how you can make or find equivalents in your own kitchen. Whether you’re in the market for a banging appetizer, a satisfying side dish, or (in this case) a perfect lunch, this method has you covered.

These were king oyster mushrooms, which are among the most popular farmed mushrooms and thus pretty easy to find in even so-so grocery stores these days. The crosshatch scoring looks nice, but it also makes them a lot easier to chomp through in case you want to eat these in more than one bite. Cooking tenderizes them some, but the scoring really helps counter their sturdy build. You could, of course sauté shiitake slices, maybe using 2 or 3 thin slices per piece, or almost any other sort of mushroom from button to a bundle of enoki. Hell, you could even make all of the above and serve them together as a stunning fungal pageant of deliciousness.

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