I could never write a recipe for this...
Twice in one week! I usually send this newsletter out once a week and on Tuesday you got my November/December teaching schedule. But I made such a good dinner last night from a mixture of leftovers and wanted to tell you about it. Which also got me thinking of a story from a few years ago. So here goes nothing!
Many years ago I made a simple lunch for my parents. There was bread and cheese and some sliced salami (no actual cooking!). There was probably a jar of pickles. And there was a chickpea salad that I made quickly in a big mixing bowl. I added lots of herbs and minced onion and a vinaigrette. I transferred the chickpeas to a serving dish. Then I put some salad greens into the mixing bowl— the one I had mixed the chickpeas in but hadn’t washed out— and dressed them simply with vinegar and olive oil. The greens took whatever little bits of herbs and vinaigrette and onions were clinging to the bowl.
My dad said the salad greens were so delicious. He didn’t believe me when I said they just had oil and vinegar on them. Then I told him: “first you make a chickpea salad, empty the bowl but don’t wash it, THEN mix your greens with oil and vinegar in that bowl…”
I still laugh about this (a dad joke with my dad!).
But as someone who has spent most of my professional life writing + sharing recipes, I think about how often moments like this happen in the kitchen that you can’t really translate to the page. I would never write a recipe for anything that requires you to make something else first and then ignore that just to have its lingering essence attach itself to whatever you’re making. That’s not really how recipes work. But it’s how home cooking definitely works. Everything can lead to the next thing, a veritable baton being passed from dish to dish.
Which brings me to my latest concoction.
This past Sunday, I taught my regular Sunday afternoon cooking class. Chicken tinga, chicken braised with a sauce made of charred onions blended with tomatoes + chipotle, was on the menu. Then on Monday I went to work with my friend Emmet to cook for our Full Fridge Club (if you’re in the Kingston, NY area, check us out!) and guess what was on our menu?? Chicken tinga! I love this dish. It’ so easy to make and it’s so good in so many dishes. I ate it on nachos, in tacos, then in a bowl with rice and beans. I had it on a roasted sweet potato that I split open and then covered with cheddar cheese before the hot tinga went on top.
By last night, I was no longer excited about eating chicken tinga. And I couldn’t get a recent conversation I had with someone out of my head about delicious Northern Indian food they had eaten. So all I could think about was a spiced-and-spicy, creamy dish to put on top of hot rice. And that’s when I realized that the rest of my chicken tinga could become something else entirely.
I sliced an onion thinly and let it sizzle in some oil. I added a few cloves of minced garlic from my freezer stash, a very generous amount of hawaij from New York Shuk (it’s got turmeric, cumin, black pepper, cardamom, coriander, and clove), and a big squeeze of tomato paste. I let it all get very sticky and fragrant.
Then I added what was left of my tinga (maybe 2 cups at the most?). At this point the braised chicken with spiced-and-spicy, but not creamy. I was thinking about opening a can of coconut milk, but knew I wouldn’t need the whole thing. And that’s when I remembered the magic jar in my fridge. Dessert in Sunday’s class was a blender full of tres leches milkshakes [vanilla ice cream— which is heavy cream (milk 1) and milk (milk 2), blended with a can of evaporated milk (milk 3), plus a little bit of cinnamon]. By the time class was over, what remained of my milkshakes had melted, so I just poured it into a jar and have been using it in my coffee every morning this week (highly recommend!!).
I added a few spoonfuls of this melted milkshake mixture— creamy, sweet, that tiny bit of cinnamon. It transformed the chicken mixture. It became velvety + the sugar offset the spice of the chipotle.
The whole thing, from slicing the onion to eating my dinner, took maybe ten minutes. The leftover tinga was where all the time was spent softening the chicken + developing slow-cooked flavor.
This ended up being one of my favorite things I’ve eaten recently. And I could never write you the recipe. Imagine! “Make milkshakes. Let them melt. Save just a few tablespoons. Make chicken tinga. Let it sit in your fridge for a few days.” And yet. I think the story is still worth sharing. Sometimes we realize the most about cooking from these types of moments, not from recipes.
What’s in your fridge? What can it be?
xooxox Julia
I don't usually comment, but wanted to write about this post and your newsletter in general. I am so grateful for the perspective that you are providing about home cooking, how to meal plan (loosely and lovingly), providing insight into diet culture and, most importantly, eating for JOY. I am amazed and grateful that someone who is such an exquisite cook (I have ALL of your books) can make cooking so fun and accessible. Thank you so building this community!
One of my absolute favorite things about your body of work is your a) acknowledgment that home cooking results in leftovers and b) acknowledgement that leftovers can sometimes be tiresome.
Am I going to have this exact scenario in the future? Likely not, but your encouragement and confidence will lead me forward! I made the mashed cauliflower and lettuce soup last week - so easy yet so transformative. It's another way for me to make home cooking sustainable. Thank you!