Boss-A$$ Beans

(didn't do anything special with these peaches, just liked the one with the extra butt)

Honestly, why do any of you care what I read on Substack this summer? I don’t know what to make of this . . . spotify-ication . . . of Substack (your list here!) and now I am embarrassed that I clicked send on that dumb recap. It is more self-absorbed than even I, who think you want to know everything I’m making all at once, care to be.

What I do want to be is someone like Steve Sando of Rancho Gordon, who only adds salt to his beans when he knows they are his bitch.¹ More on those beans below.

Speaking of kicking butt and taking names, I got my results from Ballymaloe this week and I am very pleased. I wasn’t shy about posting this on the interwebs so you’ve probably seen it already but for the two of you who may have missed that onslaught, here they are. Note that the Practical Exam constituted 40% of the overall result, the Written Exam was 20%, and the Herb ID/Practical and daily kitchen work (kept in the Black Book that is now in some vault, probably, in Ireland, or maybe already incinerated) was the other 40%.

In my work world, the degree is the coin of the realm so now that I have my results validated in a form suitable for framing . . . what to do, what to do? Kitchenless (still), I noodle around the food options for post-H activity. There is a range:

1. full-on work in a restaurant/commercial kitchen - NO.

2. full-on work with a caterer - NO

3. part-time any of those - LIKELY NO.

4. start my own restaurant/bakery/bar/catering biz - HELLZ NO.

5. start my own food biz (prepared products only) - maybe?

6. cook what I want in my own kitchen and sell/give away whatever is excess - more likely unless that is weird/gross.

7. write about whatever, mostly food.

Things holding me back from any of these options:

1. Fear, too much work, stress, commitment, rotten hours.

2. Same.

3. Likely same.

4. What do you think I am, dumb or something? Also, there is a bar in Boston - a brewery - that focuses on women’s sports already, Drawdown Brewing. Also, fear.

5. Fear, more work than expected, will anyone buy anything, will I spend the rest of my life sitting under tents at outdoor markets while small children grab all the samples from my table while their too-permissive parents pretend to chastise them but buy nothing?

6. Fear, it’s kind of weird to send notifications like “hey friends, there are 2 dozen croissants, packaged in pairs, in a cooler on my porch. take what you like, drop a donation in the jar if you are so moved.” I mean, who would come get leftovers?

7. So me-centric. And isn’t there enough dumb food writing out there already?

On the other hand . . . (watch out boys, here she comes, she’s a Gemini!):

1. It’s nice to not be in charge and to just follow orders. And to just go home at the end of the “day.”

2. Same.

3. OK, so, less same.

4. The Sports Bra in Portland is franchising. The SCORE guy I talked to told me that franchising is stupid because you do all the work for not all the money. Also he doesn’t think that a concept that works in Portland, Oregon would necessarily work in Boston, MA. But a) what does he know, b) I like the ethos behind the organization, and c) as we are all finally realizing EVERYONE WATCHES WOMEN’S SPORTS.

5. It’s nice to be in charge. God, I’m so German.

6. I just get to cook?

7. This I can do in my pajamas and take so many naps.

And that’s just the food bits, I haven’t even gotten to the rowing.² The lumpers among you will recognize that this is basically my old cosmetologist 🤷🏼 four-star general dilemma. Caring Sharing Cooker or Boss-Ass Bitch?³ Vote early and often!

And now for the point of this meandering pile of verbiage that I call a newsletter, here’s what’s been “cooking” lately in the Konstruction Kitchen.

Last summer’s romance with Bricia Lopez’ Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling flared up again with this winner winner pollo yucateco asado dinner and what is likely the last of this year’s corn. It was just a touch heavier this week, a little less sweet, a little more sticking to the teeth - all signals that corn’s time this year is nearing its end. I have yet to make anything from Asada that has not been completely hoover-able except for the time I tried to make my own tortillas. More like poor-tillas, so lumpy and misshapen. But other than that? Get this book!

The Bourbon Renewal got further gentrified last weekend with the addition of some rosemary simple syrup.

Local peeps: do you need rosemary? We have a freaking bush of it, and I am losing the battle. Feel free to come over with your scissors and harvest away.

On Monday I did a vague injustice to some perfectly respectable scallops. The induction burner remains a work in progress but those bivalves did not deserve their wan fate. Not quite pencil erasers but neither the hard sear they should have had.

I could eat these big squares of rice noodles - called “rice flakes” - all day, they are that satisfying. Especially when ground pork and soy sauce and fish sauce and vinegar and basil are involved and the flakes kind of soak up all that flavor to just become chewy savoriness with the occasional nugget of pork or spicy surprise of the basil. Props to my brother for sending me the recipe from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything because while I can almost see the book I cannot actually get my hands on it. #renovationlife #sucks

You may ask yourself, how did I decide upon this recipe if I couldn’t find the cookbook? Welcome to the greatest bargain of my life, a charter subscription to the cookbook indexing service Eat Your Books. You join, and then “add” cookbooks that you own to your virtual bookshelf. If EYB has indexed the title - and they are indexing cookbooks all the time - then you can search all of your books at once by keyword, ingredient, course, and so on. EYB will give you a list of the recipes (just the titles and ingredients, not the recipes themselves) you have in your books with whatever your search criteria is. In this case, I entered “ground pork + rice noodles” and came up with a bunch of options, some of which I even had the ingredients/equipment for. I deeply value this service for telling me that I own 1,078 recipes involving anchovies, almost as much as I appreciate its help in finding a recipe to use up whatever has been languishing the freezer. You can even ask them to index books you might have that aren’t already on their shelf and they eventually will - but EYB already has over 160,000 cookbooks indexed, ranging from The Unofficial Elf Cookbook: 70+ Delicious Recipes Inspired by the Classic Holiday Film! to Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire. So the chances that they already have your books are pretty good.⁴

Speaking of bargains from the mists of time, it has been more than a minute since this crockpot saw service - room 102 was the magical queendom of Anne and Judy, the greatest grade 1/2 teaching team in the history of the world.

I mean, those grapes! Surely this was my mother’s before it was mine.

She arose from the basement to contain not multitudes but pork shoulder and pickled jalapeños and colatura instead of fish sauce because see above with the rice flakes and I’d already been shopping so no fish sauce but oh hey that’s some good cooking without a net!⁵ Honestly, this was delicious 10/10 recommend.

Speaking of the NYT, it appears that some people take Eric Kim to task for his extremely simple recipes that are occasionally published in the Sunday mag. I think this because in his instagram stories, he has mentioned not focusing on the haters, and seriously WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE ONLINE THAT YOU HATE ON SOMEONE FOR AN EASY RECIPE.⁶ I can dimly see where this might come from - I mean, seriously, rice and corn and mayo and that’s it? But then I make something similar like his Gochujang Buttered Noodles and I am reminded that Kim’s recipes come together quickly, are always so full of flavor,⁷ and usually hit the ol’ spot-erooni.

it could just be spaghetti and tomato sauce, right?

As for those beans? I did eventually force them to submit despite the sub-optimality of the one-ring induction burner which cooks whatever is exactly in the center of the pot way faster than anything else so your beans end up at varying levels of bitchiness. But after I did all the finishing with the bacon, chili powder etc., I decided that they were pretty bitchin’ after all. Eat ‘em with rice, and a beer would be nice.

They say we’ll have a usable kitchen by the beginning of November. Not finished, just useable. God I hope so because I don’t know how many more pictures of food on a hot plate we can handle.

Leaving with you my favorite food-related find on instagram lately.

Go on, say it!

1. This is from my favorite substack these days, Michael Ruhlman’s weekly newsletter. I don’t know how I even found it but Ruhlman’s is the highlight of my weekend. A cook who writes (Soul of a Chef, among other things, which I am listening to now, oboyoboysogood), Ruhlman lives in Greenwich Village with his super smart writer wife, loves to eat and drink, travels to interesting places, goes to movies and plays, did I mention the eating and drinking, and generally seems like someone you want to hang out with. 10/10 recommend.

2. Over the winter I’m going to train up to coach, and I might even look at referee-ing too. ooo, maybe another newsletter!

3

4. Extra credit if you actually have that Elf cookbook,

5. You know how fish sauce is basically fermented anchovies? Colatura is the same idea, but Italian. So it tastes very different - stronger - but brings the umami and that worked here.

6. (checks mirror) ok, well, here I am, but I’m not being mean to that nice Eric Kim, or anyone else for that matter, am I?

7. Let us not forget the Gochujang Caramel Cookie, toute la rage of late 2022.