simple chicken tortilla soup

Many Sundays, I share on my Instagram feed a little rundown of what we ate for dinner the week before. I call these Real Life Menus, as there’s nothing aspirational about them. There’s takeout; there’s burnout; there have been quick bean quesadillas almost once a week recently simply because they’re low-effort and they work. There’s there’s jetlag, flops, and frozen pelmeni, and there are some ambitious meals I bring to the table while telling my family how grateful they should be for me (they laugh, which is deserved).

Recipe

banana cream pie

As a lifelong picky person who has brought another picky person into the world, my single biggest hope is that she’s as burdened by the things she doesn’t like as I am, and as eager to shed them. Like this. Although I like bananas, cream, pie, and also custard, I’ve never been really into banana cream pie because something about it all together always seemed so one-note, soft, and sweet. I wanted to shake it up with dark toffee sauce or bittersweet chocolate shavings, brown butter, or flaky sea salt, but having to change something to get yourself to like it isn’t really the same thing as truly liking it. And I wanted to truly like it because I hate it when I don’t get a meme, a joke, or find the charm in something [well, a food; I’m okay never taking up spelunking] beloved by millions of people.

Recipe

castle breakfast

Every Saturday morning, which is blissfully later each year that my children have grown old enough to fend for themselves for a couple hours, we stumble out of bed and do these exact things in this exact order: Make Americanos in the Moka pot. Hard-boil several eggs and plunge them in very ice water so they’re not warm-centered (shudder) by the time we sit down. And then I mix up a simple wholegrain soda bread but bake it as scones, so it can be done in 15 minutes. We use these minutes to pull out all the fruit left in the fridge and cut it up; fanning it out on a platter makes us feel fancy, and not like it’s the dregs that were left at the bottom of the produce drawer. If we’re feeling ambitious, we juice a couple oranges. If we have grapefruits, I loosen the sections of a few (I’m team grapefruit knife, not spoon, not that you asked) halves. I’ve been known to slice up pears and blue cheese with walnuts when the craving hits in the winter, and or apples with sharp cheddar in the fall. In the summer, it’s an abundance of berries or stone fruit or melon, sometimes with homemade ricotta if I have it. If we have avocados, I like to slice them.* Then we nudge the kids to set the table, which always includes salted butter and apricot jam (my favorite), and, because I do not have any argument left in me by Saturday, Nutella and raspberry jam (everyone else’s).

Recipe

crispy cabbage and cauliflower salad

This salad is not cute. You don’t need to tell it; it’s sensitive about these things. But like any wallflower about to be revealed as the babe it always was in a teen movie, it’s going to prove your skepticism unwarranted when you stand in the kitchen and eat an entire sheet pan of crispy vegetables. I cannot stop making it. And I cannot stop finishing the whole thing when I do. It’s been like this since I first made it in December, which means I’m about 7 weeks overdue to share it here. I’d spotted a roasted cabbage salad on one of Justine Snack’s delicious Reels. I’ve made roasted cabbage wedge salads, but I loved that this was already in bite-sized pieces and a tahini dressing is perfection here. In my kitchen, I used a less sweet, more lemony tahini dressing with garlic that’s my go-to and added bite-sized pieces cauliflower for more bulk.

Recipe

lemon sorbet

I realize that in a week where the most public spaces part sludge, part abyss, you might not have frozen desserts on your mind, but I cannot hide what we are: year-round ice cream people. Maybe it’s just the peculiarity of a steam-heated apartment, keeping it a balmy 78 degrees in here all winter, but snow on the ground has never kept us from cold treats, especially lemon sorbet, which tastes the way beams of sunlight feel on your skin.

Recipe

spanakopita

I finally conquered my fear of making spanakopita, the Greek savory spinach and feta pie, and yes, this means I’m going to tell you all about it. It took me so long because, however pathetically, I find filo/phyllo, the thin dough used to produce the flaky layers in many Middle Eastern and Balkan pastries, stressful: the tissue-like sheets can dry into crumbles in what feels like seconds. Having to brush each layer with butter or oil before using it is challenging in a small kitchen, and a lot of work in any size. Over the years, I’ve auditioned many spanakopitaish pies that allowed me to hedge a bit on the phyllo — triangles (only one sheet at a time made it less scary), spirals (ditto with one sheet; this recipe is in Smitten Kitchen Every Day), galettes (using a pie-like dough), and even “skillets” where I just messily crumbled some phyllo on top. All were good. None were this. This is exact spanakopita I crave, more doable than I thought possible.

Recipe

my favorite lentil salad

My friend Olga makes a lentil salad that nobody can stop eating. Yes, lentils. A salad. I can feel your skepticism through this computer screen (it’s my single superpower) but please feel assured that I would never lie to you, about lentils especially. Her recipe is one of the greatest Trader Joe’s “hacks” of all time: 1 package of their prepared lentils, 1 jar of their bruschetta topping, and then Olga always adds more chopped tomatoes, cilantro, and avocado.

Recipe

russian napoleon

This cake is a Russian New Year’s Eve tradition, and therefore no, this recipe I’ve been promising to share for 15 years isn’t late, rolling up here with a mere 36 hours left in the year, it’s exactly on time. The Napolyeon Tort is inspired by a classic mille-feuille (French for “thousand leaves”) which is made with layers of puffed pastry filled with pastry cream. The Russian version has far more layers and, like the Russian Honey Cake, is coated with crumbs made from extra cake. It was created in 1912, when it was created to honor the 100th anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s invasion — initially it was shaped to resemble his triangular bicorne (hat); the crumbs are said to represent the snow that did the French troops in. Due to ingredient limitations, margarine often replaces butter, the cream is sometimes made without eggs, and the cake layers are more brittle than a traditional pâte feuilletée, but as each family makes it their own way, you’d be pressed to find two recipes that agree on what makes a perfect one.

Recipe

short rib onion soup

A couple months ago, I was out with friends and we stopped briefly back at a friend’s place (hi Jocelyn!). It smelled amazing and it turned out she had chicken chili going in the crockpot. Despite not planning to stay, we inhaled a bowl in her yard before heading back out again and I have not stopped thinking about it since, hospitality on a you-never-know level. Stews and hearty soups are already wired with this energy — they keep well, are easily reheated, and if nobody else eats it, you’re happy to have it for yourself. But if it’s already ready, it means you can have impromptu drop-ins, and they are unquestionably the best kind. The table isn’t set, the toys aren’t put away, you’re still in sloppy clothes, and everyone has more fun.