Cabbage’s Big Moment Is Here
Every Friday morning, Bon Appétit senior staff writer Alex Beggs shares weekly highlights from the BA offices, from awesome new recipes to office drama to restaurant recs, with some weird (food!) stuff she saw on the internet thrown in. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.
Cabbage patch adults
Our most popular recipe of the week was Andy Baraghani’s new Healthyish fall-apart caramelized cabbage. I want to make it this weekend. Cabbage is so cheap and it gets so meltingly tender—or crispy-edged awesome—whatever you want it to be. Raw, crisp slaw if you must! I asked Andy, whose cabbage gratin in the Thanksgiving issue turned me into a certified cabbage head, “Is this cabbage’s year?” “I think it’s become my favorite vegetable,” he confessed. Riveting development!
Get the recipe: Fall-Apart Caramelized Cabbage
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See you at the Butt Hutt
When I was a nanny my young charge once told me wisely, “Alex, you should never hold a cat when you’re naked,” and that was my motto for living until I read Priya Krishna’s piece in the New York Times about nudist home cooking and now my motto is: “Never make stovetop bacon when you’re naked.” There are so many great...tidbits…(sorry) here, and incredible photographs where fig leaves take the form of a perfectly placed bowl of salad. If only we could all feel this free! (The fanny pack industry would boom!)
Read it: The Joy of Cooking Naked
PSA
Because I’m here for you: Rancho Gordo’s Royal Corona beans—aka “the big beans”—are back in stock for $7/pound. Imagine a white bean so creamy that when you bite into it, it melts into the texture of mashed potatoes. YES. WANT.
Find ‘em here before it’s too late.
Get the recipe: Big Beans and Tomato Vinaigrette
But I really like this recipe too.
They’ve seen my heart
“Roses are black, your heart is black, these noodles are black.” If you haven’t been feasting your eyes on Genevieve Ko’s recipes in the LA Times, what have you been doing?
Even more joy
I opened my late aunt Barbara’s 1946 edition of the Joy of Cooking this week and found the diet pamphlet “YOU CAN REDUCE” tucked into the puddings and dessert chapter. I love how much this old cookbook captures a previous era (so many aspics), but if you prefer to live in the present, make sure to grab a copy of the Joy’s latest edition, at long last. If you’re ever stranded on a deserted island and find a fully stocked pantry buried in the sand—maybe a cast iron pan has washed ashore, I dunno, a seagull drops some tongs—this is the book you’ll need. That’s why it’s our Cookbook Club book for February! You have ~4,600 recipes to choose from. NBD.
Read more: A Case for Three Copies of the Joy of Cooking
Unnecessary food meme of the week
meme
Unnecessary food feud of the week
“What’s better: pie or galette?” Sarah Jampel started it. Molly Baz propped her foot on a drawer at her station in the Test Kitchen and weighed her hands like Lady Justice: “A galette is all of the glory of the pie without all of the trouble,” she said. “The deliciousness effect is the same, but the effort is minimal. It’s a cost benefit analysis!” “This question is overly simplified and I can’t answer it,” said Claire Saffitz before she was yanked away by her director to make something I can’t disclose gourmet. “PIE FOR LIFE,” said Sohla El-Waylly. “Making a lattice is the best thing ever.” Yeah, if you can do it! It’s hard! “You can make a lattice on a galette Sohla” one-upped Jampel, who prefers a galette except in the cases of [lists 17 exceptions]. Elyse Inamine and I prefer galette because WE LOVE CRUST. “Galette, specifically for the bite where the crust folds over itself,” said Amanda Shapiro. “It’s like a stuffed crust pizza.” Whoa. “Hand pie!” voted off-topic Hilary Cadigan. “All pies are hand pies, if you believe,” said Joseph Hernandez, inspirationally. And then the discussion devolved into talk of Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts, and whether adding ice to seltzer flattens it quicker.
Get the recipe: Fall Fruit Galette
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
