Cook the Food That Makes You Feel Good

Every Monday night, Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport gives us a peek inside his brain by taking over our newsletter. He shares recipes he's been cooking, restaurants he's been eating at, and more. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.

I can’t recall exactly when in the past 10 days Christina Chaey launched her #gentlefoods campaign. And, to be honest, I didn’t really know what she was talking about when she did. But she had me at gentle.

As we became a nation of home cooks last week, we approached our newly isolated status with a startling gusto—sharing our creations on Instagram, facetiming with friends as we embarked on ninja-level cooking projects.

At the RapoBuck household, I grabbed my cast-iron skillet and fired-up Basic Bulgogi. I batched a double recipe of BA’s Best Bolognese. I made a creamy, leeky, buttery bowl of colcannon that just might have been the most satisfying thing I’ve made all year.

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But, as delicious as it all was, it wasn’t sustainable. This isn’t the kind of food you can eat night in, night out. And, so, as it has become apparent that we’ll all likely be at home for far longer than we ever imagined, we need a diet that will take care of us. Enter Chaey, a voracious home cook who happens to be our newest newsletter columnist. (You can catch her every Sunday on the Healthyish newsletter; sign up here if you don’t already receive it.)

“To me, ‘gentle foods’ are the ones that are like a blanket,” says Chaey, who has been with Bon App, off and on, for more than four years. “For me recently, that’s been things like eggs (not the crispy ones fried in olive oil—too aggressive for me right now), simple clear soups with wilted greens and dumplings, bean stew, poached fish. They’re simple, nutritious and intuitive. Not based on a grocery list so much as what your body wants to consume.”

I like the last part the best. We all know what our bodies need; we just choose not to listen much of the time. To get me headed down the gentle path, I asked Chaey for some starter recipes, many of which have popped up in her Instagram stories. There’s BA’s Anything Goes Donabe, a catch-all hot pot that you can make even if you don’t own the elegant, Japanese ceramic cooking vessel. I’m definitely going to make Healthyish’s Simple Khichari, an Indian lentil-and-rice dish that I happen to discuss with Priya Krishna on this Wednesday’s upcoming episode of the Bon Appétit Foodcast. And because gentle doesn’t have to mean vegetarian, how about some Greens with Braised Pancetta and Garlic?

As we navigate the next several months, the most important thing we can do is take care of ourselves and those closest to us. And that starts with what we eat. So keep cooking—and be gentle on yourself.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit