A Cow’s Tale
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.
A good soup is easy to find
I thought about writing a Valentine to Andrea Nguyen’s ridiculously easy canh, a brothy Vietnamese soup that in her version, is full of greens and shrimp. I made it last weekend and it happened so fast I didn’t know what hit me. Stir some onion around, add water and fish sauce, add greens, ginger, and shrimp, done. It’s amazing how much savory goodness the shrimp and fish sauce bring to, well, a pot of water. Afterward, a world of opportunity opened: I could add a sliced serrano next time! (I couldn’t actually think of any more things I’d change, but she has some suggestions in the article too.)
Make it: My Favorite Soup is Brothy, Gingery, and Ready in 30 Minutes
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I love it
Claire Saffitz Introduced Me to My Favorite New Clogs
🚨SCONCE WATCH 🚨
I like to keep close tabs on the state of sconces. Are we using enough of them? Could there be more? (Trick question: There could always be more.) Take your lunch break to swoon over photos of an English farmhouse with approximately 47 sconces. I also love design that has undertones of divorce, debt, and celibacy. And please relax! The black granite countertop is going—soon.
Read more: How Restaurateur Keith McNally Built Texture Into His 1919 Cotswolds Home
Overheard at BA
Rapo, trying to convince two staffers wearing jumpsuits to take a photo together for Instagram: “We’re gonna post a picture that says, ‘looking for a third.’”
Hilary Cadigan: “I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means.”
BOOM. Oh god. I peeked into the oven window and saw a sweet potato had exploded. Sweet yellow carnage was everywhere and the potato was split open down the middle. I’d poked holes in it with a fork, I swear! The temp was 350! So why did it explode? I’d like to blame my new oven, which has been trouble since the day it was installed. I even had to have it replaced because the first one made actual explosions when ignited. TERRIFYING. But if you know why my sweet p spontaneously burst at the seams, please fill me in.
Unnecessary food meme of the week
meme
Unnecessary food feud of the week
A 5-lb bag of BULLS-EYES showed up at the office, spurring a buzz of excitement among those of us who are RIGHTFULLY huge fans of Cow Tales. (Bulls-Eyes caramel creams—around since 1918!—are a chopped-off version of Cow Tales, a soft outer layer of caramel with a white creamy-powdery center.) “As far as old lady living room dish candy goes, I'll take a Werther’s Original over a Cow Tale any day,” dismissed Aliza Abarbanel, earning nods of agreement from Amanda Shapiro and Rachel Karten. They are “DELICIOUS,” declared Hilary Cadigan, “the ideal blend of chewy and frosting-y, semi-sweet and very sweet.” “Will someone explain to me why they are called ‘cow tales’?” asked MacKenzie Fegan, derailing the conversation into a flurry of confusion. “Never heard of them,” was the refrain from the deprived editors in the Test Kitchen. “If there are so many seedless oranges, why eat seeded oranges?” asked Adam Rapoport (he’s two weeks late to that feud.) “Cow Tales are $0.25 at the counter at Wawa!” announced Emily Schultz, qualifying her as a contestant on The Price Is Right. “They. Are. Disgusting,” said Meryl Rothstein, refusing to stand down. It’s too bad she’s so wrong.
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
