Here’s Something to Do With All That Rhubarb

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.

Pink things

What’s pink and sweet and definitely not poisonous? A rhubarb daiquiri! I got excited and bought two bunches of rhubarb recently, using one bunch to make rhubarb compote that turned out a little...stringier than I wanted. So for the second bunch, last night I made hot pink rhubarb simple syrup (doubling this recipe), and plan to make rhubarb daiquiris with it this weekend. Is it still a daiquiri if I use tequila instead of rum? Don’t know, don’t care. Semantics! It’s a refreshing, sweet-sour drink and you’re gonna love it.

Get the recipe: Rhubarb daiquiri

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It might be okay

This month’s “is it ever okay” is about summer entertaining. Can you take over the grill if someone is overcooking the burgers? Can you shoo away men trying to take over the grill because the burgers are in fact, perfect? All this and more, right this way. And now I’m looking for your questions about fine dining etiquette. Can I demand a little stool for my purse because I think it’s funny? Is tipping the coat check mandatory if dinner cost the same as a monthly car payment? Send your questions to me at staff.bonappetit@gmail.com

Read it: Is It Ever Okay...To Take Over the Grilling Yourself?

Breakfast soup

Over a cold brew* spiked with cinnamon and brain dust**, I asked Breakfast author Emily Elyse Miller what more people should be eating for breakfast. “Soup!” She said. Specifically, Hawaiian noodle soup with a dried shrimp and shiitake broth, spam, eggs, fish cakes, and saimin noodles (pictured above). It’s rich and umami-ful, and nostalgic for the writer, who grew up in Hawaii. Miller, who was wearing a pearl-and-metal-spike necklace (very Sansa Stark goth mode), told me she feels amazing after having soup for breakfast, yes, especially in the summer. Regulate that body temp to acclimate to the heat outside! Her cookbook has 380 breakfast recipes from 80 countries and if you need to expand your breakfast horizons (I see you, boiled egg Bryan), I can’t think of a better way.

*At an event sponsored by CHAMELEON COLD BREW, HEL-LOOOO
**Not sure if the brain dust works, but I’ll take all the help I can get

Brad went to Cannes

Lol! Brad Leone went to Cannes Film Festival to judge a short film competition on the theme “we are what we eat,” sponsored by NESPRESSO. He told me his favorite movies were the one about rice terraces in Bali (it’s called Subak, and you can watch it, albeit on a narrow frame, here), and Mother Seed, about Rahibai Soma Popere, an advocate for farming with indigenous seeds in India (it’s actually titled Seed Mother). Then he recreated the moment when he was trying to Instagram a seagull eating a pigeon, tripped, and dropped his phone down some rocks, filming all the while. Will be submitting that one to the jury next year.

Potato salad! I’ve made the potato-and-egg-and-bacon potato salad from B’s Cracklin' twice already and it’s not even June yet. It’s perfect. There are BLACK OLIVES in it, what else do you need to know?

MAKE IT: Potato Salad with Bacon and Eggs

Mystery

Why were two issues of Bon Appétit banned in Kansas prisons, as reported by the nonprofit Books to Prisoners? I’d like to know! We don’t even do nudity!

Bucket news

My Maldon bucket kicked the bucket this week. That thing lasted TWO YEARS and I used it pretty much daily. That’s a good deal! 3.3 pounds of tiny salt windows into my soul! Read about how obsessed with it we are here. Then get one yourself ($30) and report back on how long yours lasted. I’m vaguely curious.

Unnecessary food meme of the week

Unnecessary food feud of the week

Carla Lalli Music was developing a blueberry pancake recipe this week and that’s when we found out she LOATHES chocolate chip pancakes, which happen to be a perfect food. “Chocolate chip pancakes are disgusting,” she said while tearing apart a concha on our snack table. “I like to pretend pancakes are a breakfast food, not dessert. The chocolate chips make it dessert.” The room erupted. Christina Chaey, nursing a 16-ounce Diet Dr Pepper, analyzed what makes a CCP great: “If you’re going to put something in a pancake, what better than chocolate chips? Bananas? Stupid. Blueberries? Little pimples. Chocolate chips sink into batter just enough so they’re on top when you flip them, then cook long enough so that the bottom of chip gets a tiny crust. You get molten chip, crispy edge—it’s the f*cking best.” Jesse Sparks looked into my eyes and whispered behind his hand, “People use too many chocolate chips—they ruin the consistency.” “No syrup,” dared Emma Wartzman, “just lots of butter.” “No, you need the syrup to play off the bitter chocolate,” Chaey continued. In the Test Kitchen, Gaby Melian scrunched up her face and said, “I don’t like to find things in my pancakes.” “I’m not 12 anymore!” Cristina Martinez told me as elevator doors shut in my face. “I prefer buckwheat,” said Chelsie Craig, before slinking off to the photo studio in a quilted capelet/shawl combo I’ve never seen before. Hilary Cadigan offered her two-cents: “I like blueberry and chocolate together!” We let out a collective ughhhhhhh! Chaey shook her head in horror: “And don’t let anyone tell you to cook them with chocolate chunks. It doesn’t work.”

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit