A week of preserving
Most of the flavour comes from persistence rather than ingredients. I make a double batch and freeze half for busy weeks. A kitchen scale altered my baking more than any recipe did.
Lessons
Serve it with good bread and whichever greens look best. I would rather do one thing carefully than five things quickly. Use what is in season and the recipe largely writes itself. Every summer I revisit the same questions about sourdough. I attempted the simple version first. It did not last.
The middle part
The crisp part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is. I keep coming back to stews, largely because it rewards persistence. This got going as a quick note and gradually turned into something longer.
Modest, repeatable steps beat big plans nearly every time. The trick, if there is one, is to leave sufficient room for slip-ups. Between cooking for friends and baking bread, the second one taught me more.
- Give cooking for friends a full spring
- Stop before you are tired
- Keep a mortar and pestle within reach
- Start with pastry and nothing else
Trade-offs
In August the light changes, and so does the work. I altered my mind about soups twice while writing this. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I picked up them. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about roasted vegetables. The result is not perfect, but it is truthful. You can get surprisingly far with a dutch oven and some persistence. The difference showed up gradually, then all at once.
I keep a short list of things to try next; shopping at the market is near the top.
The process
This is less a guide and more a record of what worked for me. I altered my mind about weeknight dinners twice while writing this. The humble part is hardly ever the hard part; consistency is. Good pickles is largely a series of modest, unglamorous decisions. I wrote most of this on a quiet Monday morning.
Every spring I revisit the same questions about roasted vegetables. Some of this will be obvious; some of it took me years. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed.
I attempted the bright version first. It did not last. Thanks for reading, and for the gentle jottings that keep arriving. I like flatbreads that shows the marks of how it was made. Good pastry is largely a series of modest, unglamorous decisions.
I keep coming back to weeknight dinners, largely because it rewards persistence.