boursin, cornbread, and Goodwill
a collection of food stuff that's delighting me
I’ve been sick, battling allergies, and grinding hard to finish lots of work in preparation for a new job (!!!) that starts Monday (don’t worry, this newsletter isn’t going anywhere), and so today’s Bite into this is more just a letter of recommendation for what I’m loving to eat right now, recipes that are not my own, and Goodwill. Thanks for being here, and go here for the recipe archive if you need something to cook or bake.
The home goods section of Goodwill is a grimy, honest window into American kitchens. There’s always an aisle of assorted dusty glassware with two or three of the same Pilsner glasses, crystal goblets, and parfait flutes, the end life for your grandparents’ entertaining dreams. There’s always a couple of Limoges china plates with gilt trim, one with the soft corner chip that spelled the beginning of the end for what began as a wedding gift or family heirloom. Ikea, Fiesta, Target, Williams Sonoma: American kitchen history, defined by a couple of brands.
One shelf overflows with elaborate molds and cake stands, standing in for the end of over-zealous ambition. You can find piles of beat up plastic containers that are probably too dirty and too old even for plastics recycling, scratched nonstick Bundt pans and muffin tins that might poison you if you tried to actually bake with them, and rusted grill baskets: All well-loved, well-used tools that belong in a landfill but carried too much history for their owners to stomach trashing them.
Other people’s abandoned kitchens make great inspo for your own. I’ve never left a Goodwill empty-handed. My enormous steel bowl, wide enough to hold five pounds of pasta salad with room to spare, I grabbed off the shelf of a store in Providence and beat out the big dent in the side at home. My brownie pan and Pyrex glass 9x13 were each a dollar, covered in sticky dust but unscratched. Last weekend, I nabbed two itsy diner mugs and two floral china plates that clash violently and yet will make a happy breakfast set between them; my boyfriend found heavy and hard plastic lime green mixing bowls that nest together in the most delightful 1950s housewife kitchen vibe, now repurposed for a young man’s 21st century kitchen.
If you’re looking for old and beautiful things you can’t find anymore, if you need new cooking and baking ideas or want to try something adventurous, if you want a silly platter or mug to make you smile: Goodwill is the place to go. I do feel like I’ve been writing one of those sketchy commercials you see on regional sports networks for the local appliance supplier (if you watch NBC Sports Philadelphia, you know exactly what I’m talking about), but I will stoop to that place to convince you to go wander a Goodwill or another local thrift store (truly thrift, not a place selling “vintage”) in search of a kitchen gem.
What I’ve been eating, drinking, and cooking
Somehow it took me until age 26 to discover Boursin, but we’re finally here. This might be old news to the rest of you, but I’m addicted to the creamy, somewhat sharp cheese, absolutely loaded with garlic. Not only does it punch up the flavor when mixed into eggs or spread onto leftover baguette, it’s an improvement on the usual apero snack for hungry visitors when I’m behind on cooking dinner; everyone devours it, but they don’t get full the way they do on a nice aged gouda. I can see it getting old if I grew up with it the way friend of the newsletter Soraya did (she rolls her eyes whenever I get excited and pull out the little round), but here in the childhood of cheddar cheese, it’s just novel.
Rooibos tea: Hard to find in any physical store (but here on Amazon) and beloved to me in a nostalgic way because it was such a common drink when I was a kid at a weird little Waldorf school. Rooibos is a South African red bush plant, and the tea has this uniquely honey-ish almost orange flavor that’s more interesting than chamomile or mint when I must submit to decaf.
Asparagus and baby Persian hothouse cucumbers: The first fresh vegetables of the season! Tiny, thin strands of asparagus, charred to a crisp, have this underlying sugary sweetness that you won’t find at any other time of year. The same goes for baby hothouse cucumbers, if you can find them: They are so small that the flavor is concentrated, making them less watery than usual and also more delicately textured, crunchy but not fibrous.
Kombucha: The fermented, slightly bitter fizz is hitting the same for me as a cold beer when beer is just too filling or too alcoholic. I’m falling for it about five years behind the trend, making me believe that my affection for it will actually last.
The tiramisu at Caruso’s Grocery. I cannot stop thinking about the thick, creamy layers, enormous and jiggly; inches of mascarpone, ladyfingers sunk into the cream and almost vanished, the coffee very bitter. One of the best desserts I’ve eaten in a long time.
Recipes that aren’t my own: Both fitting for spring and summer, great on the grill or accompanying grill food, popular with absolutely everyone who eats them, applicable in many situations, quick to make, and adapted easily to your preferences.
- ’s cornbread has actually become canon in my kitchen. Be sure to weigh your ingredients instead of measure, use a mix of mayo and sour cream when she calls for either, and then bake in a well-buttered cast iron for the best results.
Huli Huli chicken from the NYT: You don’t need to marinate for more than an hour, the marinade can go on any type of meat, and the end result is a very satisfying, generically BBQ flavor.
That’s all for this week! Here’s some pics from a brilliant meal orchestrated by friends of the newsletter Paige and Roger, to sign us off…
