Food Notes, Week 16.23

What's been simmering in my kitchen of late—and a goal to stress less, cook more!

Birthday cake for my littlest boy!

Several people have asked me lately if I'm cooking more elaborate meals than ever, now that I'm not working. But the weird and counterintuitive answer is no, I feel like I have less time in the kitchen than ever.

I think it's because I've thrown myself into the job search so obsessively and aggressively that I spend more hours in front of my computer each day than I did when I was working full-time. Rather than give myself permission to shut the laptop and go do creative things, I chase the illusion that the perfect job is just around the corner, just one more application away—and then the hours and days slip away and I'm always left scrambling at mealtime.

I dislike this feeling and, after several weeks of feeling mentally drained, have made a conscious decision to create better boundaries in my day. Effective this week, job hunting is limited to only 2-3 hours daily, and the rest of my time is freed up for some freelance work, my Substack, book publicity—and cooking wonderful meals for my ever-patient family!

Nevertheless, we've still eaten well over the past week, even if it's felt rushed. Here's what I've been cooking:

1. Curried Cauliflower Pie & Brussels Sprouts-Kale Caesar Salad

This is an unusual recipe that comes from Ottolenghi's Shelf Love cookbook. It looks complicated at first glance, but is actually pretty easy, not to mention delicious! It's reminiscent of macaroni and cheese, but healthier and far more sophisticated. My kids love it.

Basically, you toss cauliflower with olive oil and curry powder and roast at a high temperature. You make a béchamel cheese sauce with Cheddar, layer phyllo pastry in a springform pan, then pour half the sauce in, followed by the cauliflower, and the rest of the sauce. It bakes until crisp and golden.

I served it with my latest go-to winter salad, a combo of roasted and raw Brussels sprouts and wilted kale with a homemade Caesar dressing that's heavy on the grainy Dijon. I add pumpkin seeds or cashews for crunch, red onions, fresh basil, and lots of shaved Parmesan. I use anchovies or capers to add depth.

2. Bean Soup with Smoked Pork Chops

On days when I have no idea what to make, the Instant Pot is very helpful. On this particular day, I soaked some random heirloom beans from the back of the pantry for a few hours. Mid-afternoon, I sautéed an onion, celery, and carrot in the Instant Pot, added the drained beans, a jar of homemade stock that needed to be used, and two frozen smoked pork chops wrapped in butcher paper that I found in the freezer. (They've been there way too long.) I didn't measure anything, but crossed my fingers and hoped for a good result. I set the whole thing to cook at high pressure for 40 minutes and went to the gym.

When I got back, Jason had roasted a pan of sweet potatoes and made a coleslaw to accompany our "soup." To my relief, it turned out very well. I enjoyed the leftovers for lunch the next day, too.

3. Pasta with Fancy-ish Tomato Sauce

Another mad scramble of a meal! When in doubt, make pasta with tomato sauce, but it doesn't have to be just any tomato sauce. I pulled a container of Marcella Hazan's famous three-ingredient sauce out of the freezer mid-afternoon and raided the pantry and fridge for anything that might "boost" it somehow. I found an onion, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, leftover roasted Brussels sprouts, and green olives. Sautéed with a generous amount of olive oil, this made a great new base for the sauce, which I added and heated thoroughly before serving over cooked pasta with plenty of Parmesan.

4. Roasted Cod with Green Curry Sauce

This wasn't great, if I'm being totally honest. It involved making a green curry sauce with a coconut base and pouring part of it over fish ahead of roasting in the oven. The remaining sauce was served with the fish, alongside steamed basmati and asparagus. I think the problem may have been the frozen cod filets that I used; with fresh fish, it would have been better.

5. Pastitsio

On Tuesdays, the kids' music teacher comes to give their lessons and have dinner with us. I put in a bit more effort on these nights, hence the wonderful pastitsio we enjoyed this week. It's like a Greek lasagna of sorts—pasta mixed into a rich, meaty tomato sauce with feta, topped with a béchamel sauce. The kids always detect what I'm making well in advance, thanks to the cinnamon, sumac, and mint in the meat sauce that gives it that Greek flavour.

6. Tofu & Veggie Stir-Fry

I like to have tofu on hand for last-minute dinners. Now that I've learned how to press it, coat in cornstarch, and fry in advance until crispy on all sides, it's much more delicious than it used to be. I get the tofu in the pan (it takes a while to crisp up totally), then prepare vegetables for sautéing. I use whatever I have—carrots, broccoli, peppers, onions. Ginger, garlic, and scallions are essential aromatics. The veggies get cooked separately, since they take different amounts of time, then get mixed all together in a big sauté pan, together with the fried tofu and whatever stir-fry sauce I've made.

On this night, I served it with fried rice, made from leftover rice that I found in the fridge. It's my uncle's go-to recipe that he's made for as long as I can remember—onions cooked in vegetable oil with some garlic, add the cold rice, cook, then add unmeasured quantities of fish sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil to taste. Sounds random (and it is), but it's utterly delicious. Sometimes we top with golden threads (egg cut into strings), tomatoes, and cucumber, but generally we're in too much of a hurry to eat.

Add-Ons

And that, my friends, are my food notes for this week. There was one culinary disaster—an attempt at smoked baby back ribs for my son's birthday that turned out terribly because (duh) apparently you can't use anything other than baby back ribs to make baby back ribs—but we pushed through that. I made up for it with a great yellow birthday cake layered with decadent chocolate icing. Oh, and it was my birthday, too, and a sweet friend made me a cake when she heard I hadn’t had one.

Looking ahead at the next week, I really want to make meringues again (a friend reminded me of some meringues that I gave her for a birthday several years ago and I was amazed because I have no memory of it), and I might try my hand at macarons. That's what this strange unemployment limbo should be for, right? Making all the delicious things I never used to have time for? Hopefully I am successful at rebalancing my days.