Recipes for when the last thing you want to be thinking about is a gd recipe
Distressed, distraught, disturbed, disjoined, and hungry.
Hello, chefs.
I’m not sure where on this blue planet you all are, but this writer is coming to you live from Nashville, Tennessee, where I am currently prepping my tornado kit (shoes, dog leash, charging block, flashlight) while I toggle between Twitter windows covering the incoming “Particularly Dangerous Situation” storm and Monday’s events at Covenant School. It’s been a doozy of a week.
My junior year of college, I was sitting at a huge dining table in the house I shared with about twenty other kids when someone rushed in and told me to turn on the news. We were getting ready for finals—December 14th. I remember what I was eating, the cover of the book in front of me. It’s one of those life moments that feels frozen in time, even ten years later. Watching the events unfold at Sandy Hook Elementary absolutely broke me.
Maybe it’s a side effect of the internet, or maybe it’s our brains trying to preserve themselves, but I think many of us consume news of tragedy through a cloud of smoke that dulls its edges. I mean, imagine if we didn’t. We’d be wrecked daily. There’s a lot to be distressed about. So we sit comfortably in our haze.
But sometimes, something feels sharp enough, or maybe close enough, to pierce through and shake us awake. It untethers us from the world we think is ours and makes us wonder, how the hell did we get here? How did I miss this? I felt this way in 2020 when parts of my city were leveled in a tornado, like the math wasn’t mathing. People say you don’t know it until you live it, and you know what, people are right.
That’s how this week feels. But this time—unlike when I was 20, and unlike when the enemy was a violently rotating column of air—it feels within my power to do something about it. And that feels frankly a little scary but also very good.
One thing that always brings me back to earth is just the simple task of pulling together a meal for myself. Last night it was a banana bread that rocked my world, and tonight it’s a shrimp scampi that feels like the big ol’ hug I really need. So if you’re in my shoes this weekend and feeling a little rocked, I advise that you start there. And then call Congress.
-Faith
Cinnamon Toast Crunch banana bread
This one broke my Instagram account, I think. I’m usually not one for fussy ingredients, but listen, the box of demerara sugar in my pantry gets used way more often than I anticipated when I reluctantly purchased it last year. Original recipe here, my (slightly simpler) version below.
Preheat your oven to 350.
Make your topping: In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup demerara sugar, 2 tablespoons regular sugar, and 1 tsp cinnamon.
In a large bowl, mash up 2 very ripe bananas.
Add 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup vegetable or coconut oil, 1/4 cup warm water, 2 eggs, and 1/4 cup honey (I just measure with my heart because I hate cleaning honey out of a measuring cup) to the bowl and whisk until smooth.
To the bowl, add 1.5 cups flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt. Mix well.
Grease a loaf pan and add a piece of parchment paper so you can easily lift the loaf out of the pan without breaking the crispy top. Add your batter to the pan and top with all of the topping (yes, it’s a lot). Bake for an hour and you’re in business, baby.
Shrimp scampi with crispy gnocchi
This is a Melissa Clark Masterpiece™️. Ideal for weeknights when you’re working with pantry and freezer staples and have about 20 minutes flat to get dinner on the table lest you turn into a gremlin.
In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of olive oil over med-high. Drop in a box (1 lb) of shelf stable gnocchi and cook, tossing occasionally, until crisp, about 15 minutes. Turn out onto a plate.
In the same skillet, heat another drizzle of olive oil with 2 tablespoons of butter. Add a heaping spoonful of minced garlic (or, fine, if you want to be fancy, chop up 4 fresh cloves) and cook until fragrant. Add 1/2 cup white wine, and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Cook down for 2 minutes.
Add 1 lb thawed, raw shrimp. Cook through until they’re all pink and add the gnocchi back to the pan. Zest a lemon into the pan, and add more salt and some fresh parsley, if you want.
Turn off the heat and squeeze 1/2 of your lemon over top. Serve with a salad and that, my friends, is dinner.
Perfect timing--I haven’t known what to cook for dinner and both recipes will work for tonight. On the news, it’s exactly like a haze and this week has been my heart aching because it’s so awful.