Recipes for when you don't feel like making a grocery list
Shopping with your heart is always more fun.
Hello, chefs.
We are traveling, hosting people, or otherwise knocked off the usual schedule for a little more than 50% of the next three months, which makes my usual cooking cadence—meal plan and grocery list on Saturday, shopping on Sunday, following the plan all week—a bit of a fool’s errand.
I was in Alaska last week on an epic family vacation, testing the limits of salmon consumption by humans and trying to keep up with my athletic siblings as we climbed mountains that looked like screen savers. I got home from a sleepless red eye on Sunday evening and couldn’t drag myself to the grocery story until Monday. It goes without saying that no list was made. I navigated that produce aisle on nothing but raw instinct and a will to survive.
I go through seasons with cooking, and in my early 20s, the season was “buy whatever tf looks good and make it work.” I love this method because a) it requires very little foresight and b) depending on where you shop, it’ll help you buy with the seasons and (hopefully) more local. The part of it I always hated, though, is that it can often lead to wasted produce. (Editor’s note: of course, no produce is wasted when you have a flock of extremely not picky chickens willing to eat your leftovers.)
In place of a recipe, below are two general formulas for putting together a great meal from a fridge full of assorted produce and a freezer of fish. Tonight I’m trying to get my curry method right n tight so I can share that next week. Happy cooking!
-Faith
Chili crisp shrimp bowl
All you need for a great bowl is a base, a good mix of veg, and a protein that all work well together. Your base might be rice, quinoa, buckwheat or rice noodles—really any starch will do. Ideas for your veg:
Thinly sliced cabbage
(thawed) frozen edamame
Onions: green, red, white, whatever
Cucumber
Fruit! Pineapple, mango…
Peppers! Hot, bell…
Avocado
Shredded carrot
Radish
Roasted sweet potatoes or cauliflower
I’ve found that the easiest protein for these is shrimp: it keeps in the freezer, thaws super fast, and cooks even faster. Just thaw, season, sauté, and toss with some chili crisp before putting it on your bowl.
Don’t forget to zhuzh it a bit (who knew that’s how you spelled zhuzh?) with a bit of soy, rice vinegar, and/or sesame oil over your bowl!
The anatomy of a fish plate
Fish can be a hard thing to cook because (have you noticed?) there aren’t many cool recipes for it. Unlike chicken, which is always coming down the runway with a new look (sheet pan! slow roasted! braised!), fish is made fabulous by whatever it’s hanging out with on your plate. The formula for a fish plate is:
Cold salad + warm starchy veg + well-seasoned fish
A classic version of this is a typical fish fry: fries, coleslaw, fish. Here’s a summer version that I made last week:
Tomato and peach salad: chopped tomatoes, peaches, red onion, jalapeño, basil, salt and lime juice
Roasted summer squash: oil+salt+pepper, 450 for about 20 minutes (flip halfway)
Roasted cod: Pat your fish dry and season with Old Bay. Put on your roasting pan with your squash when it has 10 minutes left with a drizzle of oil on top.