beef tikka and summer produce
with a side of somerville's love for pizza and my disdain for pavlova
I’ve been busy eating the last of the marvelous produce of summer: my kitchen island is jam packed with a tray of peaches and tomatoes and the fridge is bursting with corn, eggplant, and quarts of these strawberries I found at Whole Foods (and a Wards Berry Farm stand in Harvard Square) that taste exactly the way I remember strawberries tasted 20 years ago, before strawberries were gigantic and homogenous and watery and so bland they are barely worth eating.
Instead, these Taste of the North strawberries from Canada are perfect gems and impossible to resist. I don’t tell everyone this, but between the ages of 3-5 I was obsessed with eating strawberries. The ones that grew under the hot Iraqi sun were especially sweet ruby red beauties that I could not resist. At one point, I had so many strawberries that my small body started breaking out into a rash — a tragic strawberry allergy striking the fruit’s most devoted fan. The allergy was thankfully only momentary, a severe reaction to a toddler eating much too much of one thing, and my love for them has never faltered.
When I’m not eating the strawberries whole and unwashed over the sink, I’ve been blending them up with peeled lemons for a perfectly tangy-sweet lemonade, a la Smitten Kitchen. My peaches are used as the delicious (and necessary) topping for my ricotta toast for breakfast and chopped up alongside pork meatballs in this (gift link) genius dinner recipe from the NYT. The eggplants have been getting sliced into circles and deep fried and eaten in a sandwich with tomato and whipped feta or getting charred on the stove for baba ghanoush. The corn is simply boiled and enjoyed with butter but I’m also dreaming of a salad made up of cranberry beans I shucked and froze earlier in the summer, fresh corn, ricotta salata, and tomatoes but this recipe is tbd.
I hope that you’ve been eating well and loving the last rays of the summer sun.
somerville’s pizza situation
a week ago i had the grave misfortune of going on instagram first thing in the morning to witness a video of internet asshat, David Portnoy, getting into a verbal fight with the owner of Dragon Pizza on the streets of Somerville, Mass. The video lodged itself in my brain and quickly set me off on a pissy path for the rest of the day, mainly over how many people in the comments sided with Portnoy for publicly berating a business owner rightfully asking Portnoy to vacate the premises of the pizza shop.
Now, a week later, I’m seeing more positive news coming out of this situation. Dragon Pizza sold out a couple days in a row over Labor Day weekend and even had to close down for a day due to running out of dough, sauce, and cheese. It’s clear that Portnoy’s dickriders are cowards who flooded Dragon Pizza’s Yelp page with bad reviews, yet the people who don’t care for a gambling addict’s untrained food critique flooded the restaurant with cash in hand and a hunger for pizza. It gives me hope to see, in my own neighbourhood, what support looks like, and that despite the hundreds of comments from Portnoy’s fanboys defending his actions, there are reasonable people who agree with someone who stood up to an irl internet bully (which, I guess, is just a regular bully). Charlie Redd, the owner of Dragon Pizza, told Boston.com: “When you’re faced with a bully, you have to stand up to them,” he said. “… I have no regrets. This is really as simple as a playground bully. Everybody knows and feels that they would stand up in this situation, and I feel that I did.”
a mess of pavlova
I’ve been accidentally making my way through Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person. I noticed what was happening when I referenced the book for a recipe for three weeks in a row. Claire’s recipes always hit the mark. The book is full of exciting dessert recipes, that are genuinely well-tested and error-free, which is unfortunately not a given for all dessert books.
Since I’ve been baking on a weekly basis, I happen to have a lot of leftover egg whites sitting in a pint container in the fridge, waiting to be called upon. One of my faves on Instagram, tenderherbs, tends to make and post lots of photos of her pavlovas. She even wrote a guest recipe on Cup of Jo about them. From the photos, they seem like a very elegant yet forgiving dessert: they’re beautiful but kind of messy, look high effort yet all they need is a high-speed whisk. There’s something about them that drew me in. Pavlova feels like the kind of dessert that a woman who cherishes herself would make just for the heck of it. So I set about on my pavlova journey. I whipped my egg whites till foamy, added a ton of sugar, whipped them till I saw stiff peaks, added a buttload of powdered sugar, and whipped THAT until I was afraid I’d break my hand-mixer. The flavouring was simple: just a bit of lemon juice and vanilla syrup. I baked it for 2 hours, let it cool in the oven, and then dressed it beautifully with some last-of-the-season quick-poached rhubarb.
The result? Well. The pavlova tasted the way Dove soap smells and it was so sweet it made my tongue tingle, and it was a bad tingle. After eating a slice, I experienced the type of sugar rush I’ve only ever had while working an office job on a minor holiday where management passes out cheap candy to the staff. The sugar rush led way to a massive crash of anxiety tinged with depression and finally, I settled into my night with a bloated stomach and a sense of self loathing. It’s safe to say I was not a woman who cherished herself that night. It’s also safe to say that I’ve had my fill of pavlova and will never be making it again, and I’ll have to find a better use for my leftover egg whites in the future.
Have you had pavlova before, and if so, how do you feel about it?
Beef Tikka
serves 4
The quintessential grilled beef dish at any Middle Eastern restaurant, beef tikka isn’t meant to be a showcase of the priciest meat you can buy, but rather about just picking a somewhat tender, flavourful cut and cooking it extremely well. The smokiness of grilling is the special touch that makes the beef stand out. I picked my cut of beef from Copicut Farms’ booth at the Brookline Farmer’s Market and you can easily find the beef you need at a supermarket or butcher. I went for sirloin, which has a tender, meaty flavour and is more affordable than tenderloin (where filet mignon cuts come from). Avoid cuts made for long cooking times such as chuck, brisket, and anything labelled “stew meat.”
Salting the beef and letting it sit for 24 hours tenderizes it before cooking. However, if you’re short on time, simply salt the beef right before it goes on the grill.*
*Salting the meat for just a few hours before cooking tends to dry it out, so it’s best to avoid doing this at all when you don’t have 24 hours to let the meat sit in the fridge. When you’re short on time, simply salt the meat right before cooking.
ingredients
1lb sirloin steak
1/4 of a red onion
1/2 cup parsley leaves, stems removed
1/2 tsp sumac
salt + pepper to taste
special equipment
long metal skewers (preferred) or wood skewers, soaked in water overnight to avoid burning
outdoor grill
the way
marinate the meat. the day before you intend to grill, take the cut of beef out of its packaging, blot it dry with a paper towel, and salt it on both sides. The general recommendation is to use 1tsp of salt per pound of meat. Lay the cut on a clean plate and place this in the fridge for 24 hours. I like to keep the meat uncovered so it continues drying in the fridge, making it easier for the beef to take on colour while grilling.
start the grill. The day you’re grilling, start the grill per its instructions and let it heat up while you prep the skewers (keep an eye on the grill and don’t leave fire unattended!)
prep the onion and parsley. Slice the quartered red onion very thinly lengthwise — you’ll get long, thing layers this way. Place sliced onion in a small bowl and top with cold water for 15 minutes to take the edge off. Wash and dry parsley leaves. On a cutting board, tightly bundle up parsley leaves and run a knife through the bundle a couple of times to roughly chop the leaves. Drain the onions and place them in a small dry bowl with the chopped parsley. Lightly season the mixture with salt and sumac. Mix it thoroughly and let sit while you grill.
skewer the beef. Take the beef out of the fridge and chop it into evenly sized cubes. I made mine around 1.5inches large on each side. They must be the same size to cook evenly. Carefully thread these cubes onto your skewers. Leave some space between each cube of meat for airflow and avoid overpacking the skewers. Season the skewers with a few grinds of black pepper and only salt them if you didn’t marinate the meat overnight.
grill the meat over direct heat. Once the coals in your grill have turned ashy and glowing, spread them out evenly over the entire surface of the grill. Place the skewers evenly on the grilling grate. Grill the skewers for a total of 8-10 minutes total, grill uncovered, turning the skewers every 2-3 minutes to ensure an even char on each side.
plate the meat. Once they beef has taken on colour on all sides, remove the skewers from the grill and carefully use a fork to slide them off the skewers onto a serving plate. Back inside, scatter your onion and parsley salad over the beef and serve warm with rice or a pita and a side salad. I had my tikka alongside a plate of warm fava bean rice (gift link) and a small fattoush salad.
Thank you for reading i was cooking! August was an unintended but actually much needed summer break and a perfect time to catch up on the sun, try and get back into reading, and start taking yoga classes again.
Coming up in your inbox this month is a trip together to the Armenian grocery store and a breakdown of must-buys as well as one more recipe to close out September as well as YEAR THREE of the existence of this newsletter. If you haven’t already, subscribe below so you don’t miss it!
this is my favorite newsletter I will always stop whatever I'm doing to read it <3
Wow! You should come over and cook for me! I love the looks of the beef recipe (and love the story about Portnoy which I had also read about).