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I got vanilla beans for Christmas from my best friend. I stashed them, thinking they were too special to use for a non-special occasion. And then, things happened at my job that made me unhappy enough to realise I needed to find a new job.
After a frustrating, fruitless week of job hunting in late February, I walked into Blanchard’s and bought a massive bottle of decent quality vodka, and, at home, split the vanilla beans in half, placed them in a jar (one also gifted to me by my best friend, this time for my quarantine birthday, containing homemade rosemary-infused simple syrup to go along with the other ingredients of our favourite cocktail, a French 75) and covered them with the vodka.
According to Smitten Kitchen, this recipe for homemade vanilla extract would be ready to use within 6-8 weeks. The purpose for making it at home?
1) to use up the special friendship beans and incorporate them into all my baked goods this year
2) to stop spending so much dang money on tiny bottles of vanilla extract and
3) as an assurance to myself that I would probably definitely oh god hopefully have found a new job by the time it was ready to use.
This morning, exactly seven weeks to the day of starting the vanilla extract, I’m starting my first day at my new job at Peregrine, the sister restaurant to Juliet in Somerville. I’ve known I’ve wanted to work for this hospitality group ever since my and Olivia’s first brunch at Juliet in late October of 2019. I’m beyond excited to move on and start my first SECOND adult job, with a company I admire, learning about new ingredients and techniques and wine and cocktails and management style. I haven’t used my brain at work in a long long time, and the challenge of discomfort at my new job, of ~not knowing everything~ has got me nervous as hell. But I’m prepared for this, and I’m dressed for this, and my friends have handled TOO MUCH of my shit for the last three months for me not to give my all to this job.
The recipe I’m sharing today is one I wrote after eating a sausage pita from Sofra with Olivia, deep in the middle of quarantine last year, which to me was April since I went back to work in June. I left it alone for a year because I wasn’t happy with my writing, but I looked over it and cooked it again recently, determined share the experience of being alone but eating together in March-June of 2020:
And so this newsletter is an ode to pandemic eating. It’s a reminder to share your meals—bake a birthday cake over zoom with a friend then cut your cake over zoom with your family; make a homemade cocktail and fit it into a discreet juice bottle, then pop some champagne on a side street to top off your French 75 and drink it while wandering around your city with your best friend; pack fresh-baked scones and cookies into one of the numerous take-out containers you’ve been hoarding (you know the good quality, hard-plastic ones I’m talking about) to share with friends at the park, find a way to cook for another person and have them cook for you because it’s sharing food that shows me how deeply we care for one another still, despite the distance and really, it’s been through food that I’m reminded of my will for survival.
This recipe is a recreation of Sofra’s Sausage Pita, currently on their menu and highly recommended. It serves as a reminder of the great day my best friend and I had together getting three pastries apiece from our favourite bakery and laying our bounty under the shadow of a willow tree in Cambridge’s Fresh Pond.
The Takeaway
This recipe is about browning and braising meat. The meat in this recipe is being cooked in TWO ways. First, it is seared at high heat to achieve a beautiful brown color all around. Then, it is very quickly braised in orange juice in order to make it tender again and to deglaze the pan. Traditionally, braising is a process that takes around 3-4 hours, but the ground meat here requires only around ten minutes. The most vital takeaway from this recipe is to learn how to brown meat (and vegetables). You can achieve proper browning by picking a pan big enough to accommodate however much meat you’re cooking. For a pound of meat (4 sausages), I picked a large 12in pan. When I first made the recipe with just two sausages, my small 8in egg frying pan sufficed.
Pan size here matters because it’s not possible to properly brown meat if your pan is too small. Everything we cook, whether eggs or meat or vegetables or fruit, releases water as it cooks down. If you pile on a bunch of raw ground meat into a tiny pan, the water will pool around the meat and boil it, leading to grayish meat. But when food is properly spaced out in a pan (or roasting pan in the oven!), this water will evaporate quickly and allow the meat or vegetables to brown. This browning process is called the Maillard reaction, which creates new flavours in a food. The Maillard reaction is the reason toasted bread tastes so much more complex than untoasted. In the presence of heat, the aromatic molecules in the pale bread transform into entirely new flavours and heightened aromas. The same happens with toasted baked goods, nuts, poptarts, and vegetables (Nosrat, Samin. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, 2017).
If you think you hate most vegetables, it’s possible you only hated them because you were force fed the boiled versions of them.
This recipe also teaches you to layer your salt. The meat and onions in the recipe are lightly salted in preparation of being mixed with tangy, salty feta and briny black olives. Remember to taste at every stage to ensure things aren’t getting too salty or spicy for your taste. Tasting at every stage includes tasting your ingredients, like the feta I found, which was much saltier than the brand I normally buy. Finally, you will also learn how to bloom spices to get their full effect.
Hot Tips
meat: I recommend getting Italian pork sausages for this recipe. Italian pork sausages are traditionally made of ground pork, seasoned with fennel and a few other spices (ground onion, garlic, paprika, etc). I picked the spicy ones I found at the store and then added even more spices to my liking. You can also try making this with chicken Italian sausage or regular ground pork, beef, or chicken. If using plain ground meat, up the amount of spices in the recipe to taste. Remember that you’re looking for raw sausage in the butcher section, not ready-to-eat hotdogs
feta: Use a fresh block of feta brined in water instead of buying crumbled feta, if you can. Yes, the recipe asks you to crumble the feta anyway, but the block feta is a higher quality product and tastes fresher than the crumbled stuff. Every brand of feta has a different level of salinity, so always taste it before using and adjust how much salt you use in your meal accordingly
zest: My cheap microplane zester is my favourite kitchen tool. If you don’t have one, carefully use a cheese grater, or peel the orange and chop the slivers very finely. don’t hurt yourself
spices: The purpose of adding the fennel seeds and fresno pepper to the oil before adding anything else to the pan is to bloom them, which is to make them fragrant and lively again. I use a fresno pepper for heat and colour but you can try a green serrano or dried chili flakes or omit peppers completely to avoid spiciness. If you don’t have fennel seeds on hand, you can sub it with ground coriander. If you don’t have spices at all, you can omit them entirely, especially if you bought the already spiced Italian pork sausages
pita: I went back and forth about using middle eastern pita versus a versatile flour tortilla in this recipe. I ended up using tortillas because of how much easier it is to find in the US. Good pita is hard to find, but if you live by an Arab, Armenian, Turkish, Iranian, or even Indian grocer, you’ll have good luck finding soft, fresh pita bread there. Don’t bother with the leathery, thick pita pockets at regular supermarkets and stick with the more pliable tortilla for this recipe.
sausage pita wraps
makes 4 servings
the stuff
4 Italian pork sausage links, spicy or mild
1 small yellow onion
1 tbsp olive oil
8 8in flour tortillas
1 orange, zested and juiced (zest and juice should be kept separate)
1/2 cup pitted black kalamata olives, cut in half, plus more for snacking
1/2 cup (4oz) feta block, crumbled
1 red fresno pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 tsp paprika
salt and pepper
red chili flakes (optional)
toothpicks (optional)
the way
prepare the sausage and vegetables: take the sausages out of their natural casing. Crumble them, using your hands, into a small bowl—this helps with declumping them before they hit the pan. Mince (i.e. very finely dice) the onion. Slice the red fresno pepper into not-too-thin slivers.
bloom aromatics and sauté onion: heat your pan over medium low heat. Add olive oil. Once the oil shimmers, add the slivered fresno pepper. Stir, careful not to burn it, for 2 minutes. Add the minced onion and increase heat to medium high. Lightly salt the onion as you sauté it, around 5 minutes until translucent. Add the fennel seeds, paprika, and red chili flakes if using and stir until fragrant, around 1 minute. Spoon the fried onions into a bowl and set aside. Do not wipe clean the pan
sauté the meat: add the crumbled sausage and quickly break up the clumps of meat, as best you can. Lightly salt and generously pepper the sausage as it cooks for six minutes, stirring it once. Add back the onions and spices and mix until incorporated.
add the orange juice and braise: add the orange juice to the pan and reduce heat to low, allowing the meat to lightly and quickly braise, softening a bit. Make sure to deglaze here so as not to lose the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Once most of the juice is absorbed, around 10 minutes, you’ll notice the sausage has separated from its oil. Take this mixture and place it in a bowl, possibly the same tupperware you’ll store the leftovers in, and allow to cool slightly.
warm the tortillas and assemble: wash and dry your large pan and set it over medium low heat. warm however many tortillas you’re eating today on both sides, about 2 minutes per side, in batches. place the tortillas on a cutting board. crumble and eighth (0.5oz) of feta into an iphone 4-sized rectangle in the centre of each tortilla. follow with an eighth of the sausage-pepper-onion mixture. top with sliced olives (unless you’re a hater), and garnish with the orange zest. If you haven’t overstuffed the tortilla, you should be able to fold in all sides of the tortilla towards the center, the same way you’d roll a burrito, except you’re aiming for a flat rectangle. You may need to keep it from unfurling by sticking a couple toothpicks through the folds.
warm the wraps: do not skip this step. so much happens here. gently transfer the tortilla wraps back into the clean pan, bottom (cheese side) down. With a spatula, press down on the wrap and allow it to heat through for around 3 minutes per side, essentially panini-ing it on the stovetop. This step melts the feta inside, intensifies the aroma of the orange zest, and crisps up the tortilla so it crunches when you bite it. If the tortilla turns reddish from the oil inside, you’re on the right track.
Serve: serve each tortilla wrap warm. Do not assemble tortillas unless you plan to eat them immediately.
Storage instructions: store each component separately in the fridge, which will keep for around 5 days. For a higher maintenance way to use up the sausage mix, consider making savoury poptarts following a Pâte Brisée recipe, and lining each poptart with sausage instead of raspberry jam.
foodie fuckups
I don’t have any fuckups to share because I really haven’t been cooking much since I’ve been stuck in an endless cycle of closing every night and snacking on cheese when I get home. BUT! I bought a cauliflower ready to become Alison Roman’s creamy cauliflower pasta.
lunchtime reads
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Will you do me a favour? Even if you don’t read any of this, could you read this poem and this second poem please, and remember to be thankful for everything you have today? These poems remind me to stop taking everything I have for granted. The chilly spring winds remind me just how grateful I am to still be here.
consuming
Grouplove’s This is This. Olivia Rodrigo and crying, obvi. This unapologetically jealous song, “all your exes,” by Julia Michaels.
Nadia Owusu’s Aftershocks, an incredible Ghanian-Armenian woman’s memoir of the seismic events, both physical and mental, that shaped her life.
Watching Bojack Horseman again, which simultaneously makes you feel better and worse about your own sadness.
doing
Tearing my hair out after weeks of unsuccessful apartment hunting (should I start another vanilla extract for that? this time I have a five-week deadline before my lease expires on my current apartment).
My roommate Riley and I bought matching roller skates from Impala Skate Shop (through Fritzy’s Skate Shop). We accidentally started an Allston Gurlz Skate Crew, through shear force of girls never wanting to go to the male-dominated skate park alone. Join us.
A special thank you to Nour for recommending me and teaching me to negotiate for better pay and benefits, and proofreading ALL my emails; Olivia for looking up and sending me job openings during her free time; Riley for being there to listen every night through this search; and the ladies in Willow’s bi-monthly Girls Creative Group for never failing to hype me up and push one another forward. This new job (or this newsletter) wouldn’t have happened without the support of the compassionate women in my life. Thank you.
1. The three pastries each picnic <333
2. "You Can't Have It All" is so good oh my GOD
3. I love you!!