A Letter From August
Tips for making pie, really good scrambled eggs and everything I wanted to eat in August.
In the month of August, like any other month, I spent most of my time occupying one of three spaces at any given time:
In the kitchen, cooking
In Notion, planning out things to cook
In my head, dreaming up things I might plan to cook
Most of those things never make it to this newsletter in sparkling recipe form. The reason often being that they don’t feel special enough, that they feel too special, or that they require somewhat specialized equipment (i.e. an ice cream maker or a pizza oven) that I don’t find entirely relatable. I thought I’d share them all here for a change for you to do with what you will.
One of my fixations this month has been making baguettes. Because I’m annoying, I only found myself interested in sourdough long after everyone concluded their pandemic hobby phase and just began working with it this year. Considering this has been my year of bread and French cooking (I only just got over my fixation with making a perfect French omelette), baguettes were a natural result. I use the recipe from Tartine Bread and the shaping and steaming method from Claire Saffitz. My results have been serviceable, though I’d like to see a bit more oven spring and a more open crumb. I have some ideas about the poolish I’ll be testing out next.
This month I also fell back in love with the simplicity of eggs and toast. Every afternoon, I like to have a hearty and lightly sweet honey 9-grain bread, sliced thick, toasted, with custardy eggs heaped on top. I love having a husband for many reasons, but particularly because I think three scrambled eggs is the perfect amount for two people, and if I were cooking for just myself, I would constantly be torn between making slightly too much or too little.
Here are my tips for custardy, no-frills scrambled eggs.
Beat your eggs with salt (1/4 tsp for three) until no streaks of white remain. This will take longer than you think, but it’s worth the commitment.
Mise en place. Have your eggs beaten, your bread toasted and your plates at the ready before you heat up a pan. The reason being that these eggs need to come out of the pan the very second they’re ready.
Set a small nonstick pot or pan over high heat and drop in a small pat of butter. When it begins to foam, pour in your eggs, shake the pan constantly, and stir vigorously with a silicon spatula, making sure to get into the corners. When they’ve begun to set into glossy curds, immediately remove them from the heat and get them out of the pan.
I like to accompany my eggs with a smoothie so I have a whole balance of fruits-veggies-protein going on. I am a smoothie minimalist. I don’t fuss with things like maca powder or spirulina at home. All my smoothies include a frozen banana and a big fistful of fresh spinach. My favorite combination lately has gone like this: fresh spinach, frozen banana, a splash of soy milk, 2 parts frozen cherries, 1 part frozen mixed berries, a teaspoon of honey, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of cardamom. If I’m making it a bowl, I top it with more banana, bee pollen (helps with allergies, allegedly), smooth peanut butter and homemade granola. To emulate my granola, pick whatever recipe looks good online and replace the honey or maple syrup or whatever it calls for with molasses and double the salt.
While egg toast and smoothies made up most of my weekday lunches, over the weekends I was frequently craving a good club sandwich. I like mine with both ham and turkey, and I always add a mild sliced cheese. I don’t add the third slice of bread in the middle because I think that’s the sort of gluttony god would frown upon.
I’ve also been enchanted by the idea of slab pie (I’ll be selling slices on 9/16 at First Light Books in Austin — You heard it here first!) and trying to enjoy all the late summer fruit before it’s gone. I took a slow and thoughtful approach to making a strawberry rhubarb pie that went like this:
Macerate the fruit in lemon juice, sugar and spices in the fridge overnight.
Collect the fruit juice that has accumulated by the next morning and reduce it over the stove.
Reintroduce the thickened fruit juice to the filling followed by a spoonful each of cornstarch and flour.
Assemble the pie and place it in the freezer as the oven preheats to allow for maximum stability and definition in the crust pattern.
Egg wash twice (chilling in between) for an extra glossy browned finish and top with crunchy sugar.
This method yielded extremely delicious results, and notably, resulted in zero spillage or overflow from the filling, which I think is an impressive feet for a pie made up of such water-ladened fruits like berries.
On the topic of desserts, the heat this month has also called for plenty of ice cream. I got ambitious and made three flavors to assemble into spumoni and learned something along the way: If you over-reduce your jam by leaving it unattended too long at too high of a heat setting, the sugars will caramelize. This was entirely by accident, but resulted in a thick, rich cherry caramel which turned out to be the perfect way to introduce cherry flavor into ice cream base without adding a lot of water (which makes ice cream icy and unpleasant.)
Another summer flavor I’ve been loving is corn, as you can probably tell by this month’s recipes for Summer Cakes with Sweet Corn, Blueberries & Toasted Meringue and Charred Summer Vegetable Salad with Burrata & Basil Oil, or this corn and seafood chowder.
That’s all I have to share this month, but if you’d like to receive more kitchen dispatches and loose cooking suggestions in the future, you know how to reach me and let me know.
As always,
Bella
where do you buy speck/brie/cheese/deli meats in general?
Every single one of these sounds like something I desperately need to try and make. If you’re willing to share the pie recipe, that would be so so special