Today we have for you:
My new go-to mapo tofu
The shoulder season between summer and fall is maybe my favorite time to cook. The temps have cooled off a bit, so the oven is back in play, and there are still tomatoes and peppers and corn and eggplant at the markets. The neat packages of pens and notebooks in the back-to-school sales have me feeling very organized (or, at least, wanting to be organized) and thinking about what I want to make, what I want to eat, what I want to try. And right now I very much want Hetty Lui McKinnon’s vegetarian tomato mapo tofu. Mapo tofu is one of those dishes I like to collect recipes for (see also: Hainan chicken rice), borrowing ingredients or tips from one to incorporate in another. Hetty adds fresh tomatoes to hers, which is such a great move — their sweet acidity is a perfect match for the tingly, spicy, funky flavors of mapo tofu. I can easily see myself adding tomatoes to all my mapo tofus moving forward, since the assertive dish more than makes up for any off-season produce. “Very tasty and alive with flavor,” writes Dylan, a reader — that’s a Hetty dish for you. Featured Recipe Vegetarian Tomato Mapo TofuToday’s specialsRoasted dill salmon: If I make a generous slab of Naz Deravian’s golden, citrusy salmon for dinner tonight, that means I’ll have leftovers for Friday’s lunch and Saturday’s breakfast. As several readers have pointed out, you can swap pomegranate molasses for the maple syrup for extra tang. White chicken chili: Starting this month, I’ve challenged myself to make a big pot of beans once a month so that I have super flavorful beans at the ready for stews, soups, hearty breakfasts and quick lunches. I have some creamy-bellied white beans sitting in their cooking liquid in the fridge, which means Lidey Heuck’s white chicken chili will be in my near future. (You can, of course, make this with canned beans!) Lunchbox harvest muffins: I know that the destination for these darling muffins, packed as they are with grated apple, carrot and zucchini, is right there in the name. But tell me that you don’t want one of these Melissa Clark treats as a midnight snack, eaten over the sink and smeared with cream cheese or, oh, labneh.
And before you goNot only do we have a new list of the 50 best restaurants in the country, but we also have a list of our 12 favorite recipes from restaurants and bakeries that you can make at home. If you, like me, don’t live in New York but want to eat as if you do, you’ll be happy to know there’s plenty of New York goodies on this list, like Raf’s tardivo salad and the halloumi, arugula and tomato sandwiches from Baby Blues Luncheonette. And now, Adina Steiman has adapted the recipe for the creamy, funky fuyu cacio e pepe mein from Calvin Eng and Phoebe Melnick of Bonnie’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; you can click here or on the image below to watch the dish come together.
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