Spicy, Giant Crunchy Corn by Alison Roman

I truly can’t believe I’m writing this. The final recipe. 

There were days when I wished time would speed up so I could arrive here. There have been far more days when I wished time would slow down to delay things a little longer. I wish I could go back and taste certain dishes for the first time, feel the rush of those small victories all over again. I wish I could relive all of the conversations and community shared around those meals. 

For a whole year, my social life has primarily revolved around a cooking project. For a whole year, I’ve filled moments of solitude, of dreaming about the future, of rest, of worry, of exhaustion - with cooking and writing. It would be impossible to count the hours spent on this project, but there’s really no need to do that. I would do it all over again. 

It feels sort of odd to end such a journey with a recipe as simple as spiced corn nuts. Somehow this one slipped through the cracks till the very end. Yet, after what’s felt like a marathon of the past month, perhaps it’s fitting to end with a snack that only requires baking corn nuts in oil, then tossing them in nutritional yeast and aleppo pepper. What results are highly addictive and oddly irresistible toasty corn kernels - perfect for a party or sharing with coworkers the next day. A dish meant to be shared. (I couldn’t for the life of me find quicos, so I used the Love Corn brand of corn nuts, which are less salty).

This project started out of a desire to reincorporate my artist-self back into my daily life. After years of studying theater and making art all the time, the years since have felt drier, lacking. This project changed that by providing an outlet for self-expression and personal growth all in one. I don’t want to go back to my old way of being. I’m ready to keep going. 

This is not the end. I believe it’s only the beginning.

225 recipes cooked, 0 to go. Goal: Complete.

Trout Roe on Buttered Toast with Lemony Herbs & Smoked Trout with Mustard and Apples by Alison Roman

For the not-so seafood savvy like me, you might be wondering, what is trout roe exactly? Also referred to as caviar, roe is an unfertilized egg collected from a fish. Not exactly a description I call “appetizing.” I recognize that many people view caviar as a delicacy, but I’m not really a delicacy kind of person. Needless to say, I put this recipe off until I couldn’t any longer. 

Last week, I decided that it was high time to start crossing off the final seafood recipes. So I picked two: trout roe on toast and smoked trout with mustard and apples. Then I marched over to Whole Foods with determination and a tinge of dread. I found smoked trout in a refrigerator next to the seafood counter, but didn’t see the roe. I asked the seafood counter for help, and turns out, the roe was next to the smoked trout, but it was labeled caviar. Clearly I hadn’t done my research yet. They didn’t have trout roe, but Alison says salmon roe will do the trick, so that’s what I purchased. 

I paid for the products reluctantly (caviar is pricey!) and marched back over the bridge toward home. That afternoon, I popped a slice of sourdough in the toaster, smeared a heck of a lot of butter on it, and topped it with dill, lemon zest, flaky salt, and roe. And it wasn’t bad. It’s hard to mess with buttered toast and dill. Roe is very fishy, perhaps too much for my taste. But I could sort of convince myself that it was good. I still have much of the jar left, so maybe I’ll try it with potato chips like Alison does in the video she released today (I swear I’m getting more and more on her wavelength somehow). 

The next day, I pulled out the package of smoked trout and tried a small bite. Again, not terrible, but not something I’d normally choose to eat. This salad is a nice way to eat it though, with plenty of vinegar to balance out the fishiness. Sour cream smeared on the bottom of the bowl, mustard greens (I used arugula) and mustard seeds soaked in apple cider vinegar. Smoked trout, too. All in all a fine combination. Jordan and I ate this for lunch. Now that I’m thinking about, it would have gone nicely with some salty potato chips, too! 

If you like this kind of fishy food, I think you’ll love these recipes. If you don’t, feel free to skip them.

190 and 191 recipes cooked, 34 to go.

Seeded Breadsticks with Parmesan by Alison Roman

I don’t think I’ve ever fully bought into the idea of the breadstick. What about the shape of a stick makes bread any better? Though a thinner cylinder of bread may be easier to bite into than a loaf, will you at least grant me the point that a bread stick dries out much faster than a round or rectangular loaf of bread? I like bread crust as a general matter, but will you not concede that the inner parts of bread, aka everything but the crust, is the best, softest, loveliest part of bread? And do you not also see that breadsticks, given their shape, inherently require a higher crust to inner bread ratio? Thus, making breadsticks inherently inferior to a normal oval loaf of bread? I don’t mean to be aggressive, but I can’t help but question the philosophy of going out of one’s way to make breadsticks, when clearly a loaf is better AND less work. 

To all the Olive Garden lovers who rave about their bottomless breadsticks, I tell you now, that OG is just not that good. The food is subpar and the restaurant lacks any charm. If the only thing you can love about it are their breadsticks, then there must be something wrong with the restaurant to begin with because breadsticks are also not very good. May I suggest, instead, Panera? If you’re going for a chain restaurant that specializes in carbohydrates, why not go to one that at least has fantastic loaves of sourdough, wheat, and just about every other kind of bread on tap. Plus, at Panera, you can order a cup of their tomato soup, which is my favorite. But that’s besides the point. 

Clearly Alison’s breadsticks did little to sway me. I appreciated her additions of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and parmesan, which made them a little like everything-bagel breadsticks. But sadly, they dried out after just an hour and a half of sitting on the table during dinner. This was a product of the sticks being so thin -- she instructs you to cut the dough into 1/4th inch thick strips. Also, because they’re so thin, the breadsticks completely forfeited one of the most important functions of bread with dinner: dipping. There was simple not enough surface space to soak up and absorb the short rib juices (the main course). 

Sadly, this side is one of those that I made for the project, but don’t see the point in making again. I think I’ll stick with my bread loaves for dinner. 

166 recipes cooked, 59 to go.

Dad's Scotch Gravlax by Alison Roman

There was this bagel shop near my high school that served a freshly baked, toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese for $5.50. Besides going to Panera for a cup of their tomato soup, this was my ideal lunch, which I ate often. 

One day in line at the bagel shop, I heard the person in front of me order a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese. I hadn’t the faintest idea what lox was. Since these were the olden days, and I didn’t have a smartphone to look up quick definitions or Google Image search for clues, I had to use my good old fashioned virtues of paying really close attention. As we all stood by the counter, waiting for our order number to be called, I kept my eye on the lox-orderer. Of course, the last thing I expected to see was cured salmon. When I saw that plate of bagel and cheese topped in fish, I couldn’t help but say “gross!” out loud. To this day, I don’t know if the lox-orderer heard me. 

Also, to this day, I’ve never ordered a bagel with lox and cream cheese. I have absolutely no desire for it, mostly due to texture (can you say slimy?). So when I saw this gravlax recipe, I had two reactions: 1) “what is gravlax?” and 2) “oh no.” 

Answer key: 

  1. Gravlax is Nordic salmon dish that consists of salmon cured (never smoked) in salt, sugar, and dill. Alison’s definition adds scotch, lemon zest, and aleppo pepper. 

    1. There are two main steps to making Alison’s Dad’s gravlax. First, you must make the ingredients become intimately acquainted with one another. Start by pouring a tablespoon of scotch over the fish. Then, after massaging the other ingredients listed above into what feels like “wet sand,” rub them on top of the salmon. Second, you must prepare it for curing. This involves tightly wrapping the fish and cure in many layers of saran wrap. Then poking a few holes in the wrapping on the bottom. And finally, placing the salmon on a rack inside of a baking sheet with a plate and heavy skillet on top to press the cure into the salmon. Over the next 3-5 days (I decided on 4), water creeps out of the salmon and it becomes cured. 

  2. My worst fears didn’t come true. Yes, the salmon is somewhat slimy, and yes, it was a mental battle for me to get over that fact. But the flavor is so complex and interesting and in your face, that it overrode any focus on texture. Seriously -- the flavors of scotch, pepper, and lemon are so strong, that I couldn’t think of anything else. If I were to make this again, which, who knows, I might some day, I would stop the curing at 3 days for a slightly fresher taste. But I can’t stress enough how much the flavor distracted me from what I was most wary of. 

    1. It helped that I served the fish with other delicious things: gluten-free bagel, almond milk cream cheese, cucumber slices, and lemon. 

To answer your ever-burning question, will I now become a lox-orderer after making Mr. Roman’s gravlax? The answer is, likely not. 

148 recipes cooked, 77 to go.

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