Impostor al Pastor by Alison Roman

I’m from Southern California, and I’ve experienced the true delight of the same L.A. street tacos that Alison is trying to replicate in this recipe. Alison’s right: no one can perfectly recreate the crispy yet tender al pastor tacos of L.A. Those street vendors know pork better than anyone. But dang, Alison’s impostor al pastor tacos get pretty darn close. Taco bout a good taco! 

Heads up – this recipe isn’t a-whip-it-up-in-an-hour type. The meat really benefits from a few hours of marinating, and the marinade itself is somewhat labor intensive. But if you have the time, it’ll be well spent on this recipe. 

I prepared the marinade in the morning before the work day started. Notice my coffee next to the pineapple :). The marinade also serves as a fabulous sauce to drizzle over the tacos, chips, romaine lettuce, etc. The sauce is a blend of white onion, pineapple, spices, guajillo peppers and pepper water. The pepper prep includes toasting the peppers in a skillet until they look charred and puffed up by the heat. Then they need to have their seeds removed and cut into thick rings. The rings of peppers sit in hot water for 10 or so minutes to soften. Then the peppers are transferred to a blender with the other aforementioned ingredients, along with a cup of the pepper water. The whole process took about 20 minutes, with another 10 minutes of cleaning up. I cut the pork into 1-inch thick slabs and placed them in a large bowl to marinate with two-thirds of the sauce. 

After work ended, it came time to cook the pork! This took a little while. Alison recommends cooking the pork through once, cutting it into smaller pieces, and then doing a second round of cooking to get a slightly crispy exterior. I was not able to achieve the level of crisp like in L.A., but the flavor was pretty darn close! FYI – the pork did a number on my cast iron skillet. It was very hard to clean. I might try a non-stick skillet next time. 

Now, for the fixings. I followed Alison’s recommendations almost to the letter, including chopped tomatillos, cilantro, limes, cotija, and pineapple salsa. The marinade only calls for half of the pineapple, and Alison includes a recipe to combine the other half with onion, cilantro and lime juice for a salty-sweet taco topping. I received rave reviews from Madeline, Sam, and Jordan. All of them openly admitted that this one falls in their top meals from the project – and they’ve had a lot of them! 

123 recipes cooked, 102 to go.

Turmeric-Roasted Carrots with Seeds and Labne

I love a good roasted carrot, don’t you? If you’re like me, you almost always have a bag of carrots on hand. And if you’re like me, you also typically wait until they’re about to go bad to consider eating them. The carrots usually sit hidden in a drawer, and then one day I’ll catch a glimpse of orange and realize that if I don’t act fast, I’ll lose the whole bunch to old age. When these situations arise, I almost always place them on sheet pan, turn the oven to 450, cover the carrots with olive oil and various spices, and roast them until tender. If we don’t eat them all for dinner, I have the leftovers for lunch with whatever else I’m eating that day. 

Alison treats her carrots the same way. Exactly the same, in fact. Here she prefers to use turmeric, coriander seed, and fennel seed as seasonings of choice. But the beauty of carrots is that they pair well with so many different spices! Most often I choose cumin. Sometimes smoked paprika and chile powder. I liked this particular combo that Alison uses, especially the seeds, which are fun to bite into. 

Alison also loves some good dairy mixed with lemon and garlic to go with her veggies. I’ve noticed it’s kind of her thing. And you might notice that I chose to skip that here. While I could have gone with some goat’s milk yogurt for my base instead of labne, I had a particularly discouraging episode with dairy the night before, and let’s just say my body would not have thanked me for giving it more. Sometimes, ya gotta call an audible and listen to your body’s cues. 

If you have a bag of carrots in your fridge, don’t neglect them. Cherish them. Give them the oil and spices they deserve and heat them up until your fork can’t help but pierce one. And then another. And another. 

122 recipes cooked, 103 to go.

Sour Cherry and Sesame Galette by Alison Roman

I was legitimately nervous about making this galette, for the sole reason that the pictures of it in nothing fancy are gorgeous. The top crust looks so delicate and precise – there’s no way my galette could even closely resemble what Alison made.  

Well, guess what. About half-way through the baking process, I decided not to care! I let my tendency to compare and harshly judge my own work go by the wayside. I was at my in-laws home with a lovely afternoon breeze passing through the screen door. My brother- and sister-in-law were in town, and I love their company. To let my petty pie crust fears get in the way of a lovely afternoon would simply violate all logical cost-benefit analysis. And if you’re a Varberg, cost-benefit analysis reigns supreme. 

So I went to town on two pie crust rounds, utilizing King Arthur’s Gluten Free pie crust recipe. I’ve now made five of these crusts now, and the recipe continues to hold up well. While the dough chilled, I focused on pitting 2.5 lbs of cherries. That’s a LOT of cherries! It was a divine moment when I discovered that Michelle owned a cherry pitter… I didn’t even know that existed! Instead of halving each cherry and digging the pit out with my thumb, I just punctured each cherry with the pitter, which spit out the pit into a tiny bowl. But even with this modern contraption, the task took about 30 minutes to finish. I tossed the cherries with lime zest and sugar before setting them aside to roll out the dough. 

Rolling pie dough takes patience and a willingness to stick it back in the fridge at a moment's notice. As soon as the dough starts to feel slightly too warm, it really needs to get cold again before trying to coax it along. I’m learning that pies are not something I can count on being finished in a certain window of time. They take the time they take, and so many external conditions affect that. 

Once the first disk was ready, I spread a third-cup of tahini paste over the dough, leaving a sizeable border along the edges. The cherries followed suit. I cut out holes in the other dough as instructed, though I confess that I didn’t plan the spacing out very well. To be honest, I was quite distracted by the fantastic conversation I was having with Heidi, my new sis. She’s delightful. Even more delightful than pie. I placed the holey dough on top and folded the edges. The final touches include an egg wash for browning, sugar, and sesame seeds. The galette spends about a half hour at a higher temp, and 20 minutes at a lower temp. By the end, the crust should be a light golden brown. 

I love cherries, so I enjoyed this one. The combination with tahini works, but it wasn’t my favorite. I wish everything was a little sweeter; the sourness of the cherries and saltiness of the sesame paste dominated the flavor. Even though some of the crust broke on top, I’m still proud of how this turned out. I’m growing, friends. And that feels really good. 

121 recipes cooked, 104 to go.

Tiny Peppers with Yuzu Kosho by Alison Roman

I agree with Alison that serving tiny peppers that have been tossed in a paste also made of tiny peppers is kind of funny. Meta, even. But regardless of how odd the concept might sound, these little green dudes were surprisingly a hit. 

The recipe calls for shishito peppers: small, green, slightly wrinkly and mildly spicy peppers widely found at Trader Joes. I’ve never seen them at Whole Foods, but they seem to be at TJ’s every week. These peppers are ever so slightly more spicy than a bell pepper, and most of their kick lies in their seeds. I’m not known for having a particularly high spice tolerance, and I still felt confident enough to eat them whole (save the stem) and in one bite. Believe me, that says something. 

I tossed the peppers with olive oil, salt, and pepper before placing them over the grill, set to medium-high. I could blame this on Alison, or I could just admit that I wasn’t really thinking, but I should have known that the peppers were likely to fall through the grate. An extra 30 seconds of critical thinking could have provoked me to put a grill pan underneath them. In the end, we lost about 20% of our peppers that day. May they rest in peace. 

The survivors were tossed with several tablespoons of yuzu kosho, a tangy pepper paste, and lime juice before hitting the table. Our meal that evening consisted of smoked ribs (my father-in-law is a master), Alison’s Crushed Baby Potatoes (aka her far better version of a potato salad), the peppers, and corn bread. For dessert, we had Alison’s Sour Cherry and Sesame Galette (post to come). Toward the end of the meal, Jordan turned to me and said, “This one goes in my top 3 Alison appetizers.” So I call that a win. 

120 recipes cooked, 105 to go.

Grilled Eggplant Dressed with Garlicky Walnuts and Lots of Basil by Alison Roman

Eggplant, I’ve learned, is polarizing. Its flavor, its texture, and even its shape seem to draw out strong responses from people. Whether you love it or hate it, you feel strongly about the camp you’re in. Which is funny to me, because personally I’m in the middle. I didn’t grow up with eggplant – I’m not even sure if I’d heard of it till college. But my school’s cafeteria didn’t do the vegetables any justice. It wasn’t until making my own ratatouille that I was presented with eggplant in an edible, non-soggy and flavorless form. That experience turned me on to eggplant. I realized its potential for providing an almost creamy element to recipes, when cooked correctly. Alison sure loves a creamy eggplant, and has since exposed me to several other ways to eat it, particularly the oil-roasted method. Which I think I prefer to grilled eggplant. 

Grilled eggplant, though it looked pretty, didn’t prove to be the best eating experience. I found that the skin became tougher and hard to chew. I found myself scraping the flesh out with my fork, which was far less appetizing. 

The flavor of this recipe… well, there wasn’t a whole lot of it. In my opinion, Alison’s signature move is in-your-face flavor. But this recipe lacked boldness. The toasted walnuts with garlic and pepper flakes were nice but not strong. The basil added some obviously herbal notes, but it didn’t transform anything. Salt and pepper didn’t carry enough weight to make this stand out. And in fact, only two of the four of us ended up eating any of it. I brought my leftovers home, and a week later, they’re still sitting in my fridge, untouched. 

All that to say, I’m still squarely in the middle when it comes to eggplant. I really like the oven-roasted kind, but I’m out for soggy or grilled eggplant. I don’t care how tiny and cute the eggplant might be, the recipe needs to have decisive flavor. Do you have eggplant standards, too? I’d love to know! 

119 recipes cooked, 106 to go.