Sweet + Sour Sardines, Sun Dried Tomato Paste, The Only Sweatshirt, and My Favorite Podcast of All Time.
Plus: Exclusive discount on Fishwife tinned fish!
Good morning from sweaty SoHo, where the people are eternally on their way to an exercise class or waiting in-line to buy luxury goods on streets that smell of hot piss. I never thought I would say this, but as the nuclear dose of botox for my stress-related TMJ begins to fade, I can’t wait to get back to Pasadena (my grays are showing).
That said, we have made good use of our time in my hometown. I was thrilled to catch the friends & family preview of Eel Bar, the new LES spot from the team that brought you Cervo’s, The Fly, and Hart’s. We slipped in with a same- day res to the Mission Chinese Chinatown pop-up, the easiest table to get in town. The food did not disappoint, and it’s up and running through the end of the summer. I hit the Makié summer sale, stocking up on chic baby gifts (nothing compares to their bloomers and fleece hats) and I popped into the new Hauser & Wirth Wooster Street gallery space, with Roni Horn cast glass sculptures on view. (Manuela, Hauser’s highly underrated Los Angeles restaurant, will open their second location on Prince & Wooster this Fall). I love seeing Soho being reclaimed by art spaces, blue chip as they may be.
Ok, on to what to eat/cook/listen to and wear this week!
EAT
Let me tell you about estratto, the Sicilian sun dried tomato paste sold in clay-like mounds in the market, and the contents of every available square inch of my suitcase. Blood red, the flavor is infinitely more balanced than conventional tomato paste. It’s so sweet, I was even moved to ask a vendor if he had added sugar. Butt-hurt, he assured me that the sacred paste was made from just ripe tomatoes and salt, ground by hand, spread onto long wooden boards and dried in the summer sun for 10 days.
I have spent the last week testing estratto’s breadth as a noble upgrade to tomato paste. Whereas tomato paste girds a recipe, doing invisible labor to build acidic complexity, estratto is a top note in its own right.
I thinned it out with lemon juice and smeared it on the surface of hot, pan-fried eggplant so it melted into the caramelized surface. I whipped it with olive oil, parsley, garlic, and dried oregano to season the cavity of a whole orata before throwing on the grill. I slipped a finger full on the surface of a brined grape leaf and wrapped it around a grilling cheese before I charred the whole package in what resulted in a grown-up mozz stick.
Look for estratto at Italian specialty food stores online. The only ingredients should be tomatoes, olive oil, and salt. It’s expensive, but a little goes a long way.
WEAR
If you grew up with a downtown artsy mom in the 80s/90s, you have likely stolen an Agnès B. snap-front cardigan from her closet at some point over the last 30 years. With the silhouette of a prim sweater and the hand of a fleece sweatshirt, it’s a fashion workhorse, and I never travel without one.
I pray to god they never discontinue this look, but you can always find them used online, sometimes in my personal favorite older style, where the snaps continue all the way around the neckline. There are a couple of variations on the cut, my preferred being the less tailored, ¾ sleeve, boxy Le Petit Cotton Fleece.
LISTEN
In the intro to the podcast POOG (GOOP spelled backwards), comedian/actor/writers Kate Berlant and Jaqueline Novak claim, with thinly-veiled cynicism, that their entire podcasting endeavor is just a ruse to get free products. But in practice, each hour-long episode is an invitation to eavesdrop on a daringly vulnerable conversation between two brilliant friends. If you’re like me, it will leave you desperate to chime in (my only company through inane nighttime feedings with my second baby, I started to feel like their long, lost third).
They laugh their way through otherwise crippling self-examination, and seamlessly punctuate their armchair philosophies with tangential thought bubbles on serums, the world of wellness, and Erewhon-ified self-optimization. The un-canned and unrehearsed format is a showcase for Berlant and Novak’s common ability to follow the thread of life’s most mundane details until nothing makes sense and everything is funny.
COOK
One of the standout dishes of the course I just taught in Sicily was Sweet And Sour Sardines with Currants and Pine Nuts. Countless cultures have fish preparations that rely on vinegar for preservation and as counterpoint to the flavor of oily fish — there’s Filipino Paksiw na Isda, Jewish pickled herring, and Jamaican escovitch, with the added flavor of Scotch Bonnet peppers. This Sicilian/North African recipe, my take on sarde en saor, has two looks: enjoyed fresh with the fishies still crispy, or, in our use-case, made the day before and served at room temperature, the flour coating taking-up all the flavor from a blanket of vinegar-kissed onions and currants. The latter modality was ideal for an off-site adventure in the spirit of my second book, Arty Parties — an al fresco lunch at a Majolica ceramicist’s workshop in central Sicily.
The lesson was in cooking, yes, but also in finding the sweet balance between planning and improvisation. How do you show up in a location that is minimally equipped for entertaining and throw together an elegant meal for 15 people? No refrigeration? Prep and assemble the food ahead, only serving dishes that are best serve room temp. No budget for florals? Clip a wild passionfruit vine and wind it through the table. Sun beating down on the table? Repurpose studio drop cloths and drape them over the arbor. There’s always a creative solution to be had, if you can keep your cool.
While developing this recipe in advance of the trip, fresh sardines were nowhere to be found (their season is limited). So, I tested it at home using oil-packed, skin-on, tinned sardines, and with great success (be sure to buy them whole, not filleted). I pan-fried them to crisp the skin before dressing them with sweet and sour red onions, currants and pine nuts. The key is to get big, fat, fancy fish, and there’s no shortage of those these days. *I am sharing a 20% discount code for Fishwife tinned fish with the recipe down below for paid subscribers. (Stock up, it lasts forever). The recipe works for both the fresh and conserved version.
Sweet And Sour Sardines with Dried Currants and Pine Nuts
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