Leftovers #106
Last leftovers of the month are for all subscribers!
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It was only in for 45 minutes. It’s less than usual, but it was a smaller bird, and while science is not my area of expertise, I’ve become au fait with roasting times in a specific oven as it relates to a chicken’s weight. I was just pulling it out of the oven, the cast iron pan glistening with fat, rice crackling, skin a deep mahogany brown. I was placing it on the hob to rest for 15 minutes when I heard a knock at the door. My neighbour, a small Indian woman who I regularly said hello to (although we weren’t on first name basis) instructed me to help her, hurrying me into her home. I told my friends I’d be back soon and walked into her flat.
Inside there was a man looking quizzically at a television and she told me she couldn’t help him lift it because of her bad ankle. They were trying to screw it into a tv stand that was attached to the wall. I helped to lift it but with it was too heavy, so I gathered my three friends and we all marched back down the corridor to the house. How many people does it take to screw in a television stand? Five women and one man apparently. We were sent home with some Quality Street chocolates and lots of big smiles. As we walked in, the chicken had been resting for exactly 15 minutes, ready to be carved.
It was the lesson in community. A real life help thy neighbour moment that made us all feel a more connected to the strangers who we quite literally share walls with. I think I really needed that.
Cooking
I won’t stop banging on about this salad dressing, it’s so good and slaps every time I make it. Honestly I am working with Mother Root but believe me when I say their ginger switchel (yes, primarily a non-alc aperitif) is such a hidden gem of a savoury ingredient. It’s giving spicy, earthy, strong – all the things I aspire to be.
I’ve also been putting a spoonful of Mother Root in my smoothies: 3-4 pieces of frozen mango, 3-4 pieces of frozen pineapple, 1/2 banana, 150ml coconut water, a handful of spinach leaves, 1 tbsp Mother Root and a spoonful of super greens powder.
I’m obsessed with this creator’s way of connecting recipes with rom com icons, this time it’s a wedge salad with Boursin dressing worthy of Dionne from Clueless.
Will be making Jenan Land’s herby potato salad to go with barbecues all summer long; also this corn salad mainly for the recipe but also for the story that Roti’s grandma has been best friends with her boyfriend’s grandma for over 70 years and I’m all about that.
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Plus: a cucumber salad with feta-dill dressing, these Japanese sweet potatoes stuffed with miso tahini butter, a pomegranate studded Turkish ezme salad laced with herbs; a Lambrusco spritz c/o drinks connoisseur Rebekah Peppler (on that note, buy a bottle of Montenegro for the summer and thank me later… on ice, in spritzes, so perfect!).
My mum brought back this little zine from the Korean Cultural Centre (well worth a visit – it’s in central London near Trafalgar Square) and there are a few recipes I really want to try. This gochujang roast chicken with kimchi rice stuffing is inspiring me to put kimchi in my crispy nurungji rice recipe… I’ll be testing that on out on a friend next week.
Recommending
A holiday-esque meal at Sardianian hidden gem Trattoria da Luigi (on Stoke Newington Church Street) which genuinely felt like we had been transported to Italy. It was the meeting of four of my favourite people, and we sat around the table eating garlic bread (which was basically a marinara pizza and we were not mad about it), eating genuinely delicious burrata (I swore I would stop ordering it but this one hit different), drinking a bottle of ice-cold vermentino and tucking into clam-studded pasta drenched in peppery olive oil like we’d been on a beach all day. Honestly didn’t stop smiling. We finished with pistachio gelato and a shot of limoncello (free with your bill!!), walking out to blue skies at 8.30pm. Almost wanted to gate keep it but we want the owners to have so much business so please go. There’s a full on dance floor downstairs and we were considering starting a club night but we’re all in our mid-thirties and cba, so can someone else do it for us?
Reading
Why I Can’t Go Back To Where I Came From, Letters From A Muslim Woman
I’ve been reading
’s words on Substack for a while now, and what always strikes me is how intentional, soothing and full of feeling they are. I was so happy to see her essay make the Substack Reads list, and pained to see that a commenter’s bigoted views be given a platform. Her response is as measured, calm and beautiful as Noha’s writing is.I wondered if there was a way to tell her that I’m never at home in Egypt. That even though I love it, even though I appreciate my heritage, my food, my art, my music, and my stories, the heat and the crowds of Cairo overwhelm me. That it takes weeks for my ears to adjust to the speed of my cousins’ speech. That I miss the inside jokes and tv references. That I feel like a fish out of water until my feet touch down again on Canadian soil.
I wondered if she ever thought about the fact that no one would ever tell her, a white lady, to go back to where she came from. That by virtue of her whiteness, she’d be assumed to belong. That even though my family has been on this soil for 50 years, I will never have the luxury of that assumption. That my boys will watch that clock go to 60 years, and 70 years, and 80 years, and their children will still be told to go back to another country.
How To Be A True Romantic, Ask Polly
As a person who simultaneously loves loves and cynical about modern romance, I always enjoy reading about how to cultivate true romance, be it in relationships or your with yourself. I like the idea that you can be romantic about something, anything – and that this can feed your romantic soul more and more.
I loved listening to him talk. But he didn’t just talk, he rhapsodized. He was in love with so many things. He knew how to hate people and love them at the same time, a skill that I didn’t learn for decades to come. He would describe an irritating coworker, going on and on about what a prick he was, and then he’d pull out some small detail about the guy that proved that you could never, ever cross him or let him down because he was just a sweet guy at heart, just a wonderfully sweet guy that you could never ever turn your back on. By the end of his story, you’d be shaking your head right along with him, lamenting the absolute mercilessness of anyone who’d turn their back on such a pure soul.
Listening
To this song that opens up the film Turtles All The Way Down, which I’m very proud to say was co-produced by my wonderful friend
. It floored me. I don’t necessarily believe in differentiating between YA and adult fiction; but I’ve always felt such an affinity with films intended to reach a YA audience. Am I stuck inside a teenage brain? Who knows. I want to live inside this track.
I'm a 72 year old male and I really enjoyed Turtles all the way down, and I do not have a teenage brain. We like what we like.