Leftovers #108

A rosé kissed by peaches, olive oil + dates + ice cream, matcha discounts etc

It’s raining and my body aches and my brain is fizzing and I suspect I’m not a good person. I’m sure I’ll sleep on it and wake up altered. For some reason 11pm is the writing witching hour and I’ve taken to returning home after seeing friends and sitting in my arm chair where my computer sits on an Ian Curtis coffee table book of his old diaries, and I write and work hunched over or legs flung upwards until my eyes hurt and I think of either sleep or food. I consider fryin some halloumi in olive oil and honey, but instead cut little slices, eat them cold with fresh green beans dipped into salad dressing. I know I need to get the ceiling painted and to change the curtains and to write an essay and water the plants and get some sleep and buy a car before I spend the summer by the coast. I leave London in less than three weeks, which means I must drink the martinis while I can. I tell myself I can bring the necessary ingredients (vodka, olive brine), but I’ll still end up at Silk Stockings on Saturday night three sips down.

goofball in inky tarn alert

Matcha, still, but at home

Not sure why or how but I stopped drinking coffee cold turkey. I never needed it for the caffeine; it was more the ritual and the theatre of making a coffee at home. Jenki v kindly sent me their matcha ritual starter kit and I’ve been finding deep pleasure in whisking at home and adding a splash of honey and watching the almond milk swirl through the silky green pool. If you want to buy any matcha for your own home rituals, you can use this link and the code JENKICAT10 if you want 10% off!

Good beans, dates in olive oil, soba noods etc

Obviously the gigante beans from Pani’s mum – a bowl of piping hot, tomato-slicked, salty, wholesome, hearty legumes that you’ll find in family homes all across Greece.

The weather is doing the absolute least, so a donabe one pot meal of salmon and rice is on the cards. When it cleans its act up, I’ll make these cold soba noodles with salmon and cukes.

I’m heading to Cornwall briefly next week, where I will be playing chef whilst my friend Becca plays host; I’ll grab Bold Bean’s new jar of borlottis and stir them into this pasta e fagioli.

I’ve eaten pasta three times in 24 hours which is very unheard of for me; I made my friend Kelli my gochujang vodka rigatoni (with the addition of anchovies, chef’s kiss) and my little gem pistachio salad.

My other friend Sash made Ixta Belfrag’s spicy tuna ragu and I’ll be recreating this asap; as well as this viral ice cream with olive oil dates recipe for dessert which slapped.

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Dreams, surfing, ambivalence: a reading list

Restoring The Dream Temples, Incubatio

I’ll read anything my friend

Molly Virostek

writes. I particularly love her opening sentences – they appear so smooth on the page, almost mysterious, as if conjured up by a spell. Molly’s writing for design lab Incubatio does that particularly impressive thing of matching the energy of the subject she is writing about. In this case, her words on dreams elicit an entirely somnambular state, where you read and drift and read and drift.

There is a place one can visit each night, where the wind whispers ancient wisdom and everyone speaks the language of Myth. Pigs fly and Chimeras play chess with the stars. Creativity flows and problems shape-shift into new solutions. Genius lands on shoulders, Psyche sips tea with her shadow, and Mnemosyne tends to the gardens of Recollection. Here, we feast on the answers of the Universe and swim in the sea of everything that ever was. The Golden Threads of Fate swirl through the air, promising to guide us into aligned lives of creativity, balance, health, and wholeness… if we are wise enough to listen, and bold enough to embark on the adventures they have planned for us.

A Surf Legend’s Long Ride, The New Yorker

I love William Finnegan’s writing, especially when he’s penning words about surfing – he can make even the most landlocked person feel like they’re walking on water. In this lengthy profile, he connects with Jock Sutherland in Hawaii, where Finnegan spent much of his childhood surfing around the same time. His writing always makes me want to go on an adventure, in pursuit of waves, or at least the glides and the knocks that they provide.

“Looks fun out there,” he said, peering at waves breaking on a reef off the point. It did look fun. We paddled out through a gantlet of blue-gray lava rocks. I tried to mimic Sutherland’s every move—he had been navigating this tiny, swirling channel since the nineteen-fifties—but still managed to slice my foot. Out in the channel, he took my foot in his hands, studying the cut from various angles. “That’s not from a rock. You kicked an ‘opihi”—a limpet. “We can clean it later. I’ve got some good stuff.”

Page, Stage, Plate, The Desk Dispatch From The Desk Of Alicia Kennedy

I thought this writer made an excellent argument for seeking ambivalence in cooking – the simultaneous obsession and boredom it elicits and how it comes through in the language of cookbooks.

Ambivalence takes many forms, of course. A sense that while food is the most important thing in life, it’s also faintly ridiculous to spend one’s life thinking about food; a frustration with, but also celebration of, the transience of a dish; a suspicion that satisfactory nourishment is at once the most private, selfish of endeavors and the most communal, collective of aims. A protest against the drudgery of kitchen experience, as well as all the inequities and oppressions it sustains, along with an insistence on the value of kitchen experience, with all of the creativity and ingenuity it fosters.

Cowboy cologne and other fragrances

Romy’s botanical tour was full of wild adventure

Romy and I had scrambled up a particularly steep section of a trail in Griffith Park. The view was electric. It was my final morning in Los Angeles, and I was not quite ready to leave. Romy was giving me an unexpected botanical tour of the trail and she passed me a little handful of herbs and told me to rub them together between my palms. I buried my nose into it. “They call it cowboy cologne; apparently cowboys in the wild west used it as a fragrance.” It smelt like how California has always felt to me: fresh and wild and strong. I stashed some away in my pocket and later stuffed it into a small canvas pouch so I can smell it always. As I was looking it up, I came across D.S & Durga’s Cowboy Grass, which has leathery notes of cowboy cologne (California Sagebrush), bergamot, vetiver and rosewood. It reminds me of another perfume by Bodha called LA Woman, which is all California citrus and incense smoke and night jasmine. I never cared about scent before but it’s suddenly evoking a lot in me - something about the sensory, sensual, nostalgic, transportative quality. Might be time to start making my own perfume oils. DS & Durga’s candle, Big Sur After Rain, is also on my mind a lot. It’s got that petrichor fragrance, super fresh and clean.

A rosé kissed by peaches

A Grenache Rosé (Felicette) brought by my friend Aylin to go with chicken roasted over rice. For Provençal rosé purists out there, I’m sure you’ll be shocked and appalled to see a hue any more opaque than paper-thin pink, but this was so light and refreshing, just dry enough with a hint of honeyed sweetness – almost like it had been kissed by peaches.

June Baby: a TikTok earworm

Victoria Canal’s campaign for her song June Baby has totally worked on me: teasing a few lyrics at a time over the past couple of months while she mouths the words with her producer, who happens to be Ross from The 1975. It just feels like young summer romance in a song.

Listen on the last bus home, moonstruck

If you hate Cigs After Sex please look away. I love them. I know all their songs sound the same. But I love them, they make me feel like I’m in my own little movie and I need that cinematic indulgence sometimes.