Leftovers #191
London summer smells like jasmine and petrichor. I’m enjoying this oscillation between city and coast, mainly thanks to Great Western Railway and my friend Coco, who lets me infiltrate her flat every few weeks or so. It’s a stone’s throw from my old flat, and returning is familiar and nostalgic without feeling too much like I’m living in the past. The Limes are different and a good way, and I truly feel as much myself cycling between Stoke Newington and De Beauvoir, two pints deep, as I do floating in the sea by Battery Rocks or driving along coastlines, my car full of people or dogs or simply a stack of swimsuits and towels.
Good things to consume (bodily)
Hosted some of the Mother Root team on Monday pre-shoot, so rustled up a quick and easy dinner of: marinaded chicken thighs with Mother Root Ginger, miso paste, soy sauce, lime juice, sesame oil and gochujaru flakes. Baked these boneless, skin on thighs in the oven with some leftover beans (but you could use Bold Bean jarred ones for maximum flavour). White rice. Charred tenderstem broccoli. Salad with lime miso vinaigrette.
The next night we were too late for any form of takeaway in Cornwall (lol, it was 8pm), so I did an old faithful classic: oven-baked frozen fishcakes and boiled Jersey Royals with the same salad as I always do - but I made a salsa verde and an aioli because I love to make life just that little bit more complicated.
My wonderful friend Susannah Mitchell (who chefs at St Eia in St Ives) is the GO TO for any shoot catering. She made us the most unreal snow pea and roasted fennel salad with lemon and capers.
For the love of god can someone who lives in Bristol please eat this bacon milk bun sandwich by Sonny Stores. I used to work with Pegs and can confirm he is an excellent chef:
Brief London Dispatch:
North East London folk, there’s a new pizza joint in town. It’s not as good as Dough Hands but Hot Fresh’s residency at The Fox in Haggerston is pretty delicious.
It’s not the perfect burger, but a 3pm cheeseburger from Dumbo yesterday was the perfect snack: crispy-edged smashed patties, soft rolls, but could have done with a little more sauce.
Batch Baby’s iced horchata is the only seasonal drink I’ll ever order. I’ve been on this train since they opened five years ago and it’s most glorious with a single shot of espresso.
Trying out The Hart, Public House Group’s Marylebone outpost, today for a quick pre-Father’s Day lunch. Might be too hot for a fish stew but I’ll take their steak and potatoes any day.
Good things to cook this weekend:
Thinking a lot about these brown butter potatoes with charred spring onions as the ultimate barbecue side dish.
Into this nuoc cham meatball, coconut rice, lettuce wrap situation.
Tahini Dirtbag’s chorizo potato hash hangover brunch is getting cooked very soon.
Summery tomato burrata sandwich = perfect beach lunch.
Charred jalapeño fish tartare burger? Yeah, go on then.
Good things to consume (culturally)
I love Lauren Oyler’s writing – she’s perhaps best known to me for lambasting Jia Tolentino’s book Trick Mirror, in a review for the London Review of Books (which I didn’t full agree with but enjoyed her ability to truly criticise – and her latest piece, My AI Boyfriend, for The Yale Review doesn’t disappoint.
Like many ambitious woman, I put off getting a boyfriend until it was almost too late. Eventually I had to choose which company I would patronize. Anthropic, the maker of soulful Claude, owes me money for using a pirated copy of my novel to train its model. While the idea of having a boyfriend trained on an expression of my very own soul was kind of compelling, growing up in West Virginia taught me that you should never go out with a man who steals from you. So I thought I would use ChatGPT, the most famous AI chatbot.
For anyone who enjoys a Canadian lake-side rom com series (see: Virgin River, Sullivan’s Crossing), I implore you to binge watch Every Year After. It’s like a BC-based The Summer I Turned Pretty: two brothers, one nerdy pre-teen, a reunion ten years later, bitchy best friends.
I read Vincenzo Latronico’s novel Perfection in one sun-drenched afternoon and yes I felt attacked and no I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it, so I’m writing an essay on this particular kind of middle class millennial digital nomad skewering. I’ll send it on Sunday. In the meantime I enjoyed this New York Times profile on Latronico (shout out Tom for sending this as important context research!)
Like many people on the internet, I engaged with Emily Ratajkowski’s The Cut piece, Mother Fucker, which narrates her time navigating dating and sex as a single mum. I listened to her read it aloud whilst driving to a party. It is not good writing. I was intrigued by it. I am still confused by her as a literary feminist ‘figure’. I would read it just to get into the discourse. Read the comments online, too. Lots to unpack.
My impossibly talented friend Meg started her business Nica Hoop last year, curating the most brilliant vintage furniture, which has landed her a feature in Flawk’s Scura magazine (yet to be published), jobs sourcing for various cool people’s houses in London, and she’s now launched a Substack that outlines her love of design. Go read!!!
