Scrambled Eggs with Shiso is my new favorite egg stir-fry. Aromatic shiso leaves, also known as perilla leaves, are sliced up and quickly scrambled with tender fluffy eggs for a tasty egg dish you feel good about eating. (It’s even taken the lead over our family’s go-to Chinese Chive and Egg Stir-Fry, which says a […]The water was at our backs, but everything still looked blue.
It was a Saturday, and the sky above the lake was shockingly clear. The breeze hurried the fluffy clouds along like an invisible, impatient dog walker trying to jostle a pack of Pomeranians past the more interesting signposts and fence posts: a brief stall, then a fluid push forward.
Usually, all that blue would have felt like a gift. That day, walking home from a particularly sad documentary interview, I wasn’t sure it was helping.
Outside of writing this newsletter, I work on radio documentaries with my partner, Stephen. They are creative projects with the sneaky ability to hollow you out sometimes, especially when the story requires you to watch someone move through a series of the hardest days of their life. Not every documentary I’ve worked on has gone that way. This one has.
I carried my messy notes as we walked slowly. Stephen carried a neatly packed bag lined with recorders, headphones and batteries. We were quiet, as we typically are after interviews that heavy, letting our thoughts jostle and cure until we reached a coffee shop — always a coffee shop — where we could log the tape and our first responses to it.
That was when I spotted the Little Free Library.
It stood outside a brick six-flat, also fittingly painted blue, and decorated with a few stickers: “Protect Native Plants,” a rocket ship from a regional space camp, several iridescent birds. Inside, wedged among some children’s CDs—the kind I imagine hip parents buy, with sock monkeys and mandolins on the covers—a book about angel investing and a sweet, self-published chapbook of nature poems, was a copy of “The Secret Garden.”
Eerily, I had made a note only a few days earlier to see whether the real library had it.
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As we dug through the shelves, one of the building’s residents emerged from the front door with the stride of a woman on a mission. She wore no-nonsense sneakers with pink swooshes and carried two FedEx boxes.
“That is very good!” she called as she breezed past.
I couldn’t tell whether she meant the jazz CD Stephen was holding or “The Secret Garden,” but I took it as permission nonetheless and slipped the book into my purse. I’ll return it to another Little Free Library when I’m finished.
At home, I put it on my bedside table, pausing to start the rice cooker on my way.
I could say that lately I’ve been regarding the things I find nourishing with renewed appreciation. But that sounds more composed than I actually feel. What I really mean is that, in my downtime, I’ve been steeping myself in things I already know will bring me comfort.
This morning, I actually squealed when the library emailed to say my hold on “The Wind in the Willows”—a book I first read in sixth grade—was ready for pickup.
And, more nights than not lately, I’ve been making rice and eggs.
The bowl first entered my regular rotation in 2023, during the great feta-fried-egg boom, though I suspect its staying power has less to do with TikTok than with the state I was in when it found me. I was badly burned out: singed and shaky, waking so often with heart palpitations, sweaty palms and a vague sense of catastrophe that I became intimately acquainted with the way my apartment looked at 3 a.m. Every familiar object — the chair, the laundry basket, the glass of water beside the bed — seemed to acquire a slightly accusatory moonlit outline.
Getting better took a while. The thing that helped most was finding my own secret garden, a nearby bird sanctuary that crags out over Lake Michigan. Each day, I made the three-mile round trip to inspect the warblers, chipmunks and generally mysterious rustlings of the underbrush.
Our Summer sale is on!
On my recent rereading of “The Secret Garden,” I was delighted by the moment when Mary, initially pale and peevish and uninterested in her breakfast, begins wandering the grounds with a jump rope in hand. The exercise and fresh air work their plain Victorian magic; soon she is ravenous for the porridge waiting at Misselthwaite Manor.
I understood completely. I would come home from the sanctuary hungry and make rice and eggs—if not that evening, then the following morning. Millennial porridge.
It’s funny, my mother used to look at me with an expression that was neither mocking nor exasperated, merely seasoned, and say, “Baby, not everything needs to be a production.”
This applied to rearranging my childhood bedroom furniture after reading about feng shui in a magazine, redoing my makeup when we were already late and, eventually, cooking. Once I learned what a roux was, I wanted every meal to have one. There was a period when dinner seemed to require a mother sauce, three pans and a 45-minute drive to the crunchy health-food store for microgreens that wilted almost immediately.
My mother, an excellent cook, understood repetition better. For years, I would come home from figure-skating practice bruised from falling, exhausted from trying not to fall and tender from the ambient heartache of being a teenager. She would make bowties in a light Parmesan sauce with peas, ham and an indecent amount of black pepper.
Surely she fed me other things. But when I remember that stretch of my life, I remember that bowl arriving again and again. What I failed to appreciate then was that familiarity was part of the offering. Having something good to return to is not a failure of imagination. Traversing the same landscape does not make it less beautiful.
My rice and eggs began with a feta-fried egg over steamed white rice. The rest accumulated slowly and, for the most part, logically: lemon zest for brightness, bacon for savory crunch, avocado for cool richness. Scallions and soy sauce arrived because I add them to almost everything, occasionally without proper cause. Red pepper flakes and everything bagel seasoning cover the remaining territory — heat, funk, nuttiness, crunch — in a few economical shakes.
At some point, the bowl was finished.
Naturally, I continued to interfere with it.
I swiped chili aioli over the top. I added enough hot sauce to drown out the lemon. I became overly generous with the bacon and avocado. I stirred miso butter into the rice, which was delicious but made the entire meal feel as though it had changed its name and moved to another neighborhood.
None of these were bad ideas. They simply were not my bowl.
There is a popular idea that good cooking is a matter of building flavor, and often it is. But it is also the quieter skill of noticing when the building is complete and putting down the hammer.
In my perfect version, the yolk breaks over the hot rice and mingles immediately with the lemon zest, becoming a kind of lazy hollandaise. The soy sauce deepens it; the bacon crackles; the avocado cools everything down. It costs only a few dollars a bowl, even with the avocado behaving like an avocado, but I feel rich when I eat it: nourished, complete and relieved that dinner did not need to become a production before it could take care of me.
Here is exactly how I make it.
Ingredients
Directions
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These Chive Egg Pockets are everything a breakfast should be: crispy, golden, and impossibly satisfying. They’re the kind of comforting handheld meal you’d find sizzling on a griddle at a bustling Chinese street market—sweet, garlicky chives and rich egg tucked inside crispy, chewy dough. One bite and you’re somewhere else entirely. The Breakfast That Lives […]This Chicken with Lobster Sauce recipe takes that silky, savory sauce from our beloved Shrimp with Lobster Sauce and gives it a new home — nestled around tender chunks of chicken instead of shrimp. Growing up, I was not a seafood kid, which meant I spent many years watching everyone ELSE eat shrimp with lobster […]Inspired by a recent trip to China, this recipe for Chinese eggs with soy bean sauce is a quick, easy midweek dinner that’s savory and super tasty! Eggs for Dinner Eggs are a great, relatively low-cost source of protein that Chinese families often turn to for last-minute meals. Because they cook so quickly, you can […]If you’ve enjoyed the egg bites at Starbucks, here’s how to make them at home! These egg bites have become a staple recipe in my kitchen. Sure, they’re not the prettiest egg recipe, but they’re wonderfully flavorful and silky tender. They’re a protein-rich snack or ready-made breakfast to keep in your refrigerator (they freeze and defrost well, too).
These egg bites are a fun cooking project with a few twists along the way. I was surprised to find cottage cheese in Starbucks’ ingredient list. It’s the secret ingredient that offers a lovely tang and extra protein. Once blended, the lumpy texture disappears, which explains why I’d never guess it was there.
Instead of Starbucks’ sous vide cooking method, we’ll bake the muffin tray on a rimmed baking sheet filled with a small amount of hot water. The steam from the water bath gives these bites a luscious, smooth texture. Without it, the eggs would brown at the bottom and taste more like frittata muffins. It’s a small detail that makes a big difference!
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Fall has three essentials: cozy sweaters, warming soups, and PUMPKIN BREAD! Whether your fond memories of this spice-filled treat are from Starbucks, Grandma’s house, or your favorite box mix, we’re bringing you alllll the nostalgia! This homemade gluten-free + dairy-free pumpkin bread is FLUFFY, tender, spice-filled, and has the perfect balance of sweetness and pumpkin flavor!
Just 1 bowl and simple ingredients required for this fall classic.
The BEST Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread (1 Bowl!) from Minimalist Baker →
I’ve cooked scrambled eggs about a million times in my life, and I’m pretty particular about them. I like fluffy scrambled eggs topped with cheese. They must not be mushy, undercooked, or overcooked (the worst—and that smell!). I’m sharing my perfected technique with you today.
This recipe is designed for a stainless steel or cast iron skillet. If you’ve ever wondered how to cook scrambled eggs without a nonstick skillet, this post is for you. It can be done!
With this technique and some practice, you’ll make beautiful scrambled eggs with little mess. Even if you think you have your scrambled egg technique down pat, I think you might find some new tips here.
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Hold onto your sprinkles, folks! This recipe takes the cake, literally. We’ve taken our crowd-favorite funfetti cupcakes and made them undetectably gluten-free! Your friends and family will be begging for the recipe for these soft, fluffy, perfectly moist, incredibly delicious gems!
The catch? There is no catch. They’re made in 1 bowl with just 10 ingredients! What are you waiting for? Let’s bake some cupcakes!
Gluten-Free Funfetti Cupcakes (1 Bowl!) from Minimalist Baker →
Are you familiar with migas? If not, let me introduce you! Migas (pronounced mee-guhz) are cheesy scrambled eggs tossed with crumbled tortilla chips, which lend delicious salty-crunchy-corn notes. You’ll typically find sautéed onions and peppers or tomatoes folded in as well, plus your choice of toppings.
Migas are served in Mexican under various names, but this recipe is modeled after the Tex-Mex migas served in Austin, Texas. It’s a wonderfully satisfying and flavorful meal to enjoy for breakfast, brunch, lunch or even dinner.
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In some places, eggs are in short supply. For bakers, that may present a problem for us. But the folks at King Arthur Baking have provided an excellent guidelines to using egg substitutes, with tips for using everything from seltzer and flax seeds, to chickpea liquid and fruit puree, so you can keep on baking.
Check out their detailed guide to egg substitutions guide here!
Whenever I mention “Chocolate Chip Cookies,” this recipe seems to come up in the conversation. I’ve been making chocolate chip cookies all of my life, and am always happy to add new ones to my repertoire. I’ve made them with various kinds of flours, different types (and sizes) of chocolate, some with nuts (or cocoa nibs), and others without. In some cases, the salt in the chocolate chip cookies may be in the butter, or sprinkled on top. Or there might be a double-dose of chocolate in them.
But I haven’t done too much tinkering with the butter, because to me, that’s one thing that’s non-negotiable in chocolate chip cookies. But when I heard about tahini, my loyalty to butter was put into question.
You (and I) can relax, because these chocolate chip cookies do use butter, but get an underlying richness from sesame paste, a common ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking that I always keep on hand. So although I thought I’d done everything possible that a man could do to a chocolate chip cookie, and then some, I was finally ready to tackle a batch of these chocolate chip cookies.
The recipe is adapted from Modern Israeli Cooking by Danielle Oron, that also was in the New York Times. In addition to having everything on hand, they were easy to mix up, and the soft sesame paste made a dough that was hard not to snack on before the cookies went into the oven.
I prefer to chop chocolate for chocolate chip cookies, rather than use conventional chocolate chips. I have nothing against chocolate chips, but most are made of what’s called baking-resistant chocolate, which is designed to hold their shape once baked. I like big, oozing chunks of chocolate in my chocolate chip cookies, and I don’t care so much what they look like, so much as how they taste.
So I took a knife to a block of chocolate and made my own. Some makers are now producing what are called chocolate “chunks” which may or may not have similar qualities, but chopping a block of chocolate, while a bit messy, puts me in one of my happy places. And I’m happy to make my own chips, or chunks, I should say.
These cookies were some of the best chocolate chip cookies that have ever come out of my oven, and I don’t say that lightly. The tahini gives them a gentle savory taste, with a faint musky flavor that pairs remarkably well with dark chocolate and a touch of salt, so don’t be afraid to use a very strongly flavored chocolate. I futzed with the original recipe a little, to make them chewier, and couldn’t resist adding even more chocolate. But can you blame me?
Related Posts and Recipes
Baking Ingredients and Substitutions
Ingredients for American Baking in Paris
Soom Tahini (Amazon)
It’s that time of year again. And that only means one thing: time to start thinking about the holiday baking. In Paris, bakery windows fill up with Bûches de Noël (Yule log cakes) and bourriches (wooden crates) of oysters are piled up at the markets. The chocolate shops are crammed with people, buying multiple boxes as gifts, and people splurge on caviar and Champagne, one of the few things that go on sale in France during the holidays.
One thing you don’t see is the use of pumpkin in desserts. A tart or pie (or ice cream) made of squash might sound funny, especially to non-Americans, but helps to remember that pumpkins, and other squash, are technically fruit. One could also point out the classic Swiss Chard Tart from Provence (which is in a whole other category), and Melanzane al cioccolato, eggplant with chocolate sauce, which I like. (Which one could argue is good because it’s smothered in dark chocolate.) But I don’t think everything goes with chocolate: A friend tried the hot chocolate with oysters at a famed chocolate shop in Paris, and after her description, I wasn’t rushing over there to try a cup.
To get that last image out of your mind, I present pumpkin cheesecake with a pecan praline sauce, that has nothing not to like about it. Cream cheese and sour cream, a buttery cookie crust, and a brown sugar and bourbon-tinged sauce loaded with crunchy pecans. I’m in.
DIYers may raise an eyebrow at using canned pumpkin. I’ve got a few reasons for using it. (And as many of you perhaps know, it’s not made from pumpkin, but a variety of squash similar to butternut squash.) One, is that when writing a recipe, it’s easy to get consistent, similar results when we’re all using the same ingredient. And two, it’s a heckuva lot easier, which is appreciated around the holidays when all of us have enough on our plates, and in our ovens, and it’s fewer dishes to wash to boot.
If you want to go the other route, you can also make your own cream cheese and Graham crackers, grow your own pecans, churn up your own butter, and make your own cake pan. If you do go that route, let me know when your cheesecake is done ; )
In the meantime, I’m standing over my stove, stirring warm, just-toasted pecans into my praline sauce before lacing it with a dash of bourbon.
The praline sauce is decidedly on the sweet side. But that didn’t stop me (like, at all…) from dipping my spoon into it over and over and over again. Be sure to toast the pecans before using them. My pet-peeve in restaurants is when they don’t toast nuts. Toasting any nut usually improves it by at least 99%, if not more, so if you’re not consistently toasting your nuts before using them on salads, sauces, and in ice creams, start doing it now. It’s not too late.
But I can’t imagine this cheesecake being served without it. Although I could imagine eating the sauce without the cheesecake. And if you’re anything like me, you might find yourself spooning it over ice cream, ladling it over pumpkin pie (without the marshmallow topping), or even spooning it right into your mouth, like I do.
Related Recipes and Links
Ingredients for American Baking in Paris
Homemade Graham Crackers (Smitten Kitchen)
Homemade bourbon (Bourbon of the Day)
Homemade salt (Ruhlman)
It’s no secret we love cornbread and have shared recipes for it before (exhibits A and B). And we wouldn’t be posting another version if it wasn’t worth it. So trust us…it’s worth it! This FLUFFY, moist gluten-free cornbread is naturally sweetened with honey, SO flavorful, and seriously EASY to make.
Just 1 bowl and 8 ingredients stand between you and the best gluten-free cornbread.
Easy Gluten-Free Cornbread (1 Bowl!) from Minimalist Baker →
Whenever I’m looking through a new cookbook, what never fails to make me bookmark a recipe is when I come across something that has caramelized nuts on it, or in it. Whether it be Honey-Almond Squares or Swedish Almond Cake, you can be sure you’ll find me in my kitchen within the next 24 hours, and baking it. This Caramelized Peanut Cake that takes very little effort to make, but yields big rewards. Big, crunchy, peanutty ones, with a bonus of moist, buttery cake underneath, holding it all together.
The good thing about this cake (aside from it being covered with a generous pile of caramelized salted peanuts, as if it can get any better than that) is that you likely have most of the ingredients already on hand. That was my case, so I was able to make it right away. The only ‘technique’ you need to master is boiling butter, honey, cream and sugar, then stirring in the roasted peanuts. The topping couldn’t be easier.
This recipe is adapted from The Joys of Baking, an unabashedly sweet ode to baking by Samantha Seneviratne that riffs off stories and situations in her life, ones that inspired the recipes. Gingered Cashew Nut Brittle showered with sesame seeds, a Roasted Plum Cloud Cake topped with swirls of snowy meringue, bittersweet Amaro Stracciatella Ice Cream, and Salted Chocolate-Covered Chocolate Caramels are the kinds of things that I’d agree are a joy to bake, and to eat.
So how could I resist cake topped with SALTED CARAMELIZED PEANUTS? Sorry for shouting, but this cake is something to shout about. I mean, just look at it…
The only difficulty you might encounter is getting the cake neatly out of the pan. Mine got a little dark around the edges (why, oh why, wasn’t I born a food stylist, to make mine as neat as the one in the photo in the book?) I found that letting the cake rest for about 5 to 10 minutes after it comes out to the oven, then using a sharp paring or utility knife that’s either sprayed with a bit of non-stick spray, or lightly greased, to separate the sides from the cake pan while it’s still warm, is your best bet for easy (or easier) removal of the ring of the springform pan. Any pieces that fall off can be reaffixed to the cake.
Or let them cool…and eat them yourself.
Which is what I did with the missing chunk in the photo, above. (Why, oh why, wasn’t I born with photo editing skills?) But honesty is the best policy, and I hope you’ll trust me when I say this cake is as good as it looks. And if a few pieces go missing, here and there, well – you only have yourself to blame. But unlike me, you don’t have to tell anyone about it.
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