Are Smash Burgers a Vegetable? 🍔

Plus: Soy-Braised Tofu and Bok Choy, Caramelized Cabbage Linguine, and Thumbprint Cookies.

Hey everyone,

I’m full of surprises. Last newsletter, I was telling you that my new year’s resolution was to eat more vegetables and in today’s newsletter I’m telling you how to make smash burgers. So many contradictions!

Not really… I mean, if I ate vegetables every second of every day, I’d turn into one. And I had to put the smash burger smasher that Craig got me for Christmanukkah to work.

So I used Kenji’s recipe/technique from Serious Eats and made this video to walk you through it:

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A few lessons from this experience:

1. The two ounces of meat per burger yields the perfect diameter for a typical hamburger bun;

2. When you smash, line your smasher with parchment or the burger will stick;

3. Make sure your pan is really hot or your first burger will be a dud;

4. Have everything ready to go (including the bun topped with the sauce and your toppings) before you start because your burger will be ready in 45 seconds;

5. American cheese (as Kenji says) is the only way to go: it looks right and melts fast.

These burgers were sublime… and way hotter and therefore better than any takeout you can order in NYC. (Yes, we’ve ordered Shake Shack delivered before. No more!)

Now back to our regular vegetable programming.

I got such a reaction on Instagram the other night when I made Hetty McKinnon’s soy-braised tofu and bok choy from the NYT:

I had bok choy from the CSA (which I worked my way through all of last week and I have a new one coming today in the snow) and also tofu, so this was a cinch to pull together.

Step one: brown tofu in a skillet.

Step two: remove tofu and pour in your sauce. I made my own concoction with soy sauce, fish sauce (because I didn’t have oyster sauce), gochujang (just because I had it), and a little honey. Bring to a simmer, add your tofu back in, and then lay in your bok choy and simmer until the bok choy is cooked and the sauce has thickened. That’s it! Serve over rice.

I sprinkled with sesame seeds just because I had them but this made for a nourishing, vegetarian dinner while we watched Chicago which Craig hadn’t seen since it came out. (Still holds up!)

On another night, still working my way through my CSA box (it’s like a never-ending Chopped episode), I made a super simple caramelized cabbage pasta.

Are you ready for the recipe? Take a cabbage. Slice it in half, cut out the core, and slice it into ribbons. Slice some garlic and a few shallots. Pour a big glug of olive oil into a Dutch oven, saute the shallots and garlic for a minute or two (throw in an anchovy or two if you have ‘em, I used anchovy paste), then add all of the cabbage and a big pinch of salt. Stir and cook cook cook until everything is coated. Put the lid on for a bit, then remove it and keep stirring and cooking until the cabbage has not only shrunk down, but turned deeply profoundly golden. (If you get a dark spot on the bottom of the pan, add a little water to keep it from burning.) Then drop your pasta (I used linguine) into boiling, well-seasoned water and when just al dente, stir in with the cabbage, a nub of butter (if you want to be extra decadent), freshly ground black pepper, and lots of freshly grated Parmesan. That’s it. And it’s sooooo gooood.

For dessert, I made thumbprint cookies from Ben Mims’s CRUMBS because we had some new jams we bought from Union Market (blood orange, strawberry):

These are such a joy to make, you’re basically just making a sugar cookie (or short bread?) pressing them with your finger, filling with jam, and baking. And they come out looking so cozy and inviting.

We may or may not have eaten ALL OF THESE over the past few days. I’ll never tell.

Hey, let’s look at some links:

• Learning to connect with friends — without alcohol (for those doing dry January; NYT);

• Hazelnut and toasted vanilla bueno cookies have me intrigued and also what a great way to use up a used and discarded vanilla bean (The Guardian);

• King Arthur’s recipe of the year: big and bubbly focaccia (King Arthur Flour).

That’s all for today, folks!

See you back here on Thursday….

Your pal,

Adam