Eating Carbs on Pride 🍝🌈

Plus: Sourdough Discard Biscuits, Eclectic Scallop Toast, and My Grilling Basket.

Hey everyone,

Happy day-after Pride! It’s funny, in L.A., we never really did much for Pride, but in New York it feels like a real holiday. In the old days, we’d go to the parade; this year, we met up with friends at The Exley in Williamsburg.

What’s great about The Exley, as opposed to most other gay bars, is that their cocktails are better than they have to be. I had their frozen passionfruit margarita and it was most excellent… dangerously excellent.

We were outside and then it began to deluge. We ran under an awning and watched everyone huddling away from the storm.

In a weird way, this captured everything that I love about living in New York. The instant sense of community, that feeling of experiencing some event all together and coping with it, that sense that this is still fun even if it shouldn’t be.

By the time the storm ended, and two or three passionfruit margaritas later (I can’t remember!), I found myself back home and hungry. So what else could I do but make a quick tomato sauce and boil some pasta?

Into the pot went a big glug of olive oil and a chopped red onion. I sautéed that and then added lots of sliced garlic and red chili flakes, a can of San Marzano tomatoes, and a bunch of basil and marjoram from my porch.

While that bubbled away, I brought a pot of water to a boil and seasoned it well with salt. I dropped in bucatini and in nine minutes, the sauce was thick and the bucatini was ready to go swimming in it.

I just cooked it with a ladleful of pasta water until the pasta was supple and took in all of that flavor and there was no liquid left on the bottom. Then I turned off the heat and added a big handful of Parmesan and another glug of olive oil. I twirled it into bowls, topped with more fresh basil, and watched BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, an underrated gem in my opinion. When people debate whether straight actors should play gay roles, I say look no further than Michael Douglas as Liberace. I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job. And Matt Damon’s not too shabby either.

So yes, I ate carbs on Pride, and that’s only half of it.

Sunday morning, before we went to The Exley, I decided to put my sourdough starter to work.

RECORD SCRATCH.

Sourdough starter? You made a sourdough starter and didn’t tell us?!?

Yes, I did. I’ve been reading Olia Hercules’ Summer Kitchens (a wonderful book) and she has a recipe for one with rye flour and I decided to make it. It really was as simple as mixing flour and water together, leaving it in a jar, and waiting for it to get bubbly from the natural yeast that occurs in the air. Then you feed it every day for a few days, discarding about half before you do, and now I have a bubbly starter in my fridge.

Yesterday I decided, instead of throwing the sourdough discard away, to use it to make biscuits using this King Arthur Flour Recipe.

That may not look so attractive, but it was fun to do: I just pinched 1 stick of cubed, cold butter into a mixture of 1 cup all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon salt. When it was pebbly, I poured in 227 grams (1 cup) of sourdough starter and worked it in until I had a dough.

I pressed it into a 1-inch thick circle, cut out biscuits, and put them on a parchment lined sheet and baked in a 425 oven for 20 minutes.

How’d they come out?

These really were sourdough discard biscuits in that a few had to be discarded.

But the one on the lower right came out okay!

I think my mistake was I patched on some extra dough on to the biscuits before they went in the oven and that weighed them down.

Also my starter may not be springy enough yet? (Though it was super bubbly. Maybe I needed to bring it to room temperature first.)

Still: it was a good breakfast with scrambled eggs, butter, and jam. (And the rye flour in the starter gave the biscuits a nice earthy flavor; they tasted like warm, savory scones.)

On Saturday, we took a big walk to The Brooklyn Flea, which was really fun.

And that night for dinner, I took out some good bread, some tinned seafood, and some leftover vegetables and made this for dinner.

What is it exactly? A corn salad with quickly boiled and shocked fresh corn cut off the cob and stirred together with red onion, lime juice, olive oil, cilantro, and basil. There’s a toast with leftover whipped ricotta from the last newsletter and some blanched and shocked sugar snap peas (same water as the corn) topped with yuzu sesame seeds from SOS Chefs. And, in the background, tinned scallops on toast with salsa verde.

A good spontaneous dinner, if I do say so myself!

Finally, I grilled some sausages the other night and took out one of the two grill baskets that were gifted to me by our friend Emily and also Craig’s parents Steve and Julee. (They all sent me grill baskets as a gift when my asparagus fell through the grill last time and now I have two!)

It’s a cool device, though I have to figure out how to deal with the handle. I could take it off and let the basket rest completely on the coals but then it’s hard to get back on. Or maybe you just leave it like that and it gets things close enough.

The asparagus came out great — nicely charred — and I only lost a few men this time around.

Hey, let’s look at some links!

• What to Read This Summer (The New Yorker);

• In Defense of Wine (NYT);

• The Nail Art Restaurant Will Seat You Now (Taste).

That’s all for today, folks!

Fun fact: I’m almost at 20,000 subscribers.

If I can get to 20,000, I’m going to celebrate by offering 50% off my newsletter for the next year!

So please share today’s dispatch with your friends and/or on social media and we’ll see if we can make it happen.

Until next time….

Your pal,
Adam