Ricotta Toasts with Mushrooms and Kale

Plus: Golden Borscht, My Latest Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe, and Links.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been cooking lots of vegetables this week, probably because I bought up a bunch of produce at Cookbook in Echo Park on my last visit there.

They had a big bowl of cremini mushrooms and though mushrooms don’t normally get me very excited, after last week’s Top Chef, where they had to compete for a slot in the finals by cooking French mushrooms, I decided to take these creminis out for a spin.

My favorite thing about cooking mushrooms is how they transform in the skillet! They start out as squishy, almost rubbery little specimens and then, through the magic of fat and heat and salt, they become caramelized and meaty, nature’s closest thing to a hunk of steak.

To turn these into dinner, I made some toasts, topped them with a ricotta mixture, and tossed those golden brown mushrooms with spring onions, garlic, and cooked kale. Recipe included for subscribers at the bottom of today’s newsletter!

Another bit of produce that I brought home from Cookbook were these golden beets.

If cooked mushrooms are nature’s steak, cooked beets are nature’s candy. I love the golden ones especially because they’re so pretty (not that the red ones aren’t pretty. You’re pretty, red beets! I promise!)

In my quest to figure out what to do with them, I stumbled upon a golden borscht recipe and immediately fell for it. I loved the idea of cooking golden beets the way you would red beets in lots of liquid with aromatics. And the results were so photogenic, I almost didn’t want to eat it… I wanted to hang it on the wall.

Topped with yogurt (that may have been expired, teehee) and lots of dill, this made for a satisfying, light, springy dinner balanced out by a little bread. And chocolate chip cookies.

Finally: I’m not normally a fan of actual chocolate chips in my chocolate chip cookies. Normally, I buy bars of chocolate and chop them by hand so you get all the slivers and blobs and unexpected streaks of chocolate. But it just so happened that I had two bags of Ghiardelli Bittersweet chocolate chips in my baking cabinet and, wanting to put them to good use, I made chocolate chip cookies with them yesterday.

And lo and behold: they came out so great and they were so much less messy. Honestly, I just did everything directly in the mixer: butter, sugars, vanilla, beat beat beat. Eggs in, beat beat beat. And I added the dry ingredients in without mixing them together first, because I’m a rebel. And finally the chocolate chips. Get my latest chocolate chip cookie recipe below.

Hey, would you like some links? I thought you would:

• LA won big at the James Beard Awards this yaer and New York got shut out… just as I’m leaving one for the other! (Eater);

• Clear ice at home? I’m into it (Ice Made Clear);

• The 2023 Food Photographer of the Year (Kottke.org):

  

That’s all for this week, folks!

See you back here on Monday….

Your pal,
Ada