Cocoa porridge for autumn 🍂

And warming-up with miso soup

Autumn means gathering lovely things for the Easter break, which we always spend at home. So far, chocolate for Tony, supplies for a knitting project, and a very important hot cross bun pre-order (made in February!).

I’ve been reading Ethaney Lee’s

try a little tenderness

and realising self care isn’t another thing to do (haha) but a commitment to taking care of yourself in all kinds of ways (small things count!). I love the way she writes about being a slowish girl, it feels right for the season.  

Also on my mind, Hayao Miyazaki’s subtle yet moving use of ‘ma’ (appreciating the space between two things) via this funny New York Times piece about the new Ghibli Park in Japan. These ideas ended up finding their way into the food I’ve wanted to make lately — satisfying, gentle and simple meals.

P.S If you’re new here, hello! I’m constantly trying new recipes and started this newsletter to highlight recent favourites and give my brothers a break from receiving many unsolicited recipe recommendations. I’m from Sydney originally and currently live in Tasmania (lutruwita), Australia. I have the lucky job of commissioning recipes for work and hope you find something new to cook at home.

Cocoa and almond butter porridge

I’m in danger of recommending most of the recipes from Simply Genius, the latest cookbook to come out of Kristen Miglore’s Genius Recipes column.

The latest is cocoa porridge with almond butter, which smells like Coco Pops as it cooks. The recipe is from Samantha Seneviratne and apparently a hit with kids!

Miso soup from scratch

There’s an episode of The Makani: Cooking for the Maiko House (Netflix) where Sumire, a geisha in training, has a fever and her best friend Kiyo spends a day shopping for ingredients to make a healing soup. She goes to a kelp specialist then sees bonito flakes being carved, before returning home to start cooking. 

So when I saw Eric Kim’s miso soup recipe (NYT Cooking gift link), I was primed to have a go. Every step of this recipe is soothing and it’s just the kind of meal I want to be eating over Easter, in between days filled with hot cross buns, long walks and chocolate eggs.

@nytcookingFull recipe by @ericjoonho 1 (5-inch) square kombu (dried kelp)
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon mirin
5 grams wakame (dried seaweed), crushed (¼ cup)
2 cups loosely packed katsuobushi (often labeled “bonito flakes”)
1 (14-ounce) package silken tofu, drained
¼ cup miso (white or red; see Tip), plus more to taste
1 large scallion, thinly sliced Step 1
Make dashi, the soup base, by soaking kombu in 4 cups cold water for 15 minutes in a medium pot. Add the sake and mirin and bring to a simmer over high heat. As soon as the water starts to boil, take the pot off the heat, cover and let the kombu steep until the liquid smells like the sea, about 15 minutes. Step 2
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, soak the wakame in about 3 inches of cold water until soft, about 15 minutes as well. Drain and set aside. Step 3
When ready to serve, remove the kombu from the pot (see Tip). Stir the katsuobushi into the kombu broth, cover and let steep for 1 minute. Strain into a medium bowl, pressing down on the katsuobushi to extract all of the liquid; discard the spent flakes. This is your dashi. Step 4
Return the dashi to the pot and add the drained wakame. Scoop the tofu into the pot using a spoon or your hand, leaving it in large chunks. Bring the soup to a boil, then remove from the heat. Step 5
Add the miso to a small bowl, then ladle over some of the broth and stir to dissolve. Add the dissolved miso to the pot and gently stir until incorporated. Add the scallion, taste for seasoning (adding more miso if you’d like) and serve immediately.

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I’ve been serving it alongside bowls of sushi rice and an Indonesian-style omelette that’s an easy way to use any leftover tofu. My dad used to make this omelette every Sunday to serve with dinner. To make it:

Lightly beat two eggs together with a pinch of salt. Add a couple of tablespoons of silken tofu (which I sometimes chop into cubes). Heat a fry pan with some neutral oil over medium-high heat and pour the eggs in when hot. Then let the egg mostly cook, before tipping it into a bowl before the middle is completely set. Top with dark soy sauce and more salt if needed.

The soup, rice and omelette together make for a very soft and comforting meal. It’s probably what Nigella Lawson means when she writes about ‘nursery food’.

P.S. If you’re in nipaluna/Hobart, I gathered my supplies from a Japanese deli in the city.

Julia Turshen’s no-recipe broccoli and cheese pasta

Julia Turshen’s broccoli and feta pasta is as easy as it looks in her video demo. It’s the kind of meal I want to eat on a Thursday night when I’m too lazy to go out but also can’t be bothered to make anything too involved. I bought a mini container of Meredith Dairy goat’s cheese (it had just two chunks), boiled some broccoli in pasta water and blitzed the sauce together.

Gnocchi with broccolini, olives and sun-dried tomato

The best meal I ate last month came from a collapsible bowl! I went to Freycinet National Park for my first multi-day hike, one of the perks of living in Tassie. After a big day of walking and a very refreshing (read icy) swim, my friends cooked a packet of gnocchi in sea water with some chopped broccolini. Sliced olives and sun-dried tomato were added, olive oil and lemon too and that was dinner.

Having dinner on the beach and the fact that I was no longer wearing my pack made this a very satisfying meal. And it’s even easier to make at home.

The view from our Cooks Beach campsite at dinner.

Sourdough sandwich loaf

On the opposite end of the spectrum — I’m making sourdough again. I’ve been obsessed with a sourdough tin loaf sold at a cute bakery in a nearby town. 

I found this recipe and it’s responsible for the best loaf I’ve ever made. It’s pretty hands off as far as sourdough goes, you just need lots of time. The loaf itself is soft and sour and perfect for weekend salad sandwiches and Hong Kong-style scrambled eggs on toast.

Other stuff!

Currently inspired by…

Micro bakeries. I love them all.

Tenderherbs.

The Daniels. 

This Korean memoir. 

Catch you next month 😋