Soy-Braised Brisket with Caramelized Honey and Garlic by Alison Roman

This recipe reminded me a lot of a New York Times recipe by Sarah Digregorio that I make at least once a month, Honey-Soy Braised Pork with Ginger and Lime. They are similar in ingredients, flavor and cooking method. So I wasn’t at all surprised that we loved it. The biggest (obvious) difference between them was using beef brisket, which I had never cooked before. Partially because it’s expensive, partially because I found it intimidating. This project is forcing me to go out of my comfort zone all the time though, so now was as good a time as any to jump into brisket. 

The meat spends a total of 3 and a half hours on the stove over a low simmer, which means you spend 3 and a half hours smelling your dinner. It’s like having a fresh chocolate chip cookie dangled in front of your face for multiple hours. Annoying, but wow, what a delicious-looking cookie. 

A 3.5 lb. hunk of brisket is one big piece of meat. I practically needed two sets of tongs to lift it in and out of my Dutch oven. Before the clock starts on smelling your dinner, the beef is seared until deeply browned on all sides. Then the honey gets her time at the bottom of the Dutch oven to caramelize and become thinner so that it can coat heads of garlic, quartered onions, and spices. Once the onions are softened, the meat is nestled back in the pot, along with beef broth (or chicken broth), soy sauce, wine vinegar and fish sauce. Then the timer begins. 

210 minutes later, the fall-apart tender brisket is ready to be cut. By now the onions have become very soft memories of their former selves and pair perfectly with the meat in each bite, as do the confit garlic cloves. The braising liquid should be spooned over the top to keep everything moist and full of umami.

The closing statement to this dish is lots and lots of herbs. Alison calls for 4 cups of herbs (cilantro, mint, & basil) to be sprinkled over the top of the meat. It’s a veritable salad. And while J was worried they would get in the way of the meat, I found they were the perfect companion. I’ve never before had a salad made entirely of herbs, but this dish changed that and I am beginning to think of herbs more as standalone essentials and less as inconsequential flourishes. That’s one concept I know Alison believes in. 

12 recipes cooked, 213 recipes to go.

Cocoa Banana Bread by Alison Roman

I came back from my trip to Cincinnati to find 5 overripe bananas sitting on our kitchen counter. So ripe that they were hours away from needing to die in the trash can. I can’t stand food waste. I’ll force myself to eat leftovers for several days past when I should because I hate throwing food away. So I grabbed my cookbooks, searching for an emergency banana bread recipe, and what do you know, Alison’s Cocoa Banana Bread calls for exactly 5 overripe bananas. 

This chocolate banana bread turned out more like a dense chocolate banana cake, which I was thrilled about. From my first childhood memories, I requested chocolate cake with banana slices and Cool Whip frosting for my birthday every year. The bread tasted like a more sophisticated version of my childhood birthday cakes. However, I’m not sure Alison intended that. 

Past experience tells me that banana bread is dense and moist (I tried to resist that word). This recipe called for ½ cup of cocoa powder, which simultaneously gave this bread a strong, but not overpowering, chocolate flavor AND made the batter more tightly packed and somewhat dry. Perhaps the greater reason it turned out drier than expected is because I used All-Purpose Gluten Free flour instead of regular All-Purpose. My friend Margaret tells me that different flours have various hydration levels, so this could easily have altered the end results. 

All this to say, that while the bread was more like a dense cake, it still tasted delicious. My favorite parts were the raw-sugar crust and the sliced banana on top. I’d never tried baking with a raw sugar crust and was delighted by how easy it is to do. Simply grease the inside of a baking pan, sprinkle raw sugar (Demerara or Turbinado) over every side of the pan, and tap out any excess that doesn’t stick. What results is a crunchy sweet exterior in place of what is normally a boring part of banana bread - the sides. This crust meant every bite had something special to offer. And the banana on top, not only did it look fancy, but the sugars in the banana crystallized while baking and the whole thing became slightly gooey, which gave the bread another textural layer. 

The prep time was rather minimal, though I did need a stand mixer. You can make this without one, but your poor hands will be exhausted by the end. The suggested oven time is 90-100 minutes. I took mine out at 80 minutes, and next time, I’ll try 70 because perhaps that will make it less dry. 

11 recipes cooked, 214 recipes to go.

Hard-Roasted Spiced Cauliflower by Alison Roman

I’m just not a cauliflower person. Sadly, no amount of fancy spices will change that fact. Something about the taste (or lack thereof), and the excessive amount of fiber packed into such tiny florets. I don’t love turmeric either, the taste is a little too funky and lingers a little too long. The two main ingredients in this dish are cauliflower and turmeric. If those two ingredients are your jam, then this is your dish! It just wasn’t mine.  

But if I was a cauliflower fan, here’s what I would appreciate about this recipe:

1. Alison tells you to break up the cauliflower into very small florets, “about the size of a large bean.” The tiny size of the florets makes everything feel more delicate, and therefore more fancy. Plus, you can nibble on it instead of getting a whole mouthful of cauliflower. 

2. Cauliflower alone has almost no flavor, but Alison’s combination of spices make this different from boring cauliflower. She combines fennel seeds, garlic cloves, coriander, turmeric, salt and pepper. I imagine it would go well with a Roast chicken, a curry or a homemade Indian butter chicken. 

3. This is another one of those veggies that can be served at room temp. If you’re making a large meal, you can make this one first and let it hang out while you cook everything else. 

10 recipes cooked, 215 recipes to go.

Special Beans in Tomato Broth and Slab Bacon by Alison Roman

Special Beans are a long game kind of dish. The game takes little active time, but you have to keep your eyes on the special prize if you want to win. 

What makes these beans so special? Alison says it’s the use of dried beans. Yes, dried beans. I’d purchased dried beans only once before during the early pandemic grocery frenzy because all the canned beans were gone. That bag of black beans is still sitting in my grain basket, untouched. 

There’s an entire essay and multiple recipes devoted to dried beans in Dining In, so I couldn’t avoid them forever. But I was hesitant. Dried beans demand a lot of forethought. These special beans needed 2 full days of soaking before they were ready for cooking. Dried beans also require commitment. There’s no sure way of telling if they’ll fully soften, so you have to soak and cook them, hoping for the best. 

Where I live, dried beans other than black or pinto are hard to find. When I went on my sumac hunt, I came across a Middle Eastern market that carries 2lb. bags of dried large lima beans. So two days before I wanted to eat my special beans, I began soaking 1lb. of lima beans in cold water. 

This being my first time around the dried bean block, I was mistaken about what would happen during this soaking period. I was under the impression that the beans would become totally softened to the point they resembled canned beans. So soft that you could eat them straight out of the bowl without cooking them. Instead, soaking just loosened the proteins in the beans, helping them expand to their true size. The beans were still rather hard and needed to be cooked for several hours before becoming edible. 

This recipe is meant to make flavorful beans, and while they can be eaten on their own, they’re best used in something else (Alison suggests her Best Baked Beans or soup). By the time I finished cooking these beans, it was 7:15pm (again, long game), so I wasn’t about to whip up another recipe. I also didn’t have time to use them in something else the next day; I travelled to Cincinnati the next morning to see my BFF / designer of my website logo (thanks, Rachel!). 

On cooking day, I began by heating the bacon in my Dutch oven with a good bit of olive oil. The key here is not to brown the bacon, but to heat it slowly so the fat has time to seep out. It’s the fat you’re really going for so it can infuse the beans with porky flavor. By this point, there should be a lot of oily fat at the bottom of the pot, enough to soak a bunch of tomatoes, shallots, and heads of garlic. (Here is another example of an Alison recipe that requires minimal chopping, if choppin ain’t your thang.) Add in some anchovies, a parmesan rind, fresh herbs, and water, and you’ve got a flavorful cooking liquid to soften your beans. 

The beans spent a little over 3 hours on the stove before they were softened to my liking. I served them in their cooking liquid with homemade sourdough and herbed goat cheese. The cooking liquid doesn’t have a super strong flavor, so we added some more salt, and even a bit of lemon juice to liven it up. 

I’ll make these beans again soon and plan to turn them into Alison’s Best Baked Beans. But next time, I’ll plan for an even longer long game. I bet it will be worth it. 

9 recipes cooked, 216 recipes to go.

Roasted Tomato and Anchovy Bucatini by Alison Roman

My goodness, this tomato sauce made me swoon. It’s worth every hour it takes to make. This recipe is NOT Alison’s Shallot/Anchovy pasta which went absolutely viral in 2020. That pasta is really good, but I liked this one better. Mostly because I’m in love with tomatoes.** And this sauce still has that lovely umami flavor that only anchovies can bring. (No, you absolutely may not skip the anchovies. Don’t ask that.)

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

My cooking timeline. 

2:40pm - I slice and arrange the tomatoes in their baking dishes with some smashed garlic cloves and fresh thyme. Into the oven they go.

3:26pm - I’m sitting on my living room floor and writing the Hard-Roasted Cauliflower entry. My thoughts are suddenly interrupted by the smell of roasted tomatoes. Heaven. 

4:10pm - I turn on the oven light so I can spy on the tomatoes. 

5:30pm - I sneakily spoon a few of the smaller tomatoes out of the baking dish and snack on them with some flaky sea salt. I’m pretty sure I could just eat all the tomatoes for my meal and feel totally satisfied.

5:48pm -  Tomatoes will be ready soon, so I slice and sauté the red onion. I add the anchovies, watching them melt and disappear before plopping in some tomato paste. 

5:59pm - I start bringing my pasta water to a boil. 

6:05pm - I take the tomatoes out of the oven, the sizzling olive oil makes crackling sounds as the roasting pan sits on top of my stove. I spoon the tomatoes into the pot with the onions and stir. The smell is incredible. 

6:10pm - I cook my pasta. I used yellow lentil & brown rice spaghetti noodles from TJ’s, and quite frankly, I couldn’t tell the difference between regular wheat pasta. (I’m GF by necessity, not by choice, believe me. So no bucatini, but something close enough.)

6:12pm - I watch the tomatoes slowly break down and the sauce thicken in the pot. 

6:18pm - I add the cooked pasta to my sauce pot with some cooking water and swirl it all until the sauce sticks to the noodles. I plate the pasta with a simple kale salad with lemon. Dinnertime magic. J confirms that this is the only tomato sauce I should ever make in the future. 

6:45pm - I do the dishes, and remember to reserve the leftover olive oil from the tomato dish. I’ll use it on a roast chicken for a dinner party with my in-laws tomorrow.  

I eat the pasta leftovers for my lunch the next day and feel zero bitterness about eating leftovers for lunch. 

8 recipes cooked, 217 recipes to go.

**Below are several anecdotal memories I have of tomatoes, because I’m trying to write about my experience with food as much as the recipes themselves. 

1. My first memory of tomatoes is eating my mom’s spaghetti with “red sauce.” I grew up on a limited rotation of dependable dinners like ground beef tacos, chicken and broccoli casserole, and spaghetti. The best nights were always spaghetti nights, not because of the pasta, but because of the tangy jarred marinara sauce. 

2. I’ve lived about 40% of my life in the Chicagoland area which is known for its deep dish pizza. And since you (didn’t) ask, I will declare that the best pizza in all of Chicago is from Lou Malnati’s for the sole reason that their pizzas are sauce-forward. Their sauce is made from a balanced blend of tomato chunks and pureed tomato, and it’s perfectly salty and infused with garlic. I always ask for an extra bowl of sauce to dip my pizza into, because it’s that good. 

3. In 2019, my husband and I lived our best lives in Italy. We took a 3 week trip there to celebrate his grad school graduation. We hiked by the ocean, looked at countless pieces of art and architecture, and Vespa’ed through wine country. If I could really live anywhere, I’d pick the quiet hillside town of Assisi. Since most of our days were filled with nonstop carbo-loading (and cheap wine drinking), we figured we better eat at least one meal on the “healthier” side each day. So every few days, we’d find a local food market and buy butter, a carton of eggs, and a box of fresh cherry tomatoes to cook our own breakfast (before later going to a cafe to buy fresh croissants). I don’t know if it was the lack of pesticides, or the climate, or the novelty of being in Italy, or some combination, but those cherry tomatoes really were the most juicy and flavorful tomatoes I’ve ever had. No cherry tomatoes, even in California, have matched them since.  

Me living my best life in Italy by the sea.