Getting Hot in Here
My kitchen rom com fantasy & other yummy holiday dishes.
Hello my fellow horny Americans,
Anyone else feel that nearly forgotten twinge of warmth in their frozen veins? An unexpected lift in libido, a skip in the step, a feeling of —waddaya call it? oh, yea— pleasure? Well, watching a bag of discarded liposuction slowly roll downhill to his demise can surely do that to a girl.
But, also, the holidays are coming, and nothing gets a lady hotter than the official season of eating your feelings. ( If you don’t believe it, just see me in the image above, eating a customary Christmas Berry Pizza in my kinky knit sweater.)
Look. Either way, the next few months are going to be difficult. Depressing if we have to be far from our families, anxiety-inducing if we are with our families. Stressful to travel, upsetting to make the decision not to. Lonely to be alone, annoying to be with our partners, having to pretend we haven’t heard them tell the same story over and over again for the last 10 months.
The one solace we have is food. The one escape we have is cooking.
So this holiday, no matter where you may be, get yourself into the kitchen and start sweating over a hot flame. Cooking can be a great excuse to leave that horrible political conversation happening in the den. Cooking can be a way to reconnect with your partner who you have come to despise so very much. Cooking can be a way to reconnect with yourself, a therapy session without having to stare your therapist awkwardly in the eye over Zoom. Above all, the pay off of cooking can give you pleasure only second to that of watching the aforementioned fat bag rolling into a busy highway.
So go on. Cook your problems and eat your feelings. You’ll feel great, just like I did in the image above after I prepared my family and granddaughter a delicious Thanksgiving meal of whole peppers, broccoli medley, and red drink.
“How do I spice things up with my partner that I live with? It’s been a lot of Kraft macaroni nights…”
Dear Dr. Love Kraft,
If you’ve ever seen a Rom-Com made in the early 2000s staring Katherine Zeta-Jones or Sarah Michelle Geller or really any other woman with three names, then you know that cooking with your love interest can be very sexy.
I’m talking, flour on your nose, sexy.
Slowly tasting sauce, sexy.
The type of sexy we all want to take a shower after watching.
You, too, can have this passion!
All you have to do is find a recipe you both want to eat that doesn’t come in a box. First, clear space so you can actually do tasks next to each other, like on the dining room table. If it were me, I’d smoke a little weed to get in the mood that this is “fun time”, and not “accidentally scream at my partner for getting in my damn way” time.
Put on some music, wear a cute apron, divvy up the recipe tasks before you start so fights don’t break out. Even if you are not talking, the sound of a lover chopping an onion can really get things going. Extra points if you can maneuver behind me while I cook, your body pressed up to mine, showing me how to sautee — together as one.
WOW.
Moving on. Whatever you make, just do it together. And do the dishes together, too. It’s all about balance and support and changing it up without expecting one party to do all the work. If Snoop and Martha can do it, so can you.
My favorite Rom-Com ready meal to cook is mushroom risotto. Lots of chopping. Lots of mixing and sloughing and grinding together. Delicious, sensual, and pretty damn easy.
Kate’s Simply Irresistible Risotto
6 cups low-sodium chicken stock, or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
1 lb shiitake, porccini or whatever mushrooms you love, stemmed and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
1 ½ cups arborio rice(200 g)
½ cup white wine(120 mL) or lemon juice
1 cup grated parmesan cheese(110 g), plus more for serving
¼ cup fresh parsley(10 g), for serving
Step 1: Add the stock to a medium pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Once the stock is boiling, reduce the heat to low or remove the pan from the heat and keep nearby.
Step 2: Heat the olive oil in a wide, tall pot over medium heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until translucent.
Step 3: Add the mushrooms and butter. Cook, stirring occasionally until the mushrooms have cooked down.
Step 4: Add the garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper, stir, and cook for 1 minute, until the butter has melted and the garlic is aromatic.
Step 5: Add the rice and stir until fully coated in the mushroom mixture. Let the rice toast for 1-2 minutes, until fragrant.
Step 6: Add the white wine and cook until the wine has evaporated, stirring occasionally. If using lemon juice add a 1/2 cup of water and the lemon juice instead.
Step 7: Add 1 cup (240 ml) of the hot stock at, stirring slowly to combine. Cook, stirring frequently until the stock is fully absorbed. Continue to add the stock, ½ cup (120 ml) at a time, stirring continuously, until the broth is fully absorbed, for 15-20 minutes. This takes time. Savor it. Slough it. Watch how the rice changes. Use your intuition.
Step 8: Once the rice is al dente, remove from the heat. Add the Parmesan and stir to combine.
Step 9: Top with parsley, Parmesan, salt, and pepper and eat your sexy love creation.
If you haven’t seen Simply Irresistible skip all of the above and just smoke a bowl and watch this movie. There is a magical crab in a top hat. You’re welcome.
“I feel I sometimes neglect my career and own self by getting distracted with dating and going-nowhere-fleeting relationships.”
Dear No Work All Twerk,
I chose a freelance career to be able to do what I want when I want. This sometimes results in me wandering around for hours to avoid doing the thing I have to do. Sometimes I sit down and write this newsletter instead of doing my actual work because, well, love and food are more interesting than naming a CBD bully stick for your anxious dog.
It is in our nature to avoid the things that we deem as “important,” and replace them with things we elect as “fleeting.” So first off, don’t beat yourself up for thinking more about relationships than a career — we’ve all done it and will continue to as long as the Bachelor franchise is still on the air.
But also, a good ol’ schedule never hurt anyone. Sit down and plan out your day or week allotting time for both dating and work. For example, Sunday to Tuesday nights are for progressing your career, looking for jobs, updating a resume, making work connections, etc. While Thursdays and Saturdays are date night, where you can smash without guilt. And if you need something more than a calendar alert to keep you on schedule, a long-winded, highly intensive, multi-day recipe will do the trick - and give you a sexy payoff after all the hard work.
If quarantine hasn’t got you on the sourdough starter train yet, now is your time - and not for the reasons you think. Making a starter is like caring for a gooey baby you need to attend to every single day at exactly the same time, with a lot of confusing tiny steps that can kill it in an instant. It is a nightmare and a great distraction from your dysfunctional love life.
I would start your starter with these directions, but if you need more help, as I definitely did, go to the Instagram stories of Sonny’s Pizza Restaurant in DC, here.
Hannah, from Sonny’s DC, with a homemade babka that you, too, can make at home.
Hannah, the baker at Sonny’s, takes you through all the painstakingly mundane tasks of creating your perfect starter, tending to it, adding to it, burping it, etc, until it’s finally ready to use. The restaurant, which is amazing and a definite must-visit if you are in the area, also has some great classes you can take online to learn how to bake all sorts of delicious things. They are fun and interactive classes, and very helpful, especially if you are a person who hates baking, like me.
Now, after a week or so of sticking to your schedule and growing your dough baby - “doing the work” as they say - you get a treat. Perhaps, because of all your restraint and hard work, this treat can be shared with a date, in bed, with lots of syrup.
I present to you the best goddamn payoff to making your own sourdough starter- the Vinegar Hill House cast iron Sourdough Pancake. I’m not just saying this because I worked at VHH for years as a young horny food lover trying to make it as a writer in the big bad city, but this dish is truly one of the best things in the world.
Try to make it, report back, and if all else fails, get yourself to Brooklyn and go eat the damn thing in person.
And that’s the soup, my sultry little chefs.
If you are looking to donate funds to keep restaurants alive during this inevitable second shut down, and support workers in need, please give to The Restaurant Worker’s Community Foundation, California Immigrant Resilience Fund, or ROC United.
Until next time, keep cooking, grinding, and submitting your questions below!
Love and Butter,
Kate
