APÉRITIF:
One half of Sifted sweat her way into her late 20s this week. The other half escaped the hot, humid New York streets, crossed the country, and touched down in the warm, breezy City of Angels. Don’t worry — I (Gab) am just visiting, but the farmer’s markets overflowing with Harry’s Berries and backyards full of sour little kumquat trees are making me seriously consider finally getting my driver’s license. If Madame President Rodrigo can do it, so can I. In honor of my new future home, we’ve got another round of So You Couldn’t Get In for you, but an LA edition, of course. Whether you didn’t get a table, don’t want one, or aren’t in LA (my condolences), this week’s menu will transport you straight to a Silverlake staple, known for their jars of (sometimes moldy) jam and perfect breakfast bowls. Yes you guys, it’s Sqirl, so do with this what you will.
ON THE MENU THIS WEEK:
DINNER PLANS
Corn & Manchego Salad: I love corn. I once subsisted almost solely on grilled corn on the cob for a week during a high school stint at Bonnaroo music festival. I’ve had this stool on my dream home decor Pinterest board for years. You get it, I love corn! And this recipe is one of my all-time favorite ways to enjoy it, which is really saying something. My dad clipped it out of a copy of Bon Appetit nearly 10 years ago, and it’s remained a mainstay on our family’s summertime menu ever since. The equation is butter + chili flakes + lime + grated Manchego and it unsurprisingly equals a completely addictive summer side that you will truly lick the serving spoon clean of. The latest iteration from a recent backyard barbecue utilized some browned Kerrygold butter I had leftover from a baking project, which made it even better, something I previously thought was impossible. The recipe calls for roasting the corn in its husk in a hot oven, but we prefer to use the grill and spare the already-overworked AC in our kitchen, plus grilling it in the husk adds a charred flavor reminiscent of the best corn tortillas. It’s sweet & salty, cheesy zestiness somehow reminds me of the summer salad version of a Cool Ranch Dorito, and if that doesn’t convince you to make it, I don’t know what will.
Grilled Hanger Steak with Peanut Salsa: Summertime has me wanting to wrap truly everything and anything in crisp, cold lettuce and call it dinner. This week it was a riff on this recipe, but with hanger steak and taking hints from this recipe’s marinade a.k.a. adding a big glug of fish sauce and lime zest. There are few things better than the charred edge pieces where the sugar from the marinade has caught on the grill, making for irresistible bites, especially when sliced and eaten with your fingers straight off the cutting board. The rest of the steak was sliced thinly against the grain, then draped into butter lettuce and topped with the former recipe’s outstanding peanut ‘salsa’ and the latter’s cucumber salad. That’s a summer dinner, perfected.
Brown Butterscotch Cookies: Suburban grocery stores are superior for many reasons, the best being that they carry every type of baking chip you could ever dream of. On my most recent trip to one of these meccas, I picked up a bag of intense, oversized dark chocolate chips and another of tiny, cloyingly sweet butterscotch ones. When tossed together and strewn throughout a toasty, brown butter batter, though, they baked into big, balanced brown butter-scotch cookies —see what I did there? ;)— with crackly shells and caramel-flavored, cookie dough-like centers.
SO YOU CAN’T (OR DON’T WANT TO) GET INTO SQ*RL
Ricotta + Jam Toast: I had a friend recently text the group chat “What’s the deal with the internet discovering ricotta?” The zoomers in that group chat (they’ll dispute this fact, in true gen Z fashion) alerted me that ricotta toast seems to be the new avocado toast, at least on TikTok. Famously, the Internet loves to pick a favorite cheese (see: Feta’s fifteen minutes in the spotlight, Halloumi’s inevitable rise to fame), but for most of us, Ricotta is that b*tch, been that b*tch, still that bitch, will forever be that b*tch. For the last 10 years, Sqirl has been churning out thick slabs of brioche lathered in ricotta & their [now-controversial] house-made jam. If you’ve eaten it, no matter how much you hate Instagram-bait, overpriced ‘toasts’, or just L.A. in general, you get it. Luckily, it’s not at all hard to make at home. Get yourself a loaf of brioche from a good bakery, not the oddly pale, unnervingly-plush stuff from the grocery store. Cut it thicker than you’ve ever cut a slice of bread in your life and toast it in a pan, in even more butter. Then do your best impression of a chef and spread on ricotta with the back of a spoon, not a knife, creating a little divot for your jam to pool. Add the jam-- June Taylor’s are for die-hard jam-heads, but Bonne Maman & their anti-Nazi jams are great too and much more accessible-- or arrange three varieties in a palette of sorts for the true Sqirl look. And don’t you dare forget the most important parts: flaky Maldon salt and a squeeze of lemon on top, duh!
Pesto Rice Bowl: Arguably even more famous than the sweet, stretchy slices of toast spread with ricotta and jam are the bowls of bright green pesto rice that sit on seemingly every single table at Sqirl. The tender grains are coated in just enough of a tangy, herby sauce to serve as the perfect base for whatever combination of eggs, bacon and kale you choose. Sqirl surprisingly shared the recipe here, but I’m a lazy cook, meaning I despise any recipe that asks me to do things like spread cooked rice onto a baking sheet to let it cool. Instead, when I’m craving the infamous bowl, I turn to this easy, adaptable herby rice recipe. It’s technically a creamy, crunchy mix of crispy rice tossed with peas, feta, raisins and pistachios (which is delicious as is) but I’d recommend following just the herby sauce portion of the recipe, then tossing just-cooked, cooled, or leftover rice in it. From there, top your bowls Sqirl-style, a.k.a. with thinly sliced watermelon radishes, a poached egg, sautéed kale, crumbled feta or slices of thick and crispy bacon.
Millet Granola Bowl: Here’s the bowl I actually make most mornings. The mornings where I can’t seem to get breakfast together until 11:30, when my third cup of coffee sends a shockwave of caffeine jitters through my body, and my stomach makes a noise that can be roughly translated to an Audrey II-esque “feed me”. I love granola and have a near-steady stream of my favorite ‘nola in my kitchen, but I must admit this extra-crunchy version still calls out to me from time to time. Puffed millet (or quinoa, or kamut, or really any puffed grain) makes for an airier, lighter bite than oats, one that stays crispy even in the midst of yogurt and macerated fruit. Plus, a brilliant addition of baking soda to the heated wet ingredients makes the whole mixture bubble and fizz in a way that incorporates air pockets into the final mix, meaning ever more crunch. It’s highly snackable, and looks even more legit eaten directly from the signature Sqirl bowls that I love to hate, but actually just hate to love.
TAKEOUT:
Thank you to Rachel over at Sidekick for alerting us to this recipe for hot-honey ‘dust’ courtesy of Shake Shack. Maybe it’s the Dorito-deprived child in me, but call anything a flavoring ‘dust’ and I’m sold.
Yet another celebrity cooking show, and we’re still waiting for our call from Netflix. Paris— good 4 u, but please never forget when you cooked bacon between two irons, like a damn sociopath!!!!
Grandpa Joe, please!