Author’s note: hello! It is I, author. I found this post in my drafts from October, surprisingly nearly complete except for A Tangible Thing™. Why would I have spent 5 more minutes to finish something when I can stop 90% of the way and procrastinate forever? I’m back to finish it and break the curse, but only because I’m procrastinating something else. Enjoy!
Sunday night’s dinner was mushroom and poblano tacos AT LONG LAST. This is a dinner I’ve been wanting to make for myself for almost 2 weeks, but things like lovely restaurant meals and dinners with friends and also working on clearing out my freezer kept getting in the way. This might be the longest stretch of time I’ve ever denied myself of anything, but I will admit the suspense probably made the tacos taste better. Secret ingredient: deprivation!
Leave it to me to make a relatively inexpensive dinner idea grow into something more costly than it needs to be - but honestly there are so many cookbooks written on the subject of budget friendly cooking (yawn), and none about budget hostile cooking (provocative!). A manuscript I was born to create!
I purchased my beautiful amazing mushrooms at this awesome meat market (ironically) called The Meat Hook in Williamsburg, they’re from a company called Smallhold, which grows their mushrooms in these insanely cool and futuristic urban farms that look like this (pic from their website):
Apparently they grow their mushrooms on a substrate that is primarily made of sawdust - “which just so happens to be a waste byproduct of the lumber industry. One person's trash is another person's mushrooms.” Wow!
Needless to say, Sustainably Grown Mushrooms of The Future aren’t cheap - at least if you compare them to other mushrooms! But I got about a pound for $14, and that’s about the cost of an average quality steak (aka a cow that lived a sad life), which probably wouldn’t have inspired as many grunts of pleasure as these mushrooms did when we were eating them.
Anyway, there’s some girl math for you. A long time ago I read or heard a bit that goes something like “we always ask ‘why’ when food is expensive, but we never stop to think about why other foods are so cheap” and I think about that constantly.
Also at Meat Hook I noticed a small fridge with corn tortillas from Nixtamal and ISTG when I opened the fridge to grab a pack, a wave of corn tortilla perfume filled my nostrils, and the fact that I can buy food of this quality at an unplanned stop on a Sunday stroll made me hate NY just slightly less than I did before I sniffed that sweet tortilla air.
I ripped the mushrooms up into pieces, which I think provides more interesting texture than cutting them uniformly. I sliced 2 poblano peppers into strips, finely diced a jalapeno, and sliced a shallot that was going bad in the back of the fridge.
I first let the poblanos and jalapeno cook on high heat in the pan with no oil, so that they could develop a yummy char. I then added the shallots and about 1/3 of the mushrooms, I let that cook down for a few minutes, added another 1/3 of the mushrooms, let that cook down more, and finally added the last of the mushrooms. I like to think this creates a mixture that has some really melty soft mushrooms, and also some that are more al dente.
In the last few minutes of cooking I seasoned it all with cumin, ancho chili powder, garlic powder, a bit of oregano, and some lime juice. It became an even more fun version of itself when I covered it with Oaxaca cheese, this incredible Mexican cheese similar to mozzarella, which comes in a big ball that unfurls into one long fashionable cheese scarf.
I shredded most of it up into stringy bits, and broiled the whole pan for slightly longer than I wanted. I’m writing this at 7:18 am after having woken up at 2:45 and not being able to go back to sleep, so I have no funny quip to insert here.
John and I said nearly nothing to each other throughout the meal, which is the primary hallmark of a dinner that we’re both really enjoying. Also we’re running out of things to talk about. Someone help.
Hello from present day! It is January and last weekend we went upstate with some friends for a snowy cabin getaway. Along the way we stopped at a thrift store where I found this precious stamp holder for $6.
I realized only after I got home and sent these pictures to my mom that it’s engraved with someone’s initials - N.E.B.
I’ll presume those initials are the stamp holder’s and that her first name is Neb.