“I wish you liked soup,” I texted a friend last week. A stinging cold front had moved in, and I could think of nothing else to make us for dinner that night. His aversion to broth-based meals makes planning a cozy evening in a bit of a puzzle for me, a card-carrying soup lover — and flies in the face of his otherwise impeccable taste.
“Absolute waste of a wish,” he replied.
Very well, then. With soup off the table, I had to look inward. What did I want, really? I wanted something warm, easy to prepare and soothing. I wanted a big bowl of soft.
So a big bowl of soft we had: A puddle of Priya Krishna’s everyday dal bleeding into her coconut saag, a combination of dishes that answers the question, “What if you could eat a hug?”
Crunchy, crispy, crackly dishes may dominate the recipe attention economy, but they are decidedly not hugs. They are palm-numbing high-fives. Eric Kim’s recipe for pan-seared radicchio with soft cheese, however, is a loving embrace. “Soft” is right there in the name! It’s a delightful wintertime skillet snack for two, or you can make it a meal alongside Colu Henry’s creamy (read: soft!) white beans with herb oil and some squishy focaccia.
And while not right for my soup-averse friend, Kay’s creamy potato leek soup (swap the chicken stock for a robust vegetable stock to make it vegetarian) or Melissa Clark’s nourishing Parmesan cabbage soup (use a vegetarian cheese) may be right for you.
Brown Butter Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad
One More Thing
Tejal Rao, our critic at large and the former ringmaster of this newsletter, has been reporting on the devastating fires in Los Angeles, where she lives. I encourage you to spend some time with her latest. It’s about a network of home gardeners in Altadena, Calif., who are working to build a seed bank there that will be essential to restoring the area, home to thousands of acres of woodlands, streams and undeveloped land. The effort is helmed by a University of California naturalist and master gardener.
“Within a day,” Tejal writes, “people were dropping off seed packets — bladderpod and desert globemallow seeds, poppy seeds from ‘Sue’s yard in Pasadena’ and brickellbush from ‘a south facing slope in Topanga Canyon.’”
Thanks for reading, and see you next week.
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