Jump scare, I’m not Tanya! She’s catching a tan on a vacation, well deserved after helping you all fiber-max and C.S.A.-optimize all season. Instead you’ve got me — I work on NYT Cooking’s social media, and I write a monthly restaurant column in our Where to Eat newsletter.
I write to you from the plane, flying back from the West Coast, wistfully looking at my camera roll from a weekend in Los Angeles. The highlights: about 400 pictures of the beach from different angles; a video of my POV from the back seat of my first Waymo, sound-tracked by my panicked voice; and so, so many photos of vegetables. I’m not moving to Los Angeles anytime soon, ostensibly because I am a New York girl in my heart and soul (… but, more honestly, because I can’t drive). But if I was, you’d better believe those vegetables would be the biggest draw.
That’s one thing Angelenos get right: Anywhere you eat, you’ll find lush, stunning vegetable dishes. When you see something on a menu just called “lettuces”? Yeah, that’s going to be good. So, as I prepare for landing back in New York, here are a few of my favorite vegetable-forward dishes of the West Coast and recipes from our archive that approximate them, so I — and, ideally, you — can replicate that Californian energy at home.
I’m putting this dressing on everything
My favorite meal of this trip was at an izakaya in Venice called RVR, also a favorite of my colleague and New York Times Cooking senior editor Genevieve Ko’s. She walked me there on the beach, sandals in hand and pants rolled up, for a meal starring some of the best plants I’ve had to date. It serves bracing radicchio and Asian pear with a silken tofu-miso dressing, an ideal foil to punchy greens, but the dressing would be rich enough to spread on thick pieces of toast as a snack — a benefit to making it at home. Another standout dish: the roasted sweet potatoes, charred on some edges and boasting astonishingly velvety flesh. The closest I’ve come to making such a spud at home is this five-star recipe for sweet potatoes with tahini butter.
Punchy, crispy, toasty
Another inspired dish from the beloved Thai restaurant Night + Market: nam khao tod, a salad that’s more crispy rice than it is anything else, bathed in a hyper-punchy dressing with lots of chopped peanuts and cilantro. I’m hoping to conjure some of that energy at home with Kayla Hoang’s newer recipe for toasted coconut rice salad. Uncooked rice is toasted in oil for deep, nutty flavor before being cooked in coconut milk, and then eventually tossed with crispy tofu and tons of scallions, cilantro and cashews. Or, depending on what veg I have around, I might just toss them into Sherry Rujikarn’s incredibly adaptable recipe for chile-lime crispy rice with roasted vegetables, where flat planes of crunchy rice are the star.
Less meat, more mushrooms
I’m equally inspired, looking through our archive, to make some of my favorite, albeit more commonly carnivorous, Californian bites — like birria, an L.A. staple — with a vegetable-y lilt. I’ve long fantasized about making Kristina Felix’s recipe for mushroom quesabirria tacos, and I foresee making my dreams come true very soon.
An evergreen L.A. favorite
Lastly, we can’t forget the creamed spinach at Musso & Frank Grill. Instead of flying back every time I picture it, I think I’ll make a big bowl of Kia Damon’s ultra-savory miso creamed spinach.
One More Thing!
BLEAK: Corporate-core restaurant interiors. I love my office! But I do not want to do a tasting menu at my cubicle.
CHIC: I need to claim squatter’s rights in the cookie house at Carleton College in Minnesota. How wholesome is that?
Thanks for tolerating me this week. I’ll give you back your beloved Tanya in due time. Promise!
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