Episode 2: Here's What Else You Knead to Know Today (with W. Kamau Bell and Stella Parks)
White flour is in short supply, so what should you do when you want to bake? We’re joined by pastry wizard Stella Parks (@bravetart) to help us answer your questions, and comedian W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) tells us about the magic of two-ingredient pancakes – an easy breakfast that his daughters love.
For a transcript of this episode click here.
Food ideas discussed in this episode:
(These are not recipes! The internet abounds with good recipes that can help you flesh out these tidbits.)
New Jersey style pizza salad
Make a salad adding salami, chickpeas, radicchio, and pieces of cheese in the salad. Dress with vinaigrette with oregano. Here’s a version that looks pretty good!
Meatballs with red sauce
Make meatballs and brown them. Cook them surrounded by tomatoes you have crushed by hand. Add salt, garlic, onion ends, and hard cheese rinds.
Marcella Hazan’s simple tomato sauce [ link ]
Canned tomatoes, an onion cut in half, butter, and a little salt. That’s it.
Lazy meal
Annie’s macaroni and cheese with peas and chili crisp.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Peanut butter on one half of the bread. Jelly on the other. For the Hrishi version, toast the peanut butter side face-up in the toaster oven.
Tortilla español
Make a tortilla español with 8 eggs, potatoes, and caramelized onions. Eat on its own or as a sandwich.
Good and Cheap, cookbook by Leanne Brown [ link ]
Leanne Brown’s recipe for creamy zucchini fettucine
Delicious packed lunch ideas
A grain salad (e.g. farro)
A bean salad (e.g. chickpea)
A cabbage slaw; try Mexican or Japanese inspired flavorings
Soba noodle salad with dressing on the side
A sandwich that improves with time, like a layered sandwich of meats, cheeses and pickled vegetables pressed under a weight
A sandwich with potato chips or furikake added at the last minute for crunch
Dryer bread
Use a dryer as a proofing drawer!
Alternative flour recipes
If you have a nontraditional flour, don’t try to figure out how to adapt traditional flour recipes. Instead, find recipes that were originally designed for that flour.
Stella Parks’s whole wheat sandwich loaf [ link ]
Kenji’s no-knead bread [ link ]
Stella Parks’s whole wheat carrot cake [ link ]
You can also make it with apples or pears.
Fix your stale bread (or as Hrishi calls it: Dead Bread Redemption)
Rehydrate stale bread by adding a little water. Then use as breadcrumbs (maybe in meatballs) or make bread pudding or French toast.
Panzanella
Bread salad! Toast croutons and toss them with tomatoes and cucumbers and basil and pickled onions in vinaigrette. Let it sit 15 minutes or so to make a half soggy, half crunchy salad. Or try variations! Raddichio and bleu cheese, butternut squash with hazelnuts and brown butter, asparagus and mint...
Egg in a basket/toad in a hole/one-eyed jack/egg in a trashcan
Step 1. Make a hole in the bread.
Step 2. Fry an egg in the hole.
Step 3. Make up a name for it. Literally any name.
W. Kamau Bell’s two-ingredient banana pancakes
Mash up one banana until it turns into a mush. Whip together with two eggs, a little baking powder, a hint of cinnamon, and vanilla. Fry small pancakes in butter.
Movie night popcorn
Pop popcorn in a pot, ideally with coconut oil. Grind nutritional yeast in a spice mill or coffee grinder until it’s a fine powder. Mix with salt and sprinkle on popcorn. Or try parmesan cheese, or Magic Unicorn sea salt.
Making an octopus
Simmer - don’t boil! - in water until tender. Add a wine cork, I guess. You can make a delicious stock from this water if you add items like tomato, celery, onion, or garlic. Once the octupus is tender, you could marinate it in a marinade containing sugar and fish sauce. Or, grill it, not to cook it but just to heat it and char the outside.
Go break an egg!