Staying In No. 11
What I want to eat on my birthday.
Welcome! This is “Staying In,” a Sunday newsletter with recipe ideas for your week ahead. Every other Thursday I also publish a “Going Out” edition where I review a restaurant, bar, or activity here in Portland. What should I write about next? Feel free to leave a comment on this post or submit your idea here. And don’t forget to check out pdxrecs.com for even more recommendations. Enjoy!
My birthday is on Tuesday (yes, my mom and brother also had birthdays last week. August is a big deal in my family).
I’m turning 32, which feels….meh. It’s not my 30th so I don’t feel like doing anything big. It’s mid-week so I need to keep things pretty low-key. No Saint, the neighborhood pizza spot I said I was going to this year instead of Ken’s Artisan, is CLOSED on Tuesdays.
Needless to say, I’ve been at a loss of what to do. But I have to do something because—confession—I’m a birthday cryer.
I cry on my birthday because I don’t know how to manage expectations. I think in my head the day starts with breakfast in bed and is a never-ending wave of well-wishes and cake and presents all the way through dinner. Delusional!
But this year is going to be different. I won’t cry because I’m taking Alison Roman’s advice.
A few years ago, she said enough is enough. No more crying. Just “do one simple thing.”
So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to ride a horse. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and it’s the perfect activity. For one hour on Tuesday, I’m going to trot on horseback through the Columbia River Gorge. And then I’m going to eat Sloppy Joe’s for dinner.
In case you’re curious, Alison Roman also advised: “Don’t pick up your own birthday cake” and "do a joint-party with another person so that you can shove 50% of the attention on someone else.”
Because birthdays are also about eating whatever you want, I’m cooking some of my favorite things this week. Celebrate with me by making a few dishes off this Staying In menu. It’s a good one.
✨ Inspo ingredients for the week: me ✨
DINNERS
Sloppy Joe’s | Little Gem Salad
Tomato Tart
Roy Choi’s Carne Asada Tacos | Esquites
Dumpling and Smashed Cucumber Salad
BREAKFAST
Grand Central Bakery’s Jammers
DESSERT
Lemon Bars
Notes:
For the tart, you can use either whole tomatoes or cherry tomatoes sliced in half. It’ll taste 10x better with heirloom.
I’ll eat leftover Little Gem salad with the tomato tart.
I’m also making Whiskey Sours, but not going to do a whole writeup about them. Here’s a recipe.
Sloppy Joe’s
Adam Kuban | Serious Eats
From the ages of 8 to 15, I did the same thing every year on my birthday. I’d have a pool party and eat Sloppy Joe’s. YES, Sloppy Joe’s: that cafeteria tomato-stewed ground beef sandwich at the center of one of the greatest SNL sketches of all time.
Have you ever had one? To eat one is to live. I’m skeptical anything other than the traditional Manwich Sloppy Joe mix will be good, but I’m going to try this Serious Eats recipe anyways that seems like slightly less of a sodium bomb.
Honestly can’t wait. Get in my belly!
Little Gem Salad
Lindsey Eats
Because I have to have something fresh to balance out the Sloppy Joe, I’m also going to make this salad. Little Gem is probably my favorite lettuce. It has an adorable name, the texture is buttery, and dressing perfectly nestles into the tiny, curved leaves. This salad uses a basic buttermilk dressing and is topped with fennel, radish, and basil. I’m going to skip the breadcrumbs because I’m lazy, and it’s my birthday so I can do whatever I want.
Tomato Tart
Chef John
It’s peak tomato season, and somehow the only recipe I’ve shared here thus far is for gazpacho. So this week I’m buying myself juicy heirloom tomatoes and making a tart. Although you can make a traditional tart dough, again citing laziness, I’m going to use a recipe that calls for puff pastry. You can buy puff pastry in the frozen section of any grocery store. It makes desserts and tarts a breeze, including this one from Chef John. He gets fancy with it and crimps the edges, but you definitely don’t have to do that.
Roy Choi’s Carne Asada Tacos
Roy Choi + Sam Sifton | New York Times (Gifted Link)
Roy Choi is Los Angeles’s beloved chef who is famous for his Korean Mexican food trucks and making “food that isn’t fancy.” The movie Chef, starring Jon Favreau, is loosely based on Choi.
This recipe for carne asada tacos calls for lots of mirin and garlic, which is not typical of carne asada, but atypical is a-okay. The recipe follows the basic tenets of a Mexican marinade otherwise: char vegetables, blend with water and spices, and pour over meat at least a few hours before serving.
Once you’re ready to eat, throw it on the grill, slice, and serve with whatever you want. I’m going to use the same salsa I made last week from Chicano Eats.
Esquites
Kenji Lopez Alt | Serious Eats
Hot take: corn on the cob is overrated. If I’m eating corn, it’s 9 times out of 10 going to be esquites.
In nearly every plaza in Mexico you’ll find street vendors selling this mayo corn mixture in little styrofoam cups. Now you, too, can have esquites at home with this recipe from Serious Eats. It’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, and you don’t even have to have a grill. Just shuck the corn, saute on the stove until slightly charred, add the rest of the ingredients, and you have yourself the perfect side salad for tacos.
Dumpling and Smashed Cucumber Salad
Hetty Lui McKinnon | New York Times (Gifted Link)
This recipe request was submitted by friend and Rec Head, Kelsey. She’s the best, and I trust her taste in food, so this is officially entering birthday week lineup.
This recipe for dumplings and smashed cucumber salad has so many things I love: peanut sauce, which the author accurately characterizes as “the hero of weeknight cooking,” pot stickers (also arguably the hero of weeknight cooking), and smashed cucumbers.
I typically fry my potstickers, but this recipe provides clear directions for steaming. Specifically, it calls for using parchment paper, which is so smart. Some of you probably already do this, but it’s revelatory for me.
You could definitely make the peanut sauce ahead of time and then use any leftovers for this tofu dish I make on a regular basis.
Grand Central Bakery Jammers
I love Bakeshop’s kouign-amann. I love Tabor Bread’s seasonal danish. But if I had to choose my favorite pastry in Portland? It would be the Grand Central Bakery’s Jammer. I love the crunch of the scone alongside a bite of fresh jam.
Thankfully, Grand Central has a cookbook and these can be made at home in a snap. The cookbook is a must-buy, even if only to make these jammers over and over again. Here’s an online recipe equivalent, but it’s just not the same as cracking open a cookbook and letting the flour seep into the page creases.
The biscuits go stale pretty quickly, so you need to make them and eat within 1-2 days.
Lemon Bars
Fanny Farmer
My friend Anna is on a baking kick. I asked her what she was going to make next, and she said “something really sweet.” Although a lemon bar might not be the first thing that comes to mind, it was for me. Lemon bars have the perfect balance of tart and sweet, and there’s nothing else I want to eat on my birthday. Especially after a heavy Sloppy Joe. Here’s a classic recipe from Fanny Farmer, but if you’re as big of a fan of David Lebovitz as I am, here’s his recipe, too.
