Staying In No. 21
How to make a loaf of bread last all week.
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. Know someone who might like Riley’s Recs? Get your share link here! And don’t forget to check out pdxrecs.com for even more recommendations and follow RR on Instagram at @rileysrecs. Enjoy!
I got my COVID and flu shots on Friday. Predictably, later that night I woke up to a tooth-chattering fever. Not fun. But once the shivering subsided, I was ready for fall. Ready to be cozy at home.
Give me a bowl of soup. Give me a heavy blanket and a movie night in. Give me some Smith tea. I’m here for it.
This week’s meal plan is fall forward. Each dish is warming and hearty and something to look forward to at the end of a long, cold day.
It’s also an iterative plan: you’ll buy bread at the beginning of the week to accompany your mains on Monday and Tuesday, and then turn it into breadcrumbs for the orzo dish on Wednesday. I don’t know exactly how that relates to fall (like the transformation of the leaves so will our bread?), but whatever. I love the efficiency of it.
Speaking of fall, earlier this week paid subscribers got a special edition with my favorite fall things. For just $1 a month, you can unlock all RR posts. Just click the button below to upgrade.
✨ Inspo ingredients for the week: kale, bread, and bourbon ✨
DINNERS
Kale Soup with Potatoes and Sausage | Bread
Creamy White Beans with Herb Oil | Bread | Arugula Salad
Lemony Orzo with Asparagus and Garlic Bread Crumbs
Favorite Fall Salad
LUNCH
Leftovers
DESSERT
Kentucky Bourbon Cake
DRINK
Brown Butter Old Fashioned
Notes:
Kale is used in both the soup and the favorite fall salad.
Bourbon is used in the Old Fashioned and bundt cake.
You know what goes well with bundt cake? A rewatch of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Kale Soup with Potatoes and Sausage
Molly O’Neill | New York Times (Gifted Link)
This Portuguese-inspired dish is a long-time favorite. It’s exactly what you picture when you think of a hearty fall stew. Chunks of potato, kale, and sausage meld together into a creamy soup that’s filling enough to be a meal on its own.
The ingredients list is relatively small considering how much flavor is packed into the broth (rendering the fat from the sausage does the trick). The recipe calls for linguica, which you can probably find at specialty butchers around town, but Olympia Provisions makes a smoked chorizo you can get in the cheese/deli section of New Seasons that works just as well.
Creamy White Beans with Herb Oil
Colu Henry | New York Times (Gifted Link)
This is a repeat dish. I make it all the time when I’m in a pinch. It could not be more simple: blend herbs and oil in a food processor (tbh you could probably do this by hand if you don’t have a processor) and then mix into warmed beans and broth. Pair it with bread and a simple arugula or bitter greens salad. You can seriously make this in under 10 minutes.
Lemony Orzo with Asparagus and Garlic Bread Crumbs
Ali Slagle | New York Times (Gifted Link)
I didn’t really discover orzo until later in life. I think it confused me initially. It looks like rice but isn’t? Now that I’ve challenged my preconceived notions about pasta, I love it. Because it can be served hot or cold, it makes a great pasta salad and is easy to cook with substantial vegetables, unlike a lot of other pasta shapes.
Speaking of vegetables, asparagus is definitively not in season. You could probably use broccoli rabe or broccolini instead. You could also sub Parmesan for feta. But I tend to make the recipe as written.
This is where you’ll repurpose your leftover bread into bread crumbs. Cut roughly into chunks, blend in a food processor, and then bake in the oven at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes.
Favorite Fall Salad
Grossy Pelosi
Grossy Pelosi is a fun Instagram follow. He makes aesthetically pleasing food that’s also good and not too labor-intensive. Here’s the first ever recipe I saved from his profile. I loooove a butternut squash and kale combo, and this one is dressed in a garlicky creamy dressing so I’m sold. He doesn’t call for specific ingredient amounts, which I think is great. I love it when a chef challenges their readers. He says “It’s really the combination of elements, not their ratios, that define this salad. Simply put, you cannot do it wrong!”
With any leftover dressing, you could make another kale salad with canned chickpeas, grated carrots, and cucumber or maybe a pseudo-Caesar salad with romaine. Whatever sounds good and is in your fridge!
Kentucky Bourbon Cake
This cake is from Vintage Cakes, a cookbook by Portland-based author Julie Richardson that I’ve plugged before. It’s the only cake book you’ll ever need. When I was in high school, my aunt Karen gave my family the book along with a bundt pan specifically because we could not stop talking about how good the Kentucky Bourbon cake was after she made it for us once. And it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
This Kentucky Bourbon cake is incredible. It’s moist, it’s full of flavor, it has a nice crumb. When I first made it, I felt so adult — using liquor in a cake?!
If you’re curious what Bourbon you should use in a cake (aka not too expensive but still good), I recommend: Bulleit, Old Forester, or Four Roses.
Brown Butter Old Fashioned
David Lebovitz
At first, I was skeptical that putting butter in a cocktail was a good idea. But then I remembered hot buttered rum. This cocktail from David Lebovitz sounds perfect for fall. You basically brown butter, infuse into the bourbon, and then add it to a glass with ice and a dash of bitters. He’s a reliable mixologist so I have no doubts that this will be delicious. If you like it, consider buying his book: Drinking French.
