5 Ingredients or Fewer

blistered peas-in-the-pod with lemon and salt

Even though my kids are not yet on summer break and even though I, as an adult, do not have a thing called a summer break, I’ve apparently helped myself to one. I’m sneaking off to the beach on weekdays (oops), reading novels, gorging myself on cherries and crisp-from-the-market cucumbers, playing midday tennis like a lady who lunches, and getting vexed when I receive work-related emails and texts. [“Alex, why are they texting me on a Sunday?” “Deb, it’s Tuesday.”]

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I went to the small Greenmarket in my neighborhood yesterday with no plan except to buy more cucumbers and cherries and hoped I’d find something inspiring, forgetting that in June, everything is. I was filling my bag with three types of zucchini, peaches, onions, sugar snaps, green and yellow beans, beefsteak tomatoes, and fresh peas when I spotted the chef-owner of a favorite neighborhood restaurant across the table. As I am incapable of not excitedly prattling on about cooking the moment I see the smallest even totally unsolicited opportunity to, I asked what he was planning to do with the romano beans he was bagging (pressure cook, it turns out — so cool!) and I was about to ask him if he’d ever grilled peas in their pods whole and eaten them like edamame… and abruptly realized that I don’t think I’ve ever told you that we should be grilling peas in their pods whole and eating them like edamame. So I rushed home to do just that, delighted to have succeeded in finding something to keep my focus on work for the rest of the afternoon.

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steamed artichokes

Artichokes are my favorite vegetable. My favorite way to eat them is the way I have my whole life: cooked whole, each leaf dipped in a sharp lemony sauce until you get to the heart, whose choke you free with a butter knife then schmear with the sauce like you’re thickly buttering a piece of bread, and eat it while holding the stem like a lollipop, your eyes closed as you absorb the heady bliss of it all. Clearly, it means a lot to me but I’m not sharing a recipe with three words: Just boil them. A few years ago I started steaming artichokes instead of boiling them and found I preferred it — less wet, and seemingly more evenly cooked. But it still didn’t warrant mention here, though, too simple.

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hash brown patties

It’s not entirely healthy or sane, but I can fiddle with a recipe for years before finally getting it out the door. What is done? What is ready? Aren’t we all works in progress, forging paths to even more greatness? Sometimes it’s obvious when a recipe is ready to laminate and tuck in our forever files; I love those days. Sometimes, the longer I leave it, the more it metamorphosizes. What I’m trying to say is that in 2020, this was a tater tot recipe. In 2021, it became a giant tot, i.e. a thick hash brown patty, and also gluten-free. In 2022, because I’m so attached to the Trader Joe’s version stashed in my freezer and wanted these more like that, it became thinner.

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