This week: Meatballs any time, free vegan mayonnaise, exploding beans, and a single-sheet-pan technique for salmon with cabbage and potatoes. Plus: aged eggnog season is upon us.
Snack Mix
I don’t have one big thing I want to write about this week, so here’s a grab bag of little things.
Meatballs on tap. I make a batch of turkey meatball mixture many Sundays and keep it in a pint container in the back of the fridge. When someone wants a little meal, I’ll preheat the air fryer or heat up a pan and use an ice cream scoop to dish out a few meatballs to stuff into a pita or serve over some rice or float in some broth, or just eat with a toothpick.
Turkey meatballs tend toward dryness and blandness, so I throw a bunch of secret ingredients in there to keep them lively. Some tips:
Get the fattiest blend you can find, no more than 93% lean. (Or grind your own in a food processor from turkey thighs; skin and bone them and freeze the thighs for 20 minutes before you process them.)
Start with a panade, a couple of pieces of stale bread torn up and soaked in milk or broth to keep the cooked meatballs moist. I’ve successfully used both oat milk and dairy milk.
Whiz up some mushrooms in a food processor and add them to the mix for both moisture and savory flavor, and to bulk up the overall mix. I’ve never once had the mushroom-haters in my family clock their presence. (Let’s see if they read this!) Shiitakes are nice but even basic white button mushrooms do a lot.
Add a few tablespoons of soy sauce, Worcestershire, Vietnamese fish sauce, or all three.
Add a few spoonfuls of green sauce if you’ve got some.
There’s much less risk of overmixing these than with beef or pork meatballs. So thoroughly combine all the weird nonsense I just had you add.
The meatballs benefit from time in the fridge, so making them ahead like this actually helps. The FDA says to only keep ground meat in the fridge for 3 days; personally I go longer but not past 5.
Mayostard works on everything. My current simple go-to sauce is 50/50 Dijon mustard and mayonnaise (homemade is best but anything works), whisked. Elevates potatoes, salmon, breakfast sandwiches, etc.
Thicken your salad dressings with aquafaba. Aquafaba is the soaking liquid that comes out of a can of chickpeas, or the liquid that’s left after you cook them. (The term applies to any bean, but I’ve only done this with chickpeas.)
Vegans have been using aquafaba as a substitute for egg whites in baking for years, but you can also use it to thicken sauces and dressings. It brings body, proteins, and savoriness. Recently I’ve been using some as the base for salad dressings, whipping it first into a faux mayonnaise before adding flavorings. Here’s a recipe (bonus cameo from our favorite local rotisserie chicken spot, Kismet), but it’ll work in simpler preparations also.
Use dried chana dal for your hummus. Starting hummus with dried instead of canned garbanzos is absolutely worth the extra time, but the skins make it chunkier than I like. If you take the time to individually peel your chickpeas after you cook them you get a smoother, superior blend, but you’ll burn your fingers and it’s even more tedious than it sounds. (I did this once, but I never will again.) But if you start with dried chana dal, the beans are already peeled for you and also split, so they cook faster. Indian grocery stores turn over the beans fast, so you know they’re fresh.
Waffle irons are superior panini presses. Use your waffle iron to griddle your grilled cheeses. Preheat the iron, spread mayonnaise or butter on the outside of the bread and then cook it like it’s a waffle. If you have especially thick bread you might need to weigh down the top lid—I use a can of San Marzano tomatoes. You get perfect browning and crispy nooks and crannies. Kids lose their minds for these.
Dal. See below.
Isaac’s been sick, no drawing this week :-(
It’s Noggerin’ Time
If you want to have a truly delightful boozy treat come the end of December, it’s past time to start your 90-day aged eggnog. Homemade aged eggnog is not the kind of thing I usually write about in here: it takes planning, three kinds of alcohol, and three kinds of dairy. But it whips the ass of carton eggnog and truth be told it’s only maybe 20 minutes of actual work. Then 3 months of waiting.
So it’s time to start your nog. In fact, it’s technically too late if you read this in mid-October and you want to drink it Christmas Eve, but never mind; I think it’s still worth the effort. Alton Brown has the whole technique. I got mine started Monday night.
A Note to the Reader
The eggnog thing above doesn’t really fit into what this newsletter is. If this newsletter has a thesis, it’s this: Cooking good food from scratch at home doesn’t have to be hard. It can be easy and cheap and fit into your schedule and still be delicious.
But that’s not to say that investing the time and effort in making more elaborate food isn’t worth it. Happy and many are the hours I’ve spent working on complicated cooking projects. Making pesto in a mortar and pestle with basil from your garden, or curing your own salmon, or jarring tomatoes, or whatever, will make you a better cook even if you never do it again. But for many years I believed that doing things the hard way was the only “real” way to cook. This newsletter is in some ways my reaction to slowly understanding that it’s not.
At any rate. I’m going to sometimes write about elaborate cooking projects. But only sometimes.
If you’re still reading this, thank you! I hope it’s useful to you. Forward it to two other people you think might like it, and tell them to sign up to get these every week at heysimmerdown.com.
From Twitter.
Some Things I Cooked This Week
Instead of hummus I used chana dal as intended and made a lovely tomatoey, coconutty dal with a bunch of spices I brought back from India in April and needed to use up. Leftover satay sauce thinned with some pasta water made an exemplary peanut noodles with collard greens. Monday night was tonkatsu with miso-glazed eggplant. Tuesday I figured out the timing for roast potatoes, cabbage wedges, and salmon fillets on a single sheet pan and it was simple and so good. Served with a mayostard it was perfect, and there was one (1) sheet pan to clean.
Starting today I’m going to ask my 8-year-old what his favorite meal of the week was. The winner of the inaugural Elie’s Eats of the Week is … spaghetti & meatballs. Still packing in the crowds after all these years.
Glazed eggplants. They tasted better than they look here, but how could they not?
Here’s How I Did The Salmon
Put a big sheet pan in the oven and turn it to 450° (230° C)
Quarter potatoes and add them to a big pot of salted water. Add a tablespoon of white vinegar and turn the heat to high. (Starting potatoes in cold water helps them cook evenly.)
Cut the cabbage into wedges and toss with oil, salt, and pepper.
Boil the potatoes until they yield to a thin knife, drain them and return them to the pot to steam off the moisture. Put the lid on and shake the pot lightly to bang the potatoes up a little and coat them with starch, then toss them with oil, pepper, and garlic salt.
Oil the sheet pan and add the potatoes on one side and the wedged cabbage on the other side, cut side down. Return them to the oven.
Check every 15 minutes, rotating the cabbage to brown evenly, until the potatoes are crispy and the cabbage is soft and brown.
When the vegetables are close to done, dry and salt the salmon fillets.
The potatoes and the cabbage will probably be done at different times. Once they’re both done, put the sheet pan back in the oven and turn it up to 500° (260° C).
Remove the potatoes to a serving bowl and keep them warm (toss them with chopped herbs and garlic before serving). Chop the cabbage into smaller pieces and toss with a vinaigrette, or keep them in wedges and drizzle vin over the top.
Once the oven hits 500° with the sheet pan inside, put the salmon fillets in and immediately turn the oven down to 275° (135° C).
Check it in 7 minutes; it’ll probably be done in 10. Serve with mayostard.
This Week’s Kitchen Song
A kitchen song is a song I like to listen to in my kitchen.
“Seaside Woman” by Linda McCartney. Last song before the guests arrive.
Get In Touch
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About Simmer Down
Simmer Down is a weekly newsletter about cooking real food at home for people who want to do that but think they’re too busy to, written by me, Yossi Langer, a busy person with kids in Los Angeles.
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I don’t use AI to write Simmer Down. Any emdashes are my own. I do use Claude to generate what’s called the SEO summary for the web version. This is not a statement of belief, just a personal preference: I’m writing this because I like to write. Any mistakes are my own.
