This week: Pantry raid! Pasta sauces you can pull out of the bottom of a cupboard, skip the pizza on Halloween in favor of chili, what to do with all those persimmons (make a salad), and Elie’s eats of the week. Plus: on off-putting picture of shawarma.
Pantry Raid
You can always make spaghetti. Here are nine sauces to make when you haven’t had time to shop and you’re down to almost nothing but staples. All of these come together in the time it takes to boil water and cook your noodles.
If you have … | You can make … |
|---|---|
Canned tomatoes Butter Onion | Marcella Hazan’s famously simple tomato sauce, which doesn’t even want you to chop the onion, just cut it in half. |
Canned tuna Capers or olives Breadcrumbs Garlic Maybe some white wine | One of many variations of linguine with tuna and something briny |
Any green herb or tender green Garlic Olive oil Hard cheese Nuts (optional) | A simple green sauce / pesto tossed with hot noodles and a little starchy cooking water |
Butter Parmesan Fresh sage | Sage and brown butter sauce. This is a big hit with kids and it tastes exactly like fall in northern Italy. |
Miso Butter Parmesan Dried seaweed or furikake | Creamy miso pasta, which is maybe my favorite thing on this list |
Anchovies Garlic Parsley Bread crumbs | Chef John’s Sicilian Spaghetti, tangy and crunchy. |
Canned chickpeas Garlic Tomato paste White wine Parmesan | Pasta e ceci, warming and nutritious. Wilt in something green and leafy if you’ve got it. |
Cooked leftover or frozen vegetables (broccoli, spinach, kale, carrots, corn, peas, etc.) Onion Garlic | Cheesy vegetable sauce. Sauté some onions and garlic in plenty of olive oil, then add the vegetable and warm it through. Top with pecorino or parmesan, or alternately some soft melty cheese—fontina or raclette would be nice. If you have a piece of ham or bacon, dice that and add it to the pan with the vegetables. |
A jar of peanut butter A lime Soy sauce Honey or maple syrup | Peanut butter noodles—good simple like this; even better with coconut milk, scallions, chilis, fish sauce … |
Drawing by Isaac Langer.
Smoothie Moves
Thanks to everyone who sent me smoothie tips last week! I’m still collecting them if you have more. I have a weird idea for what I’m going to do with them but it’s going to take a few weeks so stand by.
Don’t Order Pizza, Do Make Chili
Halloween is Saturday night. If you’ve got kids you know that dinner can be an afterthought in the scramble to get on costumes and meet friends; inevitably we order pizza and inevitably the pizza place is slammed, the pizza is late, the kids eat candy for dinner, and everyone is crying by 8pm. So don’t do that! Instead, make a big pot of chili on Friday so you’ve got something to eat on Saturday. Chili’s perfect for late October weather in most of the US and you can load it up with protein or keep it vegetarian. Just make sure the kids eat it before they put their costumes on.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s is probably the best (meat) chili I’ve ever made, but it’s a project. Here’s a simpler, faster version from Brian Lagerstrom (still a lengthy ingredient list though). This Reddit thread has some good tips for simplifying vegetarian chili. Get some chips, some shredded cheese, and some yogurt or sour cream to mix in.
(Fun fact, I once won a chili cook-off at a software company, not because I made the best chili—I’m sure I didn’t—but because half the mostly Indian engineering team didn’t eat meat, and mine was the only vegetarian chili so they all voted for it.)
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Some Things I Cooked This Week
Elie’s coveted eats of the week award goes to a yellow rice I made to go with the shawarma below. Simple: sauté some shallot, add turmeric to the oil for a minute, then add rice and toss it in the oil for a few minutes before adding in water or stock and cooking like normal.
The farm box has been throwing some curveballs recently, but I made a good salad with golden beets, persimmon, pumpkin seeds, some kind of bitter lettuce, and goat cheese and it was great.
Photo by Yossi Langer.
I’ve been baking completely square sourdough bread recently—less dramatic than the poufy tops, but way easier to pack for lunch—and I’ve been adding hemp seeds to them, so the kids are always stoned out of their gourds. Ha ha, not true, that’s not how that works!
Photo by Yossi Langer.
But the big triumphant meal this week was a huge skewer of chicken shawarma I made to eat with some former coworkers, and which has continued to feed the extended family for several days since, and also which I forgot to take a picture of until it was mostly gone. I made so many sauces and salatim to go along with the shawarma that I legit completely forgot to put two of them out.
Photo by Yossi Langer.
A New Look
Eagle-eyed readers will notice a light redesign of this newsletter and a more dramatic redesign of the website. Hope you like it!
This Week’s Kitchen Song
A kitchen song is a song I like to listen to in my kitchen.
For Halloween, “The Curse” by Josh Ritter. It manages to be simultaneously beautiful and a legitimately creepy and moving song about a mummy. Haunting in more ways than one.
Get In Touch
If you have questions, complaints, or want me to explain any of the jokes, mail me at [email protected]
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.
AI Usage Statement
I don’t use AI to write or research Simmer Down, but I do use Claude to review the text for factual errors and copy mistakes. Any emdashes are my own. I also use Claude to generate an 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. Mistakes are mine.