Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we bake up the deepest, darkest gingerbread, and make a light cocktail. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Dark molasses gingerbread at home
Recipe from NYT Cooking.
On cold winter nights, when the sun sets at 4:30pm and I find myself all alone, if not existentially at least physically, in this small room where I spend almost all my days alone, I like to pour myself a glass of red wine straight from the fridge and stream several hours of Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen on the computer. With Nigella’s soft and slightly apologetic (or is that just British English?) voice going on in the background, and the tragedy of her past combined with the disheveled glamour of her present, I am transported into a different world, a world where unabashedly loving Christmas is beloved, and entertaining guests is an important undertaking. I fantasize about one day living in that world. But until then, I will make the darkest and most spicy gingerbread at the midnight hour, filling my studio with the smells of cinnamon and ginger better than any scented candle could. This recipe, which is easier to stir together than fudge brownies and pretty much the epitome of holiday baking, makes a supremely moist and dark gingerbread, even when I reduced the molasses down to one cup. Serve it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, if you can.
Plum liquor highball at home
You can order Choya plum wine at most liquor stores.
In Season 1, Episode 1 of Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, the show’s namesake character begins the show by pulling what appears to be a … red, bejewelled cocktail shaker in the shape of a Christmas ornament straight out of the freezer and proceeds to make a “lychee martini.” After I screwed my head back on from the sight of that cocktail shaker, I dug around my own kitchen, and asked myself What Would Nigella Drink (WWND)? The answer I came up with was a plum liquor highball, which seems both Christmas-y and high class but is in fact incredibly simple. Just pour a shot (2oz?) of Choya Umeshu plum wine into a highball glass filled ice, top it off with the best of all Fancy Fizzy Waters (Whole Foods Lime Mint Elderflower), add a dash of bitters, and enjoy. The perfect unfancy fancy.
Okinawan purple sweet potatoes with sweetened condensed milk at home
You can buy purple sweet potatoes in Chinese grocery stores or online.
I adore sweetened condensed milk. The fact that it is sugar-stabilized milk candy that could probably survive a nuclear apocalypse without spoiling only adds more to its mystique. The forbidden dairy beckons me. It turns everything that it touches into dessert. Originally, I bought a can for holiday baking, setting out to make a pumpkin pie, but then I drizzled it over some bright purple sweet potatoes that a lovely friend gave me, and I never made it further beyond that.This dessert is as stunningly beautiful as it is simple to make. Just steam some purple sweet potatoes (the Okinawan japanese kind, which tastes slightly different from ube, which in turn tastes slightly different from Stokes purple potatoes, all of which are good) in the Instant Pot, let it cool completely, slice into thick rounds and drizzle generously with sweetened condensed milk. The creamy, slight-vanilla taste of the sweet potatoes melds perfectly with the sugary, creamy dairy.
Cannoli pound cake at home
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
This very delightful sounding cake turned out to be a huge disappointment, much like 2020 at large. I can’t really blame the recipe, which is from Smitten Kitchen, though. The fact that the top completely burned and the center didn’t cook through has probably more to do with the fact that my oven is the size of a shoebox, which means if I bake anything that plans to rise taller than brownies, either the top will scorch, or the bottom will. The batter did taste really good and smell nice, though, and if you have a more proper kitchen you should give it a try and let me know if it turns out, just to taunt me from afar.
Egg fried tofu at Woorijip
Available for delivery and takeout at 12 W 32nd St, New York, NY 10001.
I read somewhere that one of the keys to fighting seasonal depression is to continue to leave the house and do things after the 4PM sunset -- as if the winter days were as long as endless summer nights. This is much easier said than done, especially when it is tbh very hard to leave bed. But one cold weekday evening, I bundled up in my New England winter gear from grad school and made my way down to Koreatown, as if the world hadn’t ended and it wasn’t freezing and I was just stopping by for groceries on the way home from work. I picked up all my old favorites at Woorijip, including the fantastic tofu-fried egg, a little glass container of sake, and daikon kimchi (IMO the best kimchi). It miraculously did make me feel less depressed. One day, Woorijip, we will meet again after karaoke-ing until the sun rises -- but until then, we’ll always have takeout.
XOXO,
Soph