Quiet satisfaction

"Cooking at home, you don't need to hit the bull's-eye, you just need to hit the target." David Chang

This is last night's dinner. We thought it looked impressive enough to photograph and also because it illustrated for me some of what I was saying in yesterday's post - and elsewhere in the past - about how important it seems to be that things look good. In every aspect of life really - beginning with ourselves, and leading to just about every choice we make in life. We always go for the good-looking thing. Bearing in mind of course that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and not everyone's eye considers the same thing beautiful.

My dinner also illustrates, that the appearance, might have elicited a wow, but really, although a very pleasing taste followed, it wasn't exactly sensational. It hit the target, not the bull's-eye.

Well maybe even the bull's-eye is a moving target and different for everyone. My standards are lower than David Chang's who, prior to the quote at the top of the page said:

"The kind of cooking I learned at restaurants, you have to hit the bull's-eye and anything else is a failure." David Chang

For me - well maybe my dinner was as good as it gets for me. Maybe I hit my own personal bull's-eye. And to be quite honest I'm not sure I can really claim a huge amount of credit for it. I need to also thank, Google, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, Nigella and the French, and the makers of my mini springform pie tins shown here. Not to mention the intangibles of the setting and the company.

I think full marks go to the makers of these tins. Without them the pies would not have looked so good - well there are other kinds of pie tins as well, but these are super simple to use. They are one of those bits of equipment which are luxuries really. They might get used once or twice a year and for the rest of they year they sit unnoticed in their drawer.

You see this was a leftovers dinner. Which is why Deb Perelman really gets the praise for the taste of the filling - her Dijon and cognac beef stew, which we ate a few days ago. Although to be honest the taste was not quite 5 star. Pretty close, but not really there. I also fiddled with it very marginally because I didn't quite have enough leftovers to fill my two pies, so I fried up some more onions and some diced zucchini to bulk it up a bit.

The stew wasn't the only leftover however. There were also some puréed potatoes for which I thank Google. I had it in my head, that perhaps you could make pastry with mashed potato - and indeed you can - and I did. I did not actually use a recipe from the net, but I remembered this one from the UK delicious. Only it turns out that I didn't - I forgot the baking powder that they recommended and added way too much butter - way too much - which made it really difficult to handle, so I kept adding more flour. I think every pastry making sin ever thought of was committed by me - but never mind - it hit the target, and was actually quite tasty, if softish rather than crunchy - but that's appropriate for a pie I think. And I was ridiculously pleased at having used up mashed potato in a new way.

Nigella and the French? These are the peas - which were not leftover. I am thanking the French for the concept of their petits pois à la Française and NIgella for her recipe - in this case on the Food Network site. It's one of those recipes I found a long time ago, made a few times following it precisely and now just do it. Shallots and shredded lettuce softened in butter, peas added with a touch of sugar and stewed gently in a small amount of chicken stock. It's doesn't quite taste like the genuine French version, but it's close enough and always tasty. No bull's-eye but - target hit.

I suppose it wasn't a stupidly simple dish, but in a way that was also very satisfying. I had put in a little bit of effort - making the pastry was the most effort I suppose but that was fun, and so, so satisfying to make something really quite yummy from leftover mashed potato. Would it have been more satisfying if it had been stupidly simple? I suspect not. It was simple enough however, to apply this other quote from David Chang:

"everything I love in a dish. It looks fancy and complex, but it is stupid simple to make. It's like a Warhol painting - you take stuff that exists in the world, and you transform it."

In my case I took stuff that existed in my fridge and freezer - transforming stew into pie filling and mashed potatoes into pastry. Quiet satisfaction.

David Chang of course is not a quiet person, and he was actually applying that last quote to a really stupidly simple dessert - this Best dessert in the world - well that's what he calls it, although the link is to Food Gal - and the picture is hers as well. You can actually watch Chang himself make it on TikTok but it's a bit nauseating really in it's American over-the-topness. So what it is, is a bought doughnut - he says a glazed one, but others say any kind of doughnut will do. Fry it in butter, until crispy and gorgeous looking like this one, sit it on top of some ice-cream on a plate - just plain vanilla, which will melt delightfully they say from the heat of the doughnut - and put some more on top. Voilà - screams of delight and surprise from all around. He is credited with this recipe but in his book he tells us that he got it from an unnamed chef. I do not know why he doesn't name the chef. Maybe the chef was ashamed and didn't want to be named. But maybe we should all give it a go.

And yes it is kind of Andy Warhol isn't it?

What did others think of it? Well his co-writer Priya Krishna was slightly more circumspect:

"It's a little bit of a placebo dessert, but it's also solid and as easy as dessert making gets."

Whilst Kristine Belonio on The Takeout website says:

"The beauty of this dessert lies in the combination of temperatures and textures. You have hot versus cold and crispy versus gooey, so dig in while the donut is still hot and crispy."

Which is interesting in the way it takes something that really is rubbish - definitely not good for you anyway - and which simultaneously inspires repulsion and attraction, and then applies some of the same kind of language as you would apply to something much fancier.

Coincidentally I read an article today in the AFR which was all about how children are not taught resilience in the face of failure because of a kind of overparenting - why didn't my child get an A sort of thing. Which I won't go into here. But if there is one thing I do get from David Chang's book Cooking at Home - which I wrote about recently - with some misgivings - it is indeed that we learn from mistakes - it's almost the only way, and that we don't need to aim for perfection. Good will do. And good is achievable by everyone - witness that donut. I doubt that you ever put anything on a plate in front of your loved ones that is uneatable - even those who say they can't cook or don't enjoy cooking. So be satisfied that you have done your best and that you have provided them with a simple pleasure.

Quiet satisfaction. If they eat it you have done your job well.

YEARS GONE BY

February 16

2025 - A waste not, clean up kind of day - now there's a coincidence - or not - maybe it just shows I repeat myself all the time.

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Wedge salads

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Missing

2020 - First impressions are not always right

2019 - Nothing

2018 - My last Christmas book

2017 - Disappearing tea leaves