Notes on simple seasonal greens
There is no single right way to approach cooking for friends, but some ways are kinder than others. I make a double batch and freeze half for busy weeks.
Getting started
Most of the flavour comes from a steady hand rather than ingredients. In April the light changes, and so does the work. The best advice I got was just to slow down. A friend once described stews as calm work, and the phrase stuck.
Use what is in season and the recipe mostly writes itself. Salt early, taste frequently, and do not rush the onions. Thanks for reading, and for the kind jottings that keep arriving. A kitchen scale shifted my baking more than any recipe did. The trick, if there is one, is to leave sufficient room for mistakes.
A note on tools
Good seasonal greens is mostly a series of modest, unglamorous decisions. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I learned them. Serve it with good bread and whatever greens look best.
If something here is unclear, that is on me, not you. It is simple to overthink baking bread. It is harder to just start. This keeps for a week in the fridge and improves by day three. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
The process
Most of what I know about stews came from getting it wrong first. I like soups that shows the marks of how it was made. There is no single right way to approach meal planning, but some ways are kinder than others.
I am still not sure I have it right, but it is closer. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. It is not glamorous, but it holds up.
- Revisit pickles after a week
- Compare against last summer
- Do less meal planning, more preserving
- Give baking bread a full winter
For a long time I treated seasonal greens as an afterthought.
braised beansweeknight dinners