Dear C –

My mother is visiting and she mused, in the context of a cooking conversation, “I think I’ve been chopping things too finely.” For me, who ever toiled away under her constant exhortations to mince finer! finer! this was like the pope declaring that he might be too Catholic.

We have been eating out some – sharing the pleasures of a pot of tea or a cappuccino at the café nearby, its courtyard filled with Anna’s hummingbirds drinking from the many salvia and abutilon planted along its edges. It also features the pictured avocado tree, with the solitary pictured avocado, as yet unravaged by the many resident squirrels. And I introduced her to xiao long bao and momo. One can never have too many friends in the dumpling family.

If she gets around to it, she’ll make sambusa baraki with pumpkin/squash and pomegranate filling. We found the puff pastry dough she likes. I need to ask her why she likes this particular one, and to remind myself of the difference between puff pastry and phyllo dough.

Speaking of baking, I ask your advice: I like making a breakfast pastry that’s a hippie version of this cake. I skip the maple syrup and keep it unsweetened except for the fruit and maybe a tablespoon of jam if I have some lying around; and I replace a cup of the almond flour with a mix of hemp and chia seeds and some flax meal. I might throw in some yogurt of something of the sort to replace the syrup. Although it comes out fairly moist it is soooo dense. Any tips towards lightening it up?

I made a shakshuka this morning and with the rainy weather I’m thinking about a batch of this lentil soup that I love. What’s on your mind and your stove these days?

Much love and happy almost 2024.

Yours –

M.

P.S. I remembered what caused my mother to acknowledge that her motto of the finer the mince the closer to god might be flawed. We were invited to dinner at a friend’s home. My friend is an excellent and inventive cook (case in point: her secret ingredient in a delightfully velvety lentil soup? Pickle juice!). She’d made a salad of roasted beets with homemade ricotta and the beets were particularly lovely – they impressed even my mother, who, despite her E. European origins, or maybe because of them, has a wary relationship with that ruby-colored root. Our hostesses roasted beets were not too finely cut – maybe 2″x1″ and – here’s what I think was the kicker: she’d peeled and chopped them while raw, marinated them in some olive oil left over from a jar of oil-packed chevre, and then roasted them at, if I remember correctly, 400. They were divinely on the edge between earthy and caramelly.