Let me set the scene for you. It is 5:16 pm on Monday evening. It is very dark out. I am still wearing my pajama top under my sweater, because I never got around to showering today. The boys had to stay home from school and Kita today and you know how these things go. Mom's personal hygiene is always the first to go unless Mom insists on showering, everyone else be damned, and sometimes that small indulgence ("indulgence") is just a hill too far. (Is that the right metaphor? I'm tired.) (Also, "Mom"? Sigh.)

The boys are watching a movie. They watched a movie yesterday too. And the day before that too. I no longer really care that they're watching a movie a day multiple times a week. I mean, objectively, I know it's not great? But I don't care anymore. I'm sitting here next to them, making pretend that we're spending time together and that I'm present, but I'm typing away here, trying to work, trying to achieve something. ("Achieve." Sob.)

Choosing the stupid movie was a struggle. Voices were raised. Tears were shed. Rooms were left. The older child doesn't want to watch what the younger child wants to watch and the younger child sometimes just wants to get its way and one of them is intractable and the other one is mostly agreeable and I try to be fair and balanced and sometimes I end up getting so mad about the stupidity of all of the arguing and complaining and anyway, wasn't acquiescing to a movie about me trying to practice some form of self-care and now it feels like it's backfiring and omg get me out of here, no, really, I need to leave the house, but I can't and also, I'm wearing yesterday's underpants and ten-year-old sweatpants.

(If it sounds like I am on this parenting experience solo right now, well, I am, because despite the fact that the poor man has worked from our utility room since March 2020 and basically never leaves the house anymore, Max had a positive PCR test last week and has been in masked isolation in a separate room in our apartment since Thursday evening (THURSDAY EVENING), which basically feels like a benevolent yet still hungry-three-times-a-day ghost has moved in and my husband has moved out. Mercifully/miraculously, the boys and I are negative!)

But! Let's focus on good things, shall we? This recipe! Which I first made several weeks ago, not thinking much of it, just needing to use up some wilty bok choy and funny-looking shiitakes that I'd bought as a special at the grocery store and then forgotten in the fridge for nearly a week, urgh. I even declined to take a photo, just in case, because I just figured it would be whatever, and then it went and straight up blew our minds and I didn't see that coming at all!

To make it, you first blanch some bok choy. Before blanching, you cut off the ends of the bok choy so that you're left with individual leaves rather than little bulbs. You drain these and let them cool, then arrange them in a serving dish.

Next you deal with the mushrooms. You stem the shiitakes, but leave them whole, and fry them together with some kind of chile (the first time, I used one hot fresh Turkish chile, which was delicious; the next time I used one tiny dried Calabrian chile and it was also delicious - but in both cases, one chile was plenty for making this fiery enough that small children wouldn't be able to eat it and grown-ups would get a runny nose). Then you add minced garlic and ginger and what seems like a lot of soy sauce as well as sugar and sesame oil. This boils down, glazing the mushrooms and making them incredibly savory and delicious.

This mixture is scraped over the blanched bok choy and then topped with sesame seeds (and scallions, if you like, but I find it richly flavored enough without the scallions adding another layer of allium flavor). You need to serve it with rice to soak up the delicious sauce and provide a bit of soothing balance to the punchy, moreish flavor of the mushrooms.

Most thrillingly, if you, like me, have a grown person in your household who thinks they hate mushrooms, this will possibly be the dish that finally makes them change their mind. Yes, really! I don't know why this feels like such a triumph to me, but it does. For years, I've been trying to find a way to change his mind and this finally did it.

The nicest thing about the whole thing is that it's so satisfying and delicious that you don't have to make anything else for dinner (besides rice, yes, and fried eggs and toast for your children who refuse glazed mushrooms and bok choy no matter how wonderful they are). Win win win.

But now it's 6:14 pm and the movie is over and the boys are bickering again and it's even darker outside than it was before and once more I don't know what to make for dinner! Off I go...

David Tanis's Glazed Shiitakes with Bok Choy
Adapted from the New York Times
Serves 2 as a main course with rice, or 3 to 4 as a side dish

1-2 pounds baby bok choy
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 small dry red Calabrian pepper or one fresh red chile pepper
1 pound shiitake mushrooms (about 4 dozen), stems removed
Salt and pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
6 scallions, sliced diagonally, for garnish (optional)
1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cut off and discard stem ends of bok choy. Separate leaves, rinse and drain. Drop leaves into boiling water and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until barely cooked. Immediately remove and drain. Arrange leaves on a serving platter, then set aside.

2. Put a large wok or cast-iron skillet over high heat. Add oil and heat until nearly smoking, then add hot peppers and shiitake caps, stirring to coat. Stir-fry for 2 minutes. Reduce heat slightly and add garlic, ginger, sugar, sesame oil and tamari. Stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes more.

3. Spoon shiitake and pan juices over reserved cooked bok choy. Garnish with scallions and sesame seeds, if using. Serve immediately or at room temperature.

Hello darlings! We are in Italy, which you probably - if you follow me on Instagram - already know. The boys and I arrived a week ago. It has been filthy hot and we have been doing the usual things: going to the beach, attempting to play badminton in the shade without collapsing from heat stroke, buying our weight in tomatoes and peaches from the market. Yesterday afternoon, while we were visiting a friend's baby rabbits and talking about the fox that stole her rooster a few weeks ago, a cold front finally came in. Last night we were able to sleep under coverlets again and not wake up with damply sweating skin. The air is clear and crisp today and I feel like gulping it in like a puppy dog.

This year, the boys are in day camp for the first time. They ride horses and play Italian games and eat two-course lunches every other day (there are sandwiches and French fries on the alternating days). Max arrives tomorrow and then it will really feel like we are on vacation. After having skipped the annual tradition of coming here last year, I am especially alert to all of the beauty and wonder of this place. Am I really here, I keep thinking. Is this really real?

When we are here, I share cooking responsibilities with my mother. This is lovely. She'll make things like lentil and calamari stew, or baked guinea fowl with peppers and potatoes. I end up relying heavily on the Sicilian cookbook that she mail-ordered from a newspaper once. It may seem improbable, but it is an impeccable source of recipes and I have rarely made a misstep cooking from it.

This torta di bietole (or Swiss chard tart) is something I make every summer. I buy a disc of tart dough at the grocery store (this particular one is gluten-free and perfect - Italians suffer in great numbers from celiac disease and the gluten-free options available at the grocery store are amazing, look at the blistery flake!), and a big bunch of the most tender baby chard. I get a quivering pile of ricotta from a cart at the market in Urbino, plus fresh eggs from our friend with the missing rooster. There's not much to the tart besides cooking the chard (first boil it, then sauté it with oil and garlic to dry it out and flavor it a little more deeply), then mixing it with the ricotta, eggs and some pecorino for more flavor. 

The delicate chard I can get here in summer has thin, tender little stalks. The chard I get back in Berlin (and that you may find wherever you are) has much thicker ribs, but as long you chop them after boiling, it'll be fine in the tart. The original recipe calls for sheep's milk ricotta, which is a rich delight, but not always easy to find out of season or out of Italy's borders. Of course, cow's milk ricotta is fine too. You could also swap out the pecorino for Parmigiano if you had to. (Sicilians rely more heavily on sheep's milk.)

All that's left to do is to fit the tart dough into the pie plate, scrape the savory filling into the pan, fiddle with a lattice crust with the leftover dough scraps and into the oven it goes. The tart is as good eaten fresh from the oven as it is the next day, when it's had a bit of time to settle, making it wonderful picnic fare. You could do the usual and serve this with salad alongside, or, if it's hot as hell where you are, just eat a wedge of it and call it a night. I love how simple it is, easy to whip up with the ancient whisk and plastic bowl in my mother's Italian kitchen, and how it isn't too rich and queasy-making, like quiche can be.

One final note: the metric quantities below are the ones I used when making this. I translated the U.S. quantities using Google and not my own equipment. I think they're all fine, but just wanted to make sure you knew.

Sicilian Savory Swiss Chard Tart
Makes one 9-inch/23-cm torta

550 grams/1.2 pounds Swiss chard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, halved
300 grams/1 1/4 cups ricotta (preferably sheep's milk, but cow's milk will do, too)
4 large eggs
70 grams/3/4 cup grated pecorino
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 sheet/circle store-bought or homemade flaky tart dough (unsweetened)

This is an unapologetic ode to my Instant Pot, which I love and adore. I bought it used several years ago and yes, it did take some time to get over my initial fears of figuring it out, but once I started understanding how to best put it to use, I fell hard and fast. Yes, people, you can be a hardcore home cook and also love the Instant Pot! Loving to cook does not exclude loving the Instant Pot!

What I think is essential is figuring out how you personally will get the most use out of it. What might be important to me will not necessarily be as important to you. For example, I love the Instant Pot for making chicken broth. It's easier than cooking it on the stove and it results in a more flavorful broth, plus it's quicker. I also love it for cooking rice, as I've mentioned before. And braised meat and palak paneer, among other Indian recipes. (This book by Sarah Copeland is an absolutely wonderful must-have if you have an Instant Pot.) But the most important thing for me is Instant Pot risotto. I'll literally never make risotto on the stove top again.

Not only does risotto in the Instant Pot take a fraction of the time to make, but you barely even have to stir it. PLUS,  you're guaranteed the most perfect texture every time. It's magic and absolutely worth the price of the pot. (We eat risotto at least once a week and it is one of those rare meals that everyone loves and I don't even bother serving anything else with it, so it's easy as pie for me.) The first time I made IP risotto, we'd spent the afternoon at the playground and came home just at dinnertime. The children were hangry, as, frankly, was I, and I had prepared nothing for dinner. There was a moment of panic and then I pivoted to making this risotto and when I had a hot, perfect dinner on the table less than 15 minutes later, I felt like I could have bench-pressed a car.

I used a recipe from The Kitchn to get my head around quantities and time, but my risotto is more vegetable-forward and less cheese-centric. I usually make risotto with a box of frozen peas, but sometimes I'll use a medium zucchini, finely diced (as I did here). You can, of course, go nuts and use both! Or you could skip both and just add saffron to make risotto Milanese! (Add the saffron with the broth.) You can use fancy homemade broth, or store-bought boxed broth, or even just water with some bouillon cubes, which is what I usually do. (I use Italian Star cubes that I buy in bulk in Italy or at the Italian wholesaler here in Berlin.) If you have white wine, use it. If you don't (I rarely do), just substitute more water/broth. It's a very riffable base recipe and I love it so much I've committed it to memory.

This is what the risotto looks like immediately after removing the lid. You have to then quickly give it a good stir, add the grated cheese and stir again. And then you have to serve it right away - risotto must be eaten hot hot hot, just like pasta, or the texture changes and it goes all wrong.

Okay, now I'm very curious: What are your reasons for loving your Instant Pot?

Note: This post includes affiliate links and I may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

Easiest Instant Pot Risotto
Serves 4
Print this recipe!

4 cups (950 ml) low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth or water with two bouillon cubes
2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cups (400 grams) risotto rice
1/2 cup (120 ml) white wine, optional (if not using, add an additional 1/2 cup broth)
1 box frozen peas or 1 medium zucchini, finely diced
1/2 cup (45 grams) finely grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Warm the broth or water. Set aside.

2. Set the Instant Pot to SAUTÉ and pour the oil (or the butter, if using) into the pot. Add the finely chopped onion and sauté until fragrant and translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat every grain with fat. Cook, stirring, for another minute or two.

3. If using the wine, add and stir well. Cook until most of the wine has evaporated. If not, proceed directly to Step 4.

4. Turn off the SAUTÉ function. Add the warmed broth and stir in the frozen peas or diced zucchini. Cover the Instant Pot and set it to MANUAL, HIGH, and dial the time to 5 minutes. The Instant Pot will take about 3 minutes to come to pressure.

5. When the 5 minutes are over, immediately release the pressure using a QUICK release. Remove the lid. Add the grated cheese, stir well, season to taste, and serve immediately.

Today, I thought to myself earlier, I would very much like to run away. Just, you know, walk out the front door and keep going, ending up in Rajasthan or the English countryside or an ice cliff in Greenland. I don't care where, really, just as long as it's not here, I thought. I am done with here. I've had enough of here. Get me out of here.

***

I miss my girlfriends. I miss connecting with my ladies in real life. I miss maskless faces. I miss their company and their smiles and looking at their shiny jewelry and talking about their gorgeous hair. I miss admiring them and asking for advice and giving advice and the thrilling incredulity that sometimes comes with feeling deeply understood. Waiting for them at a restaurant, deciding on a second glass of wine, feeling them all squished into a booth beside me. Their smells, their presence, their them-ness. Our conversations, the big talks and the little ones. Their outfits and their bags and their wrinkles and their laughter and their advice and our shorthand. I miss the women in my life so much that I have an actual physical ache.

Zoom was fine for a month or two or three, but now I can't even face Zooming with my friends. It feels too painful. I want to reach out and touch them and I can't. When the pandemic started last year, my friend and neighbor Stephanie came by one day just to say hi, from a distance. I ran down the stairs to see her, ripped open the front door and, confronted with her in the flesh before me, just burst into tears. My tears surprised me perhaps even more than they surprised her. The fact that she was in front of me and I couldn't go near her and touch her, pull her in for a hug, just gutted me. Once we all adjusted to the new normal, I was able to cope with that distance. I made my peace with it, I thought. But this week, that part of me is just hanging out again, all weepy and exposed, like a raw blister.

I want to run away to a faraway land and I want my girlfriends to come with me and while we're gone our husbands will take care of our children and they'll be just fine and we'll be back in a few months when we feel better, promise. 

***

The children were home from mid-December to mid-February. When they returned to school and Kita, I breathed a sigh of relief. Normalcy for them and for us, time to work again, time to be something other than a mother 25 hours a day. But the situation in Germany, in case you haven't heard, is becoming grotesque. Vaccinations lag, there is no testing strategy, and cases are skyrocketing. My mother and mother-in-law are vaccinated now, thank goodness, because they help us a lot. But Max and I are resigned to the fact that we are months and months away from our vaccinations, while the mutations are wreaking havoc. Bruno is our weakest link, poor little guy. I keep sending him to Kita, because I have assignments and deadlines, and every day I cross my fingers and hold my breath and hope against hope that he doesn't come home and infect us.

Keep him home, I think. Protect yourself. You have work, sure, but benevolent neglect never hurt anyone. And then I remember the endless weeks of them at home, at each other's throats all the time, his regressions, his brother's obsessive tendencies and how I felt like I was drowning all the time. He's better off at Kita.

***

All the while, meals are still getting made, morning, noon and night. One funny thing: I am having a quiet love affair with walnuts. I'll tell you more about that another time. In the who-gives-a-shit department, I feed my children broth made from bouillon cubes multiple nights a week and everyone is happy. In the marriage department, sometimes I get so angry about cooking one more meal that I make lunch only for myself and my husband has to go fend for himself, which he does without complaint. I have come this far in our journey together that I can report on this without judgment for myself.

Sometimes I get angry.

Sometimes I need to disappear.

Sometimes I simply refuse to make one more meal.

Yesterday, I made the discovery of the most delicious saag recipe made with Tuscan kale and tomatoes. I got it from my bible, East by Meera Sodha. In the cookbook, the saag is cooked with browned cubes of paneer, but I just wanted a big comforting pile of vegetables, so I left the paneer out and served the saag with hot cooked rice. It was so punchy and flavorful and nourishing that it felt like...a burst of sunshine in my body. An enveloping hug from someone wiser than myself. An escape. It used up precisely one bunch of perfect Tuscan kale. I made it just for us for lunch and there were no turned up noses or whines for something else.

One small good thing for which I could be grateful.

Note: This post includes affiliate links and I may earn a commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

Meera Sodha's Tuscan Kale Saag
Adapted from East
Serves 2
Note: This recipe is easily doubled.
Print this recipe!

One bunch Tuscan kale (about 250 grams), ribs discarded, leaves roughly chopped
Rapeseed oil
1 onion, finely chopped
Thumb-sized knob of ginger, peeled and grated
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 green chile, optional, finely chopped
Half a can of chopped tomatoes or about 3 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon brown rice syrup
Half a can of coconut milk

1. On a medium flame, heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pan or pot with a lid and add the onions. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes over a medium flame,  until soft and sweet.

2. Add the ginger, garlic and chile, if using. Cook for a few minutes, then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until thick, about 5 to 8 minutes. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric, salt and brown rice syrup and stir well.

3. Add the kale to the pan and stir to wilt. Add the coconut milk, stir, then cover. Cook over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. If the saag seems dry, add a tablespoon or two of water. 

4. When the kale is tender, use an immersion blender to roughly blend the mixture. Serve as a side dish or with rice as a main course.

Some days you have the time to leisurely cook a sack of dried beans the way they did in the olden days, linen apron blowing in the gentle breeze, the faraway shout of children tumbling down the heather-topped hill echoing faintly back to your gorgeously rustic, yet well-appointed kitchen; other days, you are so frantic and stressed that even the MERE IDEA of turning on the flame to get dinner started is enough to give you a nervous breakdown. On those days, you need this cheesy black bean bake in your repertoire, because it barely counts as cooking and yet delivers a pretty bang-up meal in basically seconds, PLUS you get to eat it with rice if it's not the worst absolute day of your week OR tortilla chips if it is the worst absolute day of your week. And it is so satisfying and delicious that it'll make you feel just fine about dialing it in.

You probably have all the ingredients for it in your pantry/fridge as we speak, but truly the most essential ingredient is one that isn't listed here and that is the cold beer that you must must must have on hand to drink with dinner. It makes the bean bake all the more delicious, PLUS if you're having the kind of day that warrants this meal for dinner, then the cold beer is even more important. (Alternatively, a margarita; I don't know your life.)

Hugo, as I may have mentioned in the past—and forgive me if I continue to harp on it in the future, but I reserve the right to complain about certain aspects of my children's characters and disliking melted cheese DEFINITELY counts as a (slight) character flaw in my book—dislikes melted cheese. The melted cheese on top of these beans is absolutely crucial, I find, but if you simply scoop the beans out from under the cheese, you can procure cheeseless beans for these kinds of picky eaters, as well as having extra cheese for the rest of you who are sane enough to realize that melted and burnished cheddar should be its own food group.

If you're organized enough to have a ripe avocado on hand, you could do worse than slicing it up and serving it with the beans and chips or beans and rice. Pickled onions would also be a lovely touch! Neither of them ever happen in my house, because I reserve this bake for the days when I AM LOSING MY MIND and those days do not include the possibility of pickled onions or cubed avocado. But maybe you are more capable than me.

As I write this, International Women's Day is drawing slowly to a close. A couple years ago, Berlin's government declared this day a holiday and I am still not over how furious this makes me. As my bestie Marguerite Joly succinctly puts it:

"My wish list for International Women's Day is so long and does not feature a state-mandated holiday. How about equal pay, legal access to abortion, tax-free hygiene products and a side of acknowledgment of women's mental load for starters?!! I do not want [gratitude] or flowers or a gd holiday; I want immediate inclusion and equality, justice and equity for all women of all colors, socio-economic backgrounds and all sexual orientations and abilities."

Amen, sister. With that I leave you to go chill my beer for tonight's viewing of an American actress and Diana's heir taking down the British monarchy.

Ali Slagle's Cheesy Black Bean Bake
Serves 3 to 4
Print this recipe!

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
5 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
4 tablespoons tomato paste
1 ½ teaspoons smoked paprika
¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes (can be left out if you're cooking for heat-sensitive palates)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 (14-ounce/400 gram) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
½ cup/120ml boiling water
Salt and black pepper
1 ½ cups/170 grams grated Cheddar cheese

1. Heat the oven to 475°F/245°C. In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high. Fry the garlic until lightly golden, about 1 minute. Stir in the tomato paste, paprika, red-pepper flakes and cumin (be careful of splattering), and fry for 30 seconds, reducing the heat as needed to prevent the garlic from burning.

2. Add the beans, water and generous pinches of salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top then bake until the cheese has melted, 5 to 10 minutes. If the top is not as browned as you’d like, run the skillet under the broiler for 1 or 2 minutes. Serve immediately.

Thank you all very much for the commiseration on the loss of my digital photos and manuscript. I have spent a week licking my wounds and I am starting to feel better. The truth is, I already feel deeply oppressed by the masses of photos that clog every device I own. The sudden loss of thousands when I have so many more to deal with might be kind of a blessing? That's how I've decided I'm going to look at it. As for the manuscript, I had a big realization this fall that I wasn't happy with the existing structure of the book. I decided to change it substantially, but the only way to do that was to start over. So the fact that I lost those few weeks of summer work is annoying (and stupid), but I probably was going to trash those pages anyway. (The fact that I still don't have the kind of childcare that allows me to get started on draft three IS kind of the end of the world, but let's not dwell on that or I'll pull my hair out.)

After two months of lockdown, Hugo returned to in-person instruction this week. It's a very limited kind of school, just 2 1/2 hours daily, fully masked with only half his class. But it is school and it is not in my house and I am exceedingly grateful even just for this. Bruno, however, isn't allowed to return to Kita yet, so I actually have less time than I did before, because as everyone with multiple children knows, the child who only knows life with a sibling, when suddenly left alone without the sibling, is a lot more work. I am doing my best to keep my exasperation at the entire situation at bay, but sometimes, yes, I want to scream into a pillow. Or from the balcony, like a diva being murdered at La Scala.

Lunchtime still rolls around every day like an unwelcome flea-bitten guest. Except now the lunch hour is interrupted by me having to get in the car and drive an hour round-trip to pick Hugo up from school. He doesn't get a school lunch, so he's grumpy as hell at pickup. At home, he either eats leftovers from our lunch or I scramble him some eggs and butter some toast. As much as the daily meal prep drives me up the wall, I feel lucky that the act of cooking still brings me satisfaction. And Bruno is very understanding about lunchtime. While I cook, he comes and keeps me company in the kitchen, drawing pictures or staring into my pots, and it is a fleeting moment of the kind of quiet beauty you used to believe motherhood was full of until you actually became a mother and realized it was mostly a whole lot of everything else.

Anyway.

My kingdom for comforting one-pot meals, like this absolutely delicious khichdi from Tejal Rao. It is a doddle to make—just bang rice and split yellow moong beans and spices into a pot together, then let time and steam do their work—but produces the most fragrant, wonderful and spicy one-pot meal. You complete it with some hot Indian pickle (we're obsessed with my friend Kavita's homemade garlic achar, but any Indian pickle will do) and an extremely necessary pool of cool yogurt. Sometimes, if I'm feeling fancy, I doctor that pool of yogurt with salt and ground cumin and a grated Persian cucumber. Sometimes, I just dollop a spoonful on each plate. Khichdi is the kind of food that bolsters you, makes you feel just a bit more settled than you were before you ate it. Just the thing for these unsettling days.

Tejal Rao's Khichdi
Serves 3 to 4
Note: If you are cooking for small children, leave the chile powder out of the khichdi and just add it to your plate, but be careful, it's easy to overdo.
Print this recipe!

⅔ cup long-grain white rice, such as jasmine
⅓ cup yellow split moong beans
2 tablespoons ghee
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
1 small cinnamon stick
2 green cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
1 sprig curry leaves (optional)
¼ teaspoon red chile powder
¼ teaspoon turmeric powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

1. Combine the rice and beans and rinse several times. Drain and place in a heavy-bottomed pot with 1 3/4 cups water, and set over medium-high heat.

2. In another small saucepan, heat the ghee and mustard seeds. When the seeds start to pop, lower the heat and add the remaining ingredients, swirling them in the pan. Let the spices sizzle for under a minute, then carefully pour into the rice pot, along with the ghee. (Careful: The fat may splatter).

3. When the water comes up to a rolling boil, give it a good stir, scraping at the bottom of the pot, then cover tightly and turn the heat down to low. Cook for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the rice rest for 10 minutes before opening the lid. Fluff gently with a spatula. Taste, season with salt to taste and serve.

It is 4:24 pm and by some small miracle, I currently find myself alone in our apartment. Max and Bruno left a little while ago to trudge through the snow to the pharmacy and drugstore. Hugo is in the courtyard playing in the snow. He can't stay away from it, he's bewitched by it. It's dystopian to think about how novel a truly cold winter is for our little Berliner, when the very cold winters of our childhoods in Berlin were practically a defining feature of the experience of growing up here. But wait, I'm getting away from things. I am home alone.

HOME ALONE.

First I blasted music, just to feel something. Then I drank a cup of scalding hot tea and burned my mouth. Now I'm sitting here by the radiator, trying to write. A child outside is screaming bloody murder at her father for making her play in the snow and although I usually barely register the noise of children who don't belong to me, this one is making me want to howl out the window. We're all losing our minds a little, yes?

Where was I. Home alone. You all. This soup.

Oooh, this soup. It comes from East by Meera Sodha. One of the best cookbooks I own. Every recipe I've tried has been delicious and complex, but also easy and fun and interesting. If you follow me elsewhere, you may be sick of hearing me wax on about it. I'm sort of sick of me going on about it! But it really is an amazing collection. It has taught me so much and broadened my pantry immeasurably. My cooking is better for owning the book, my diet more varied. The recipes are all vegetarian or vegan, Asian-inspired and simple to make.

Meera's recipes are a study in the masterful layering of flavors, and this soup is a perfect example. You start by caramelizing onions (I got impatient and moved on after 20 minutes and my soup was still staggeringly delicious), to which then add stock and cooking wine and soy sauce and miso. Taste the broth and kapow, it'll blow you away. Best of all, your work is now mostly done! All you have to do is cook your noodles, drop them into the deep brown soup along with some greens (I used Napa cabbage) and a jammy egg (she recommends a soy egg, which requires a little advance planning), and sit down to eat.

You'll feel like you're eating restaurant food, which is the highest praise I can give food right now, because I am so sick of my own cooking and my dinner staples and if I could, I would just order in dinner from a different restaurant every day, but I can't, so instead I depend on cookbooks to give me a glimmer of the outside world.

Which cookbooks are you leaning on to give you that sense that the world is still out there, awaiting us? I love a good cookbook chat, so have at it.

Note: This post includes an affiliate link and I may earn a commission if you purchase through it, at no cost to you. I use affiliate links only for products I love and companies I trust. Thank you.

Caramelized Onion Ramen
Serves 4
Print this recipe!

Vegetable oil
3 large onions, peeled and finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
½ tsp salt
1 bird's eye chile, finely sliced
6 cups/1½ liters vegetable stock
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
1½ tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown rice miso
Salt and black pepper
7 ounces/200 grams ramen noodles (I used gluten-free buckwheat noodles)
7 ounces/200g leafy greens like gai lan or choi sum, or Napa cabbage, cut into 6cm pieces
Chile crisp, to serve
4 7-minute eggs or soy eggs

1. In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, warm 5 tablespoons of oil over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic and salt to the pan, stir to coat in the oil, then cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring every five minutes. The onions will gradually start to caramelize and color. Eventually they'll start breaking down into a soft, sweet, caramel-colored paste.

2. Add the chile, if using, and stock to the pan, bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer and add the rice wine, soy and miso, stirring well to combine. Taste, adjust the seasoning, then turn off the heat.

3. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions, then drain, refresh under cold water and stir in a little oil to keep them from sticking together.

4. Cook the greens just before serving. Bring the broth up to a boil, drop in the greens and cook for a minute or two, until just tender.

5. Divide the noodles between four bowls and ladle the broth over the top, making sure to share out the greens evenly. Halve the eggs, if using, and place two halves on each serving. Drizzle over the chile oil, if using, and serve.