Hundreds of Culture Study Readers cook *Tenderheart*
The First Ever Culture Study Cookbook Club
First: This week’s episode of
on plastic surgery culture (with ) is so good — we talk about praying before plastic surgery (yes, real); beauty as terror; plastic surgery ASMR (a whole fascinating genre) and I promise you’ll never look at Elon Musk the same way again. Click on the magic link to listen wherever you get your podcasts — or listen here (and get all the show notes).Second: I don’t think a Culture Study thread idea has ever been explicitly complimented as much as yesterday’s— which is interesting, because it’s pretty basic? But people *loved* it.
Third: Did you read the latest in the Culture Study series about how people doing various sorts of work organize their days, their lives, and their future? This Sunday’s was with a gardening ceramicist — but it’s very much about what it’s like for an ADHD person to figure out systems that work for them. Read it here.
Last month I interviewed Stephanie Lau about the successful of her Brooklyn-based cookbook club, which has since inspired dozens (hundreds?) of others across the world — including ours here at Culture Study, featuring Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Tenderheart.
I was blown away by how many of you signed up to cook one (or many!) of the 220+ vegetable-focused recipes in the book. There were just a handful of recipes with no sign-ups (sorry Spinach Boxes) but most recipes had anywhere from two to seven sign-ups (everyone wanted to cook the Forest Loaf with me, obviously).
Unlike a “real” cookbook club, where people make the dish and bring it to share, we were making our dishes all across the world, with the intention of coming together and talking about the process (and getting ideas to cook even more). With that said — I know many of you cooked with or for other Culture Study readers, which DELIGHTS me (and I hope we can do more of it for future cookbook clubs). Please tell us about it; my goal is to create more of these in the future.
The goal of an in-person cookbook club is easy connection and a bit of structured encouragement to cook something out of your normal routine, and while we can’t all be together in person, we can create the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself — and hopefully gather some inspiration for your own in-person connection as well.
I’ve been in a real cooking rut recently and used this opportunity to force me to try several new recipes: CHARRED CAULIFLOWER AND CRISPY TOFU
WITH SWEET PEANUT SAUCE; BROCCOLI FOREST LOAF; and TINGLY 'CACIO E PEPE' SNOW PEAS WITH RICE NOODLES.
A few quick cooking notes (and decidedly unglamorous photos):
The Charred Cauliflower was my fav of the three recipes I made — loved the homemade hoisin & and will definitely make it again (and not run out of tahini and have to sub in a little peanut butter to supplement, although that turned out just fine). The recipe suggests cooking rice and quinoa together, and my end product was not as good as when I do one or the other on its own, which I mostly blame on user error. Still, next time I’d probably just cook my standard brown rice.
The Broccoli Forest Loaf is the sort of recipe I always dogear and never actually make — which is part of why I wanted to make it for this club! Olives are the only absolute will-not-eat food in my life (odd, I know, especially since I love pickles and other briny things), so I didn’t add them, but otherwise the loaf was as whimsical and delicious as expected; it really feels like a cheese bread with some exquisite broccoli bites. I didn’t have a bread loaf pan so I made it in a square pyrex and it was great. If your kid likes broccoli, they’ll be into this, I think.
I made the loaf alongside the Tingly Cacio e Pepe for Charlie and my mom. My mom loved the Cacio e Pepe and Charlie and I both realized we’re just used to pastas with EVEN MORE VEGETABLES (and also more spice). We reheated the leftovers for dinner the next night and added a bunch of pan-steamed broccoli and red chili pepper flakes (and an egg on top, because that’s our favorite way to extend leftovers) and I liked it even more (it wasn’t that tingly, but that’s because the Szechuan peppercorns my mom brought over to replace my old Szechaun peppercorns were from 2020, womp womp)
Now I want to hear what you made! What went well, what would you do differently if you made it again? Who did you make it for? How did you eat the leftovers, if there were any?
As is our custom with books and shows, let’s try and put the recipe title in ALL CAPS for reading/navigation ease. Also, Hetty is a member of this community so it’s okay if something didn’t work for you, but write about it like the author can read what you write (because she can).
When this goes live, I’ll put a link to a Chat in the comments so you can also post your pictures — but the comments here are going to be our main focus of discussion. (And yes, this is paywalled — community conversations like this is one of the perks of becoming a paid subscriber!)