In late December, I finally took the plunge and bought a Short Stack Edition. I’ve been intrigued for a while, every time I see them at the Strand — their covers are eye-catching and some of my favorite food people (Molly Yeh, Dorie Greenspan, and Alison Roman, for example) have written for them. On my girlfriend’s suggestion, I picked up Honey, and then it occurred to me that it would be fun to try to cook my way through as much of a book as I could each month of 2019.
Since buying Honey, I’ve become a little obsessed with its author, Rebekah Peppler. I bought her book Apéritif a couple weeks ago, enchanted by the idea of being someone who makes and drinks her own cocktails at home (like my dad — I really feel like I take after him far more than I could ever have expected, but that’s for another post). One of the things I like a lot about Apéritif is that, as Peppler writes at the end, it exists in a world without cishet white men.
This is dreamy at the best of cultural moments, but particularly lately. Last week my girlfriend and I went to see King Princess at the Warsaw. It was a great show, partly for the artist herself, partly because the crowd was a solid 99% LGBTQ. We weren’t the only visibly queer couple there, and we were seeing an artist who affirms that. Of course, after the show, we were trying to find food and went into a nearby German restaurant/bar. We decided not to stay, and on the way out, as my girlfriend was saying a cheery farewell to the bouncer and I was following her out, he touched my elbow and said something like, “Night, cutie.”
Look, we are both femme; look, we live in a society that assumes everyone is straight. But we’d just been at a show surrounded by other queer people. Two days before, Flare had published an essay I’m very proud of discussing the importance of lesbian visibility. I have been on more than one date with a woman wherein one of us (or both!) was hit on by a man. I’m used to it, but it still bothers me. I think what bothered me most about this is that he touched me. I’m a New Yorker. No one is supposed to do that. And between Flare, King Princess, and Apéritif, I’d been cocooned in a world without cishet men (white or otherwise). It was nice. I’m grateful for having had that, for just a little bit, before reality intruded and then retreated again.
Anyway, I named this blog post after Kehlani’s lovely song “Honey.” It didn’t occur to me until midway through writing this that there’s some significance to it being a love song to another woman, that in a piece of writing where I talk about lesbian invisibility, there’s some pointedness here.
Book: Honey, Rebekah Peppler (Short Stack Editions)
Recipes made: 10/25
Honey-Sesame Bacon: One of the best things in this book. So simple, and SO good. If you make this, drain the honey-infused fat and hang onto it to cook with later.
Furikake-Honey Butter: The seaweed-y taste was a little hard to get used to, solely because I’ve never had butter like this before. I made baguettes around the same time and the butter was great on them, although unfortunately I never had a chance to make the popcorn Peppler recommends this for.
Dutch Baby with Chamomile Honey: I found this to be a little too eggy (maybe because I skipped the raspberries), but I like the flavors a lot. I haven’t had the chance to make it again because it takes 4 days to make the chamomile honey and I am forgetful, but I’d like to try and combine the chamomile honey with another dutch baby recipe and see if that’s better. Or just use it on pancakes!
Roast Chicken with Lemon & Pink Pepper Honey Butter: God this is good. It’s not the first roast chicken I’ve made, but it’s probably the best one. I made it with my girlfriend and we unfortunately had to eat it quickly and run out the door, but that’s why the freezer was invented, right? The fat from this has also been used to great effect in Alison Roman’s recipe for eggs & kale cooked in chicken fat (which, as of this post, I have eaten every day for the last 5 days).
Honey-Malt Ice Cream: This had the honor of being the first thing I used my ice cream KitchenAid attachment for! It’s very good, but has languished a bit since I’m lactose intolerant and can’t find any Lactaid pills. On the plus side, it proved to me how easy making ice cream actually is (when you have a machine to do most of the work for you).
Bee’s Knees (& Orange Blossom Honey Syrup): Holy crap, this was so good. Even my friend who doesn’t normally like gin really liked these cocktails (I used Bombay Sapphire because I like the bottle). It’s definitely heavy on the gin, but worth it. So good and easy to make. 10/10.
Salted Sarrasin Caramels: This is all that remained of the caramels after my attempt to cut them up sent most of them flying directly into my cats’ water fountain. I’m not great at candy-making (thanks, ADHD!) so I likely screwed them up in some way from carelessness — but they’re still tasty.
Switchel: I used to do shots of apple cider vinegar with my coworkers when I was on the AM shift at work, and it’s still given me a sort of fight-or-flight-or-freeze reaction whenever I smell ACV, so I was sort of reluctant to make this drink. But it’s good! It’s really good, and I’m drinking it as I type right now.
Whole-Grain Honey Mustard: This is sort of misplaced in this group of recipes, all of which I made because I already liked the base recipe…except for this. I don’t really eat mustard and I only have honey mustard when the very nice man at the nearby fried chicken place insists I take it for my late-night chicken tenders and fries. I haven’t had much of an opportunity to use this yet, but as someone who, again, doesn’t really like mustard…I like this a lot! Also, it got me to make my first order from Penzeys, so a win-win for us all. Accepting recommendations for it, thanks. (Turkey sandwiches?)