Happy Friday!
We have officially made it to the greatest month of the year: May, when spring actually begins, as opposed to when it’s supposed to. It’s the season for fresh peonies, strawberries, and, most importantly, artichokes.
Last week, I made the scorched rice dish I mentioned here for a Friday night dinner party. It was good—impressive, even—as was a grilled rack of lamb and a salad of roasted carrots with avocado, cilantro, and cumin. But all those dishes were laughably eclipsed by a giant pair of farmer’s market artichokes that my boyfriend halved, boiled, and finished on the grill.
When they were done, we tore off the sweet, meaty leaves, dipped them into a bowl of melted butter with lemon and sea salt, and scraped them clean with our teeth. One of our guests, his fingers dripping with lemony butter, declared the artichokes “vegetarian lobster.” He wasn’t wrong. (Indeed, Israeli and Italian rabbis are now debating whether they’d be considered kosher, but not because of their culinary proximity to the crustacean.) They were easily the most decadent—and the simplest—dish on the table. Also, the one we enjoyed the most.
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“Vegetarian lobster” (serves 4). Slice two fresh globe artichokes—ideally with a bit of a stem—down the center and plunge them into a pot of rapidly boiling water with the juice of one lemon. Boil the artichokes for about 15 minutes and prepare the grill for medium heat. Remove the artichokes, drizzle them with some olive oil, and place them on the grill, flat side down. After four minutes, flip them, and cook for another four minutes. Remove artichokes from the grill and serve them with a bowl of melted butter, lemon juice, and sea salt to taste. (To eat: Pluck off the leaves, dip in the butter, and scrape off the meat with your teeth. When you’re done, remove the hairy part of the choke and enjoy the heart.)
I took the month of April off from boozing, which was a mostly positive experience, except for the few occasions when it was excruciating. The main result—and to my mind, the best reason for doing it—is that my end-of-day default has been reset from “drinking” to “not drinking.”
So yes, when I’m eating delicious pizza at a restaurant that has a natural Sangiovese by the glass, you bet I’ll have one. But when I’m just craving something that signals the day is over, my happy hour as it were, my drink might not necessarily need to contain alcohol. Which then begs the question: What’s in the glass?
A London-based company called Seedlip is answering this question with something it calls “non-alcoholic spirits.” Seedlip’s extremely attractive bottles, with labels depicting herbs, flowers, and vegetables in the shapes of woodland creatures, are already poured at New York’s Momofuku Ssäm and London’s Savoy. And the contents—two different blends of botanical distillates—gave a surprisingly respectable backbone to a zero-proof cocktail.
I started with Seedlip’s Spice 94, which features cardamom and allspice with grapefruit and lemon rind. I poured two ounces of it over ice and topped it up with Fever Tree Indian tonic and a grapefruit rind, and happily sipped it as I cooked. Seedlip’s spirits are made in a manner similar to gin, whereby botanicals are macerated, distilled, filtered, and blended—but the base liquid, when all is said and done, is water. (There’s no sugar either.)
A 700-ml bottle goes for $40, which seems expensive for flavored water but reasonable for a high-end “spirit,” which is really the way this stuff functions. And when I consider that a few days into May I’m still off the sauce, it seems a fair price for a hangover-free cocktail worth sipping.
Ooh-la-la, a classic reissue! I was supposedly too old for children’s books in the early 1990s when my aunt Carol gave me Maira Kalman’s Ooh-la-la (Max in Love), the story of a dog poet who goes to Paris and meets a poodle named Crepes Suzette. But I fell in love with Max nonetheless, and learned this week that the New York Review of Books recently reissued the title—along with a handful of Max’s other misadventures—in hardcover.
“Kalman is one of those only in New York, kids, only in New York oddballs who somehow embodies the place,” wrote Rumaan Alam this week in a profile of the author for the Cut, noting her acumen as a writer and illustrator, and that she has “been a columnist for the Times, collaborated with choreographers, created an installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, performed in Peter and the Wolf (she played a duck), and run a pop-up shop.” (Also, remember when she loaned Toscanini’s pants to Cooper Hewitt?)
Though this book takes place in Paris, its zany romance, rhythmic writing, and the kooky characters Max encounters in the city of lights makes me a little giddy about returning to New York for a visit next week. While I’m there, you can expect an edition from this newsletter’s long-time editor and first-time writer, Indrani Sen.
Have a great weekend!
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It’s gonna be May. Somehow this internet meme, based on Justin Timberlake’s strange pronunciation of the lyric “it’s gonna be me,” escaped me in years past, but never mind. Recently, NSYNC members, Timberlake included, have given 1990s kids reason for nostalgia with their induction to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Quartz’s Adam Epstein has outed himself as a former super-fan, reminiscing about rushing home from fourth grade to buy the band’s second album with his mom at Sam Goody. (Bless.) I don’t necessarily second Adam’s endorsement of firing up NSYNC’s greatest hits this spring. I do, however, endorse going to see Justin Timberlake if his “Man of the Woods” tour stops in your city. I saw him in LA last weekend and Timberlake—a consummate showman, in a jean jacket with the collar popped—did not disappoint.