A week ago, Andy and I were both packing for separate trips — me to Seattle for fun, and him to Boston for work — when the subject of dinner came up, as it tends to do. Should we just do takeout? He asked. It was tempting. I had a lot to do before my 4:45 am wake-up the next day and I didn’t want to deal with cooking and cleaning, and the agedashi tofu and spinach goma-ae from our favorite Japanese spot was calling my name. But, so too were several ingredients in the fridge that would probably go to waste if I didn’t use them before my trip. Plus we had chicken sausage in the freezer, and when that’s the case, dinner is already 80% made. In other words: Why spend money on takeout when I could just dump a few links into a baking dish, surround them with tomatoes, red onions, thyme, and a half a block of feta and bake for under a half hour? And so that’s what I did.
A very simple salad came together while it was in the oven, and the whole thing was so good and satisfying, especially when I stirred the feta into the cooked-down tomatoes, à la the viral circa-2020 pasta, to make a creamy sauce. I wish I took a photo of my plate with the green salad because the final dinner was gorgeous and somehow tasted better than the sum of its parts. Maybe that’s because it came with some virtue baked right into it. You can head over to my Substack for the How-To.
