Happy Sunday.

Our goal is to get your cooking juices flowing and inspire you to try new meals, so here are your weekly recipe inspirations.

As always, a grocery shopping list for the recipes is linked in Notion at the end of this email.

In This Week’s Edition:

Try Something New 🤯 — Curried Acorn Squash

Throwback Time 🍳 — Pesto Science

The Leftover Shelf 🥡 — Pesto-Marinated Grilled Chicken

Extra Helpings 🤤 — Is pork belly the same as bacon?

Shopping List ✅ — Ingredients sorted into categories for easy shopping!

Try Something New 🤯

The best dish I made last week. If you haven’t already, you’ve got to try this flavor combination:

Curried Acorn Squash w/ Honey

Creamy, roasted acorn squash is the perfect vehicle for warm curry spices, especially in the winter. It’s the perfect side dish for any protein or meal (like the pesto chicken recipe below!).

Dish Components

• Whole acorn squash, halved, seeds removed and sliced into half-moons about 1/2 inch thick

• Coconut oil (or another cooking fat)

• Kosher salt

• Honey

• Curry powder*

*This recipe was tested with a turmeric-forward, vibrant powder, but any curry mix will do. Garam masala or any mix of ground warm spices are welcome.

Instructions

1. Prepare for baking: Preheat the oven to 450F. Right on a large baking sheet, toss acorn squash slices with coconut oil (melt in the microwave if necessary) and a large sprinkle of kosher salt so that each slice is thoroughly coated. Arrange on the baking sheet so that each slice is laying flat.

2. Bake & monitor doneness: Check the baking sheet after 15 minutes. The bottom side of the slices (touching the baking sheet) should all be nicely colored and browned. If not, rotate the pan and check back in 5-minute increments. Then, flip all the pieces so that the other sides get a chance to make contact with the baking sheet and brown. Bake for 15 more minutes or until both sides have colored and the squash is cooked through (it should be soft).

3. Season & serve: Right on the pan, drizzle all pieces with honey to preference. Then sprinkle with a light layer of your curry seasoning. Move the slices around (gently — they’ll be delicate at this point) so that each one is coated in the honey & spice mixture. Serve with additional honey and a sprinkle more of curry seasoning for garnish.

Throwback Time 🍳

What’s the key to making a great pesto? Aside from quality ingredients, the technique and process make a significant difference.

The video covers why hand-pounding pesto in a mortar and pestle is actually better than making it in a food processor, and why you should never cook your pesto for pasta applications.

The written recipe includes Marcella Hazan’s exact pesto ratios to make an unbelievable sauce base. While pesto is delicious just over pasta, it can actually be used as a marinade, sauce, or dressing as well.

Make extra, and then try this week’s pesto-marinated grilled chicken bowls:

The Leftover Shelf 🥡

Leftovers are back in style…if you know how to use them.

This week’s move:

Leftover Pesto → Pesto Grilled Chicken Bowls

Pesto can lose a lot of its flavor and color if it’s not used immediately. However, leftover pesto shouldn’t be thrown out. The fat, salt, and aromatic contents make leftover pesto an ideal marinade: it’s still flavorful enough to subtly season meat.

Pesto Chicken

• Chicken breast or thighs, butterflied or pounded to a 1/2 inch even thickness

• Kosher salt

• Leftover pesto

Bowl Component Suggestions

• Cooked orzo (or another starch like rice or a different pasta)

• Dressed arugula (or other greens of choice)

• Leftover curried acorn squash

• Additional pesto sauce, basil leaves, or lemon wedges for garnish.

To assemble:

Grill the chicken: In a bowl or gallon bag, add chicken, a sprinkle of salt, and enough pesto to cover and marinate each piece. Reserve some pesto to use as a sauce for serving, if desired. Marinate for up to 24 hours, or cook the chicken immediately on a hot grill or pan until charred and cooked through. Let it rest on a cutting board before slicing.

Serve the cooked chicken with additional bowl components of choice and more pesto sauce as a garnish.

Extra Helpings 🤤

🚀 Viral Eats

Cooking trends explained.

Q: What is spam musubi and why is it all over my feed?

A: Spam musubi is a popular hand-held snack made with sushi rice, nori, and yes…grilled or seared spam. It resembles and gets its name from the Japanese omusubi, where a rice ball is wrapped in a sheet of nori.

Spam musubi has its origins in Hawaii, during World War II, where an important ration ingredient to U.S. soldiers was spam. After the war, leftover spam cans (and lots of them) were made available to civilians.

Thanks to the creative culinary minds of the large ethnic Japanese population in Hawaii, spam was inserted into existing omusubi and onigiri-style snacks.

Spam musubi grew in popularity and became a staple in Hawaiian convenience stores ever since. More recently, spam musubi’s popularity has soared on social media platforms like TikTok, and on menus across the U.S.

Why?

1) Spam is a cheap alternative to making sushi-style snacks that usually require expensive, hard-to-source, raw fish (especially for home cooking).

2) It’s incredibly savory because the spam slices are seared, meaning you get a ton of umami and flavor development from the browning (Maillard reaction) that occurs all over the meat.

So is SPAM cool again? Reply and let us know your opinion, or if you want to read more: here’s an Eater article that dives into SPAM’s history and cultural resurgence.

🧠 Reader Q&A

Q: Can you substitute pork belly for bacon? I can get pork belly easily at an incredibly good price that’s raised, slaughtered, and sold locally by the farmer. The bacon is great too, but NOT cheap! What do you think? — Hollis H.

A: Great question, Hollis! We’re all about getting a higher quality, local product if possible.

There is a difference between bacon and regular pork belly, however.

Bacon is pork belly that has been cured in a salt/sugar/spice mixture (or brine), and then is (usually) smoked. This additional processing is what makes bacon more expensive than pork belly — you’re paying for the time, labor, and added ingredients.

This is also what makes bacon a seasoned (already salty) product that is semi-dried (the curing draws out some water content) and crisps up easily in a pan.

If you substitute pork belly for bacon in a dish, make sure to salt the meat to compensate. It might also take a bit more cooking to get it to the same crispness. Lastly, you might miss out on some of the cured/smoked flavors that bacon brings, so think about other ways to add those flavors back into the dish.

If you really wanted to, you could turn that pork belly into bacon yourself. It’s an involved process, but fascinating to truly understand how everyone’s favorite breakfast item is made: Here is an older video where I show how to cure bacon at home.​

🏆 Dinner Winner! Reader Photo Submission of the Week

This week’s winner is Dan Serino, who made a classic carbonara. Nicely done, Dan…the execution looks 👌.

Reply with a picture of the best meal you made this week for a chance to be featured in a future email.

🍽 More Yummy Content

A Read: Will AI replace food bloggers?​

In a Minute or Less: Kimchi Spam Breakfast Taco​

What We’re Watching: The World of Japanese Cocktails​

Food Science: Six Braising Mistakes Most Beginners Make​

Upgrade Your Feed: Connect with Ethan everywhere​

Ready to shop? 🛒

✅ Shopping List 1/29