I’ve tried at least a dozen focaccia recipes. I liked Claire Saffitz’s for a while, and then suddenly I kept messing it up. I tried switching it up. I made every cookbook recipe I could get my hands on. And, after all that wasted flour, and an oven fire that one time, I finally have it.

Ingredients

• 500g bread flour

• 420ml warm water

• 7g instant yeast

• 10g sea salt

• 1.5 tsp wildflower honey

• Olive oil (for pan)

Method

1. Measure out flour in large mixing bowl or 12L lidded container.

2. Measure out salt, yeast, and honey in flour bowl, making sure to keep them on separate sides of bowl.

3. Add water to bowl and mix thoroughly until no dry flour remains and a very shaggy dough is formed.

4. Scrape the sides of the bowl so all dough pieces are part of the main mass.

5. Cover with plastic wrap or tea towel and let sit on kitchen counter for 20 minutes.

6. After 20 minutes, remove covering and, with a wet hand, stretch up one side of the dough and fold over. Wet hand as needed.

7. Turn bowl 90 degrees and stretch and fold again. Repeat until all 4 sides have been stretched and folded. Flip dough ball over and cover for 20 minutes.

8. Repeat steps 6-8 two more times.

9. Place covered dough bowl in fridge overnight or at least 8 hours.

10. Line a high rimmed baking dish at least 9x13 with parchment paper and drizzle with olive oil.

11. Remove dough bowl from fridge and scrape dough into lined dish.

12. Fold dough in thirds on itself and flip over so seam is down and it’s lengthwise in dish.

13. Cover and let dough prove and come up to room temperature for 2 hours.

14. After 2 hours, if dough hasn’t filled dish to every edge, stretch to fit. Cover and check after 30 minutes.

15. Preheat oven to 425F and prepare any toppings, if using.

16. Once the dough is bubbly and nearly to the top of the dish—about 30 minutes but could be closer to an hour—drizzle the dough with more olive oil, lightly coating your hands as well.

17. If you wish to add a topping beyond flaky sea salt, drizzle it on top of the dough now.

18. Dimple the dough by pressing your oiled fingers into the dough until they reach the bottom of the dish.

19. Sprinkle with flakey sea salt.

20. Place dish on lowest rack of your oven

21. Bake for 25-35 minutes until lightly golden.

22. Let cool for 5 minutes in dish before removing and cooling fully on a rack.

Chicken salad is just as easy to get right as it is to get wrong. The flavors that you prefer are entirely subjective, but some things aren’t. It can’t be too gloopy, or too dry. If it’s under seasoned, then you feel miserable the whole time. Or you could be like me, and have a favorite chicken salad in the whole world, from a local deli that your family has been going to since before you were born, until one day—post COVID, mind you—they decided to up and close with very little warning and for no reason other than they “want to retire.” What a load of horseshit.

Which is to say that I have been chasing a chicken salad high for four years and counting now that has gone unsatisfied. I feel like Gregory Rush, at the beginning of Curse of the Back Pearl, complaining about being unable to enjoy a bushel of apples. But, in my case, the apples are chicken salad from Diane’s Deli in Chesterbrook, PA.

Diane, if you’re out there, I still think of you.

This recipe isn’t a recreation of Diane’s, but it is everything I like in an easy chicken salad, perfect for those of us who suck at remembering to eat lunch.

• 1 grocery store rotisserie chicken (if you can get it cold, that’s even better. I prefer the plain or lightly seasoned ones for this, but you do you)

• 1 cup mayonnaise

• ¼ Dijon mustard

• ½ cup finely diced celery

• ¼ cup finely diced onion (Or shallot! Try a shallot!)

• ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

• ½ cup chopped dried cranberries (optional)

• 1 tsp flaky sea salt

• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

• ½ tsp paprika

• Pinch of cayenne, to taste

1. Dice your celery and onion. Chop the nuts and cranberries, if using. Place in small bowl and set aside.

2. Remove all meat from rotisserie chicken and place in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer

3. Shred rotisserie chicken until large chunks are broken but not finely shredded

   1. TIP: the stand mixer (or hand mixer) will shred it for you, better than you can, and at minimal effort on your part. I use a hand mixer whenever I make chicken salad or pulled pork.

4. To bowl with shredded chicken, add your mayonnaise, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and paprika. Mix until chicken is lightly coated and spices dispersed.

5. Add your celery, onion, nuts, and cranberries. Mix until well combined.

Your chicken salad is now ready to eat. It’s that simple. It doesn’t have to be a whole thing. You don’t have to work so hard at something for it to be good.

Now, if you want it be a whole thing, it can be! You can roast the chicken yourself you can get specialty mustards or truffle mayonnaise or chili oils and hot peppers or curry seasonings and make it what you want. But, even if you want to make it a whole thing, this recipe works as a great base.

You can leave it in the bowl or move it to the container you wish to store your chicken salad in for the week.

You can eat your chicken salad plain, or you can turn it into a salad, a sandwich, or a wrap.

My favorite chicken salad sandwich goes like this:

1. Get yourself a box of plain grocery store croissants. Slice in half.

2. You can toast them in the oven at 350F for 8 minutes if you want, but it’s not required.

3. Wash a few lettuce leaves and coarsely chop. My lettuce preference is whatever the farmers market has available that week.

4. On one half of the croissant, place the cheese of your choosing. I prefer a simple American or, if I’m feeling cool and remember to grab it at Wegmans, a dollop of stracciatella. Do what you want. My dad prefers provalone. My brother likes mozzarella. It’s up to you.

5. On the other half of the croissant, drizzle a thick, dark balsamic vinegar. I just acquired a dark cherry balsamic while I was in Maine. It’s even better than it sounds. If you want, you can drizzle some on the cheese side of the croissant too.

6. Place your washed and chopped lettuce on the non-cheesed croissant half.

7. Place 2-4 tablespoons of chicken salad on top of the lettuce.

8. Place the cheesed croissant side on top of the chicken salad and lettuce side.

9. Slice in half, and enjoy.

You can really do whatever you want, though. My mom likes to make a sliced tomato open faced sandwich with it. My sister just put a few salt and vinegar chips in her sandwich for extra crunch. Sometimes I’ll remember the sweet pickled hoagie peppers I have in the fridge and put a few on. Just for fun. It’s allowed.

In the era of the NYT Cooking App (of which I am a subscriber and rely on regularly for easy, daily meals), cooking blogs, and every website having every recipe available online, for free, it’s hard to justify having hardcover cookbooks. let alone buying new ones you didn’t just inherit from your grandma. Still, I love my cookbooks. I love reading them, reading the stories the authors include, and watching them become well-loved—spines cracked and pages stained; a physical reminder of the memories they’ve helped to create—over time. I love comparing similar recipes in different cookbooks to see what parts from different versions I like best. I love when people gift me cookbooks. I love what each cookbook says about the person who gave it to me and what they think I’ll love. I love being able to make something from a gifted cookbook for the person who gave it to me. I love the way they light up, knowing that I really did appreciate their gift. I love my cookbooks.

So, at the request of some of my followers, here are 10 of the cookbooks I recommend:

Note: I am not being paid to promote any of these books. I genuinely just love them. There are also books I did not list for various reasons (unavailability to the public, redundancy, etc.) and cuisines unlisted for various reasons (e.g. my family is Eastern European so I don’t have any Slavic or Balkan cookbooks on this list because I don’t own any. When we make borscht and pascha we consult faded index cards.) so if you have a favorite that I did not list, let me know! I love hearing what people love and what has inspired them.

FLOUR WATER SALT YEAST
by Ken Forkish

If you have any interest in bread and the science behind baking it, this is the book for you. It’s shorter than the other bread book on this list, but more fundamental to the way I approach bread than any other cookbook on my shelves. With his straightforward instructions and helpful step-by-step pictures in the theory sections of each chapter, Forkish unmasks what makes great bread (hint: patience).

DESSERT PERSON
by Claire Saffitz

Beloved by online millennials everywhere, Dessert Person is worth it. Saffitz has a gift for breaking down baking from the overwhelming into the manageable. She moves you through recipes as fundamental as pastry cream and pie crust to bakes as complex as kouign-amann without losing the detail and assurance that makes her a great teacher as well as a great baker. And, once you feel comfortable with baking and understand what you’re doing, you’ll find that her recipes are highly adaptable. If you’re interested in some recipes that are a little bit more specialized and complex than Dessert Person, give Saffitz’s second book, What’s For Dessert, a look as well.

SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT
by Samin Nosrat

Nosrat demystifies cooking and baking. It’s all reactions and balance. Once you get it, the world is your oyster. Go forth and salt your proteins before searing and cream your butter before adding the mixed dry ingredients.

THE FOOD LAB
by J. Kenji López-Alt

Much like Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, López-Alt works to demystify cooking and baking on a granular level. If you’ve ever wondered why some potatoes are better for mashing and some are better for stewing or when you should use salted butter or unsalted butter or what happens when you brown butter, this is the book for you.

NEW COMPLETE BOOKS OF BREADS
by Bernard Clayton

The longer of the bread books on this list. Clayton doesn’t go into as much detail regarding the Why behind bread as Forkish, but his mastery of bread is undeniable. It irks me that he uses imperial measurements rather than weighing his ingredients but that’s pretty minor considering the breadth of breads in this book. My favorite is his Twisted Cheese Loaf, which I make for Thanksgiving every year.

THE LOST KITCHEN
by Erin French

A smaller book than most of the ones on this list but I enjoy it because there are so many Project Meals in it that are perfect for when I need to unplug and do something longterm with my hands over a weekend. It’s also rather seafood-heavy in a way no other book on this list is, which is fun. French’s recipe for duck breast is sublime.

MUMBAI MODERN
by Amisha Dodhia Gurbani

If you’re looking to expand your palate and pantry beyond the French/Italian canon and more into Indian and South Asian cuisine, this is a good place to start. Mumbai Modern fuses Indian roots with modern American cooking, encouraging cooks to incorporate more traditional South Asian spices and techniques into their cooking. It’s also one of the few cookbooks I own that is exclusively vegetarian which provides a nice challenge in preparing proteins that aren’t meats.

DINNER
by Melissa Clark

Big fan of Ms Clark. Her chorizo burgers in this book are well-loved in my house. I put Dinner here but I also recommend Dinner in One and Dinner in French for easy and project meals as well as Comfort in an Instant for anyone who has an instant pot but has never really known what to do with it outside of rice. You really can’t go wrong with a Melissa Clark cookbook.

THE RISE
by Marcus Samuelsson with contributions by Osayi Endolyn, Yewande Komolafe, and Tamie Cook

My mom got me this cookbook for Christmas a few years ago and I’ve been using it more and more lately. It is deceptively dense and covers a lot of ground. Like Mumbai Modern, it’s been helpful in expanding my palate and pantry outside of the French/Italian canon while doing a great job of explaining the Why you should be expanding your pantry. It’s not quite as seafood-focused as Lost Kitchen, but it’s close. If you’re interested in upping your sauce game this is for you. Try the saffron tapioca pudding or the pork griot with roasted pineapple.

THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR BAKER’S COMPANION

More than The Joy of Cooking or Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion is my favorite basic everything cookbook. Sometimes you just need everything in one place and to know that it’s pretty impossible to mess up because it’s so tried and true. Try the cinnamon chip bread. We bake a bunch as gifts every holiday season.

Like most of God’s creatures, I am a fan of dough-based foods. And, like most, I often find comfort in a well-made dough-based food. This is a terrible mindset for my fitness goals but who cares. We only get one try at this life. Have the fucking pizza.

Here’s how I make pizza:

Makes 4, roughly 12in (30cm) Pizzas

For the dough:

• 200g high protein bread flour or ‘00’ flour

• 500g unbleached all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting)

• 2 tsp dry yeast (active or instant) or 50g fed sourdough starter

• 475g warm (not hot) water

• 1 Tbsp wildflower honey

• 13g fine salt (kosher or sea salt both work well)

• semolina flour (for dusting)

• olive oil (for proving)

• large non-reactive bowl or large lid-ed container

• 9 x 13 baking dish with tall sides or a similarly sized plastic container

• plastic wrap

• parchment paper

• pizza stone (optional)

• rolling pin (optional)

For the toppings:

• 1 can of crushed tomatoes (you may substitute with pureed tomatoes or pizza sauce if that is your preference)

• fresh mozzarella (log, pre-sliced, or little balls)

• fresh ricotta

• firm brie

• thick-cut pepperoni

• prosciutto

• sliced mushrooms

• pitted olives

• basil

• honey

• dark balsamic vinegar

This recipe will walk you through how to make the first pizza pictured above. I will include the toppings combinations for the other 3 at the bottom.

NOTE: The dry yeast version of this recipe is meant to be made in one day. If you wish to use sourdough starter then it will take an extra day as it will need to prove overnight. The final dough can last in the refrigerator while covered for up to three days.

1. In a small, non-reactive bowl, combine 150g of the warm water with the 2 tsps of yeast. Set aside to bloom for at least 5 minutes until mixture is frothy.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, measure out your flours and salt and mix well to evenly distribute the salt.

3. Once yeast mixture has frothed, pour it into the flour and salt mixture. Add the remaining 325g of water and honey to the mixture (I like to first pour the remaining water into the yeast bowl to pick up any yeast left behind). Mix well until a shaggy mass is formed. If still dry, add another 25g of water. If too wet, add another tablespoon of flour.

4. Dump your roughly formed dough onto a lightly floured section of clean countertop. Kneed dough until a smooth ball is formed — about 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Place dough ball in a lightly oiled, lidded container. Let sit at room temperature — or in an oven with just the light on — until at least doubled in size — about an hour and a half.

6. Lightly oil your tall-sided baking dish or similarly shaped plastic container. Set aside.

7. Turn out your dough onto a lightly floured counter.

8. Punch the air out of your dough before dividing evenly into fourths.

9. Roll each of the four dough sections into tight balls.

10. Place the balls in your lightly-oiled baking dish. Space them so they will have enough room to rise evenly (they will be touching by the end of the second rise).

11. Rub a light layer of oil on top of the dough balls and cover with plastic wrap.

12. Place covered dish in the fridge for at least two hours. You can also leave to rise overnight if you want a more flavorful dough. It will last in the fridge up to 3 days.

13. By the end of your second rise, your dough should fill the 9 x 13 dish.

14. Place the pizza stone on the middle rack in the oven and pre-heat to 500F. If your oven does not reach 500F, just set it at the highest possible temperature. If you don’t have a pizza stone then place a baking sheet in the oven.

15. Take one sheet of parchment paper and lightly dust it with semolina flour.

16. Place one of your dough’s on the semolina parchment paper and, either with your hands or with the rolling pin, stretch out the dough until it reaches your desired size.

17. Once the dough is the size you want, take three tablespoons of tomato sauce and spread them evenly around your dough, leaving some room around the edges for crust. Be sure to coat the sauce as evenly as possible, but don’t use too much or else it will be too wet and the dough won’t cook properly.

18. Sprinkle mozzarella chunks over the sauce and place as many pepperonis as desired in between the chunks. You may also add ricotta dollops if you wish.

19. Add any other desired toppings. No one can stop you.

20. If you used a rolling pin on the dough — be sure to pinch the sauceless edges of the crust before placing in the oven.

21. Carefully place the pizza-on-parchment-paper in the oven on the baking stone/sheet. Cook for 8 minutes or until the crust shows signs of light charring. You may spin the parchment paper at 6 minutes to ensure even cooking of the crust.

22. Once your crust is cooked as you like it, very carefully—so as not to tear it—lift the parchment paper off of the stone/sheet and top with a few fresh basil leaves. Let cool on the stove for a couple minutes.

23. Slice and enjoy!

You’ll want to repeat steps 15 - 23 for the other 3 dough balls. Their toppings are as follows:

• Pizza #2: Same as the first but spread mushrooms and olives over the sauce and between the mozzarella chunks instead of pepperoni and ricotta

• Pizza #3: After the sauce and mozzarella chunks, tear pieces of prosciutto and toss haphazardly around with ricotta dollops in between

• Pizza #4: Spread a very thin layer of ricotta across your dough. Slice some firm brie cheese and stretch it out a bit, placing the stretched out slices intermittently around the ricotta’ed dough. Tear some prosciutto and place between the brie slices. Drizzle in honey or dark balsamic if you wish.

Or, just dress and top your pizzas as you wish. The toppings suggestions are just that: suggestions. Do what you want. I cannot stop you. Just be sure to pick toppings you enjoy. It’s a sin to let pizza go to waste.

Cocktail is, to me, the Rosetta Stone of Tom Cruise’s career. It’s the Roman Empire. All roads lead back to Cocktail.

Brian Flanagan (Cruise’s character) barely has an arc. He’s literally just. Gorgeous. And stupid. And an asshole. And yet, you’re still compelled by him because Cruise is so undeniably magnetic. The movie should not work—it doesn’t, really—but, it was a huge hit anyway. Because of Cruise.

There’s evidence out there that, beyond the Academy’s former rules regarding screen time, MGM did not put Cruise up for Best Actor in Rain Man—highest grossing movie of 1988; winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor; a movie its producer recently said only got made and through developmental hell and was a success because it starred Tom Cruise and he believed in it—even though Cruise carries that movie on his back, was because they knew the industry was holding Cocktail's success against him. Because, while I know some people shit on the 80s as a movie decade, they were making Real Movies, that made Real Money, and were reviewed by Real Critics in the 80s. By the rules of the game, Cocktail should have BOMBED. It was torn to shreds by the critics, like many other cinematic attempts put forth by Brat Packers after they achieved their stardom, and therefore dismissed by audiences, which in turn brought them back down, closer to earth. Cocktail should have bombed.

In fact—since it’s 11pm on a Wednesday and I should be sleeping instead of writing this—I would go so far as to say that critics and Hollywood needed it to bomb. The powers that be had given a kid the ol’ movie star push and now had an untamable rise on their hands.

In 1988, the newest superstar was from a broken home and grew up a poor nobody. He didn’t even begin acting until he tried out for the school musical his senior year of high school after a knee injury saw him out of the wresting and track seasons. He never set foot on a set until he was 18 when he booked a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love followed by a supporting role in Harold Becker’s Taps. Within six years of the first time he stepped onto a movie set, Tom Cruise had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. To quote a 2015 Taffy Brodesser-Akner GQ article: “Cruise in the 1980s wasn’t just a star; he was a supernova.”

It’s almost impossible to comprehend in our post-monoculture world how famous and powerful he became and how quickly. Especially when, for so many of us, we have only ever lived in a world where we are born with the innate knowledge that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father, the Wicked Witch of the West melts in water, and Tom Cruise is the biggest movie star in the world.

But, there was a time when his supremacy was more precarious and less guaranteed, even after the massive hits of Risky Business and Top Gun granted him the title. The movies you make after your big, star-making hits are what make or break a movie star. After Risky, Cruise released All The Right Moves which did well and, while creating more than a few high school sports movie tropes we still see today, showed that Risky wasn’t a fluke and Cruise really was a box office draw. After Top Gun, he released The Color of Money which announced to the world that, not only is Tom Cruise the new Biggest Star but, he has the blessing of Paul Newman (and Martin Scorsese) to be it. He not only had Newman’s blessing, Newman seemed to have all but taken in the new star, even going so far as to train him as a fellow race car driver so he could race professionally for Newman’s team for a few seasons. He was a hot commodity. A truly bankable star is much more of a rarity than people like to admit and everyone wanted to work with him. But, how bankable was he, exactly? What could be done about the newest star in his mid-20s who suddenly had the whole world in the palm of his hand?

Which brings me back to how, by the rules of the game, Cocktail should have bombed. Now, I’m not saying it’s Citizen Kane but, Cocktail is not 7%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes bad. If released today, it would probably have a solid 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. But 7%? I know they didn’t have Rotten Tomatoes in 1988 but do you know how many critics have to consciously come together and really tear a movie to shreds for it to have below 10%? Famed-bomb Ishtar has a 40%. So, why the hyper-aggressive behavior from critics? It is because such a vicious panning would have sentenced Cocktail to death and have brought Hollywood’s newest superstar down to earth? Was it supposed to humble Cruise and bring him back into the fold of an industry that was already chafing at the idea of an uneducated outsider being their new Biggest Star? Maybe. But, instead it was a massive hit.

And so, Cruise lost and industry that has always been a little bit weird (read: petty and envious) regarding the success of others and the attractiveness of their male stars (not even Leo won his Oscar until he ugly-fied himself and Newman didn’t win until he aged and was in his 60s). He was officially too successful. Too pretty. Too popular. They didn’t give him the Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July or Jerry Maguire or Magnolia despite him being the popular choice all three years. They didn’t nominate him for Rain Man or A Few Good Men or Interview with the Vampire or Eyes Wide Shut or Vanilla Sky or The Last Samurai or Collateral or Edge of Tomorrow and on and on and on. Why should he win his industry’s highest honor when has the audacity to even turn a stinker like Cocktail into a hit? But, he gained the public. He became the first movie star to have five movies in a row gross $100million+ at the domestic box office. He is the only non-MCU actor in the top ten box office stars of all time. The last time a Tom Cruise Movie (where Cruise was central to the marketing campaign) did not make back its production budget at the box office was Legend in 1985. Win some, lose some.

There have been a few side effects of Cocktail. To start, it’s the last time Cruise made a movie with Disney or any of their subsidiaries. Cocktail was produced and distributed by Disney’s sub-studio Touchstone Pictures, which used to produce Disney’s adult-ier movies. Allegedly, the movie was supposed to be kind of like a spiritual sequel to Risky Business: a dark satire of the dangers and allure of Reaganism as it began to fall out in the late 80s. You can see remnants of this darker movie in the one we have but Disney thought it too dark—especially once they hired Cruise and thought it should be a lighter movie—and demanded reshoots and cut it to shreds in the editing room to make it into the pretty-boy-flipping-bottles fest we got. The lore says that not even Cruise knew exactly how far Disney had gone until he saw the movie at the premiere and was, to put it mildly, shocked at what he saw. Cruise has never commented publicly on his lack of relationship with Disney but it does feel notable that there is only one major Hollywood studio that the biggest star in Hollywood has not worked with in the last 36 years and counting.

In fact, Cruise was offered Iron Man in 2007, and Paramount very much wanted him to take it to at least shore up the risk they were taking by starting the MCU on a lesser character, but he turned it down. And there’s been a lot of speculation as to why he did that—especially when he would have been able to have significantly more control over the MCU if he had than any of the stars that ended up signing on—but it’s very possible that one of those reasons was because everyone knew that Paramount was in the process of selling Marvel Studios to Disney at the time and Cruise didn’t want to get stuck in the Disney machine once the sale went through. I’m sure this does not irk Bob Iger at all.

Cruise also has never really done a Cocktail-type movie or role again. The closest he got to approaching another Brian Flanagan-esque role was, to me, in Vanilla Sky, a movie that, again, critics hated, audiences were lukewarm on, and yet made a ton of money at the box office purely because Cruise was above the title and on the poster. Now that I think about it…no…we’ll have to compare and contrast those two movies another time…

I realize that very little of this has to do with the substance of the actual plot of the movie. But, I’m assuming that, if you’re reading this, you have already seen Cocktail and therefore don’t need me to tell you what happens. Which is just as well. I only have time for one unedited Cocktail rant tonight.

Don’t forget to sing Kokomo in your dreams.

I don’t know whose recipe this is.

Well, that’s not totally true. I know from whose recipes I have taken bits and pieces over the years to create this—recipes I’ve seen online and in books, tips from fellow cooks and chefs, even things I’ve noticed in restaurants—but, since it’s not totally any one of theirs, I guess it becomes mine.

This is my lasagna.

I make it every few months for my family, so it’s tried and tested. I have even managed to scale it up and down, for larger and smaller parties, and freeze it for longer portions of time. Whenever I need to cook a crowd-pleaser, and don’t have time to make either ratatouille or chili, I turn to lasagna.

Let’s begin.

You Will Need:

• a large, heavy-bottom sauce pot or dutch oven, for all sauce ruminating

• a large skillet, for browning the meat

• an oven-safe pan, unlined, at least 9”x13” (I have a Le Crueset casserole dish that I love to use for this which was found at TJMaxx for under $50 a few years ago. I wish you all the same luck.)

• a rimmed baking sheet

• a heat-proof rubber spatula

• a cutting board

• a large knife to cut all of your vegetables

• aluminum foil

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs ground meat (either beef, turkey, or bison)

• 1 lbs uncooked breakfast or sweet Italian sausage, de-cased

• 2 yellow onions, diced

• 2 large carrots, diced

• 2 celery stalks, just the green bits, diced

• 3 large white mushrooms, diced

• 4 garlic cloves, minced

• 1 tsp fresh thyme

• 1 tsp oregano

• 1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped small

• 1 bay leaf

• kosher salt, black pepper, olive oil, used liberally

• 1/2 tube double concentrated tomato paste

• 2 Tbps dark balsamic vinegar

• 1 can (28 oz) of crushed tomatoes (diced is also acceptable)

• 16 oz of mascarpone

• 1 - 2 boxes of oven-ready lasagna noodles, depending on the size of your dish

• 8 oz each of parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, shredded

I recommend keeping everything within their like-categories: meats, vegetables, spices and aromatics, garnishes, assembly items. I have ordered the ingredients to fit into these respective categories. I recommend gathering everything together first and then dicing your onion. And away we go!

1. Heat at least 2 tbsps of olive oil in your sauce pot on low and add onions, salt, and pepper before covering with lid

2. Dice remaining vegetables while the onions begin to sweat and caramelize.

3. Add diced vegetables to softening onions, salt and pepper again as you wish, stir to mix with your rubber spatula, re-cover with lid

4. Peel garlic cloves and microplane them into the softening vegetables — if you do not have a microplane then mince the garlic by hand and add to pot — leave off lid

   1. If the vegetables look dry and are sticking to the bottom of the pot then reduce heat, add 1/4 cup water to the pot (or as needed), stir to deglaze, and re-cover with lid for about 2 minutes before adding the garlic

5. While the garlic cooks for a few minutes, chop the rosemary, strip the thyme, and measure the oregano and bay leaf — add to the pot and stir

   1. If after a few minutes the mixture looks too dry repeat the water addition from step 4

6. Add the tomato paste and stir until well-incorporated with the vegetables and spices — continue to stir until paste darkens slightly

   1. Be sure to scrape the sides of the pot occasionally to re-incorporate all the elements

7. Add balsamic and stir until the smell of vinegar dissipates

8. Add can of crushed tomatoes to pot — fill the can with water to get all of the tomato out and add that water to the pot before stirring well and covering with lid

   1. Be sure to leave lid slightly off-kilter so some liquid can cook off while the sauce simmers

9. Heat the large skillet on a separate burner over medium heat

10. When hot — add the ground meats, salt, and pepper to the skillet and cook until browned

11. Drain fat from the browned meat before adding the meat to the tomato sauce pot

12. Simmer sauce on low with lid on but slightly off-kilter for as long as possible

    1. If you want to leave it to simmer for a really long time — add another cup of water to the sauce

13. While your sauce simmers — grate your cheeses but keep the mozzarella separate from the parmesan

14. When your sauce reaches the desired consistency (most of the water cooked off but not quite ragù consistency—you need enough liquid to cook the lasagna noodles but not so much that it’s goopy when hot, meat tender, aromatic) preheat your oven to 350F

15. While your oven preheats — add your mascarpone to your sauce and stir until completely incorporated

16. In your oven-safe dish — drizzle olive oil along the bottom and add 1/4 cup of water

17. Place a layer of lasagna noodles on the bottom — they will not fit perfectly so either overlap them or break them to fit your pan

18. Ladle in a layer of sauce — just enough to coat the noodles — and sprinkle a little bit of your shredded parmesan over the sauce

19. Add another layer of noodles and repeat Steps 17 & 18 until you reach the top of your dish — your top layer should be sauce, not noodles

    1. If you have any remaining sauce and it really will not fit in the pan then jar it and freeze it

20. Sprinkle any remaining parmesan on top before adding your shredded mozzarella to the top of your dish — be sure to coat evenly

21. Place lasagna dish on a rimmed baking sheet and place sheet with dish in your oven on the middle rack

22. Bake until cheese is melted and then, using a long sheet of foil, add a little tent/hat on top of your dish — this will keep the cheese from burning without the foil sticking to the cheese

23. Bake for at least another 40 minutes but preferably for an hour or more

24. Remove the foil hat and turn on the broiler — bake until the cheese on top is golden and bubbly

25. Remove from oven and let cool before serving

And Voila! Hooray! You’ve made Amanda’s Lasagna! How delicious and beautiful!

Now, as you probably guessed from the size of this dish, I use it to feed at least 6 to 10 people. If you are not feeding that many—or if you don’t have the freezer space for the leftovers—you can absolutely half this recipe, fit it into an 8x8 pan, and still bake as instructed above (but keep an eye on it—you don’t want it burning or getting too dry).

If you love parmesan and love sprinkling a little bit extra on top of your pasta dishes you are allowed to do that. How can I possibly stop you. I can’t. I won’t. Go for it. My own dad does it. Whatever.

Now, go forth and Lasagna. If you don’t like this recipe then make your own. The world is your oyster. Or casserole dish.

Risky Business (1983) is a teen movie. It's a sex movie. It's a comedy. It’s none of those things. It's a biting satirical commentary on the creeping societal rot of Reaganism. Of who gets second, third, fourth chances and who doesn’t even get their first. Of how we’re all stuck in a system we’re beholden to, no matter the opportunities we think we have. It's like if Michael Mann directed Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It’s stylish and sharp, oozing a slick sex appeal that pulses with a score by Tangerine Dream and a soundtrack that features Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen, Police, Prince, and the first use of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” on screen. It was almost never made. It was almost never released. It changed the trajectory of American culture and our soft power in the world. Before John Hughes lit his sixteen candles and assembled the breakfast club, there was Risky Business.

Beyond its status as one of the first great teen movies—it was beloved by critics and audiences alike, going on to make 10x its budget—Risky Business was a cultural juggernaut. Before we had the concept of “memes,” Risky managed to create one. The film contains a scene that has gone on to transcend the film itself, becoming one of the most famous and parodied scenes in the last 40 years of cinema, and maybe of all time. When young Joel Goodson slides into frame—in front of a staircase, wearing nothing but a pink button-up, tube socks, and his underwear, and lip syncs to Bob Seger's “Old Time Rock n Roll” while dancing around his living room—he created a touchstone that remains embedded in pop culture. The scene was a favorite of early MTV, as constant in the rotation of music videos played in living rooms around the U.S. as the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna, parodied endlessly by other films, TV shows, music videos, and advertisements. By Ronald Reagan Jr. on SNL in 1986 and again by Nicole Kidman on the same program in 1992. It’s been used in a slurry of ad campaigns, from Guitar Hero’s big launch push to Domino’s Delivery Business ad campaign in 2020. Even The Simpsons had Homer rocking out in his socks and underwear to Bob Seger. If you’ve ever danced around an empty house in your socks to blasting music, trying to look cool for some imaginary camera, you have Risky Business to thank.

But its most famous scene is, out of context of the progression of the plot, almost tonally dissonant with the rest of the film. Risky Business is technically a teen sex comedy, but it doesn’t feel that way when you watch--it feels like watching something else, something more. Risky Business opens with Joel Goodson, a good-looking if guileless upper middle class high school senior in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago with aspirations of going to Princeton, taking his parents to the airport as they leave him home alone for a week. It ends with Joel having bought back the entire contents of his house from Guido the Killer Pimp using the money Joel made turning his house into a brothel, with the assistance of his maybe-girlfriend and definite-sex-worker Lana (played beautifully by a young Rebecca DeMornay) for the weekend to make enough money to fix his dad’s Porsche (which crashed into Lake Michigan) and a few thousand dollars to spare, just before his parents return.

Risky Business, by all metrics, should have aged terribly. The gender and sexuality politics of the 80s should have rendered the movie completely unwatchable by the standards of 2023—Joel’s friends hire Jackie, a Black trans woman sex worker, for Joel to “let off some steam”, for goodness’ sake—and yet, Jackie is always treated with dignity and respect by both Joel and the movie itself. The joke always remains on Joel for being too much of “a white boy off the lake” to take advantage of Jackie’s services. As a modern audience member, when watching movies that deal in subjects that are still difficult to navigate in media, there’s a constant breath-holding, waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering how much we will have to write off as “a product of its time” but, somehow, Risky manages to keep its plates in the air, with every moment of distaste intentionally included by the filmmakers to emphasize the darkness of the satire they created, rather than an unintentional gaff brought on by the passage of time. 

There’s nuance to every conversation, to every glance between Joel and Lana, as the film both entices with the seductive nature of Reaganism and constantly reminds the audience of the power dynamics at play without being aggressive. In the quiet spaces where the score is allowed to breathe, when Joel furiously bikes to Lana’s apartment or they clear out a late-night L train, Risky reveals itself as something more than its contemporaries. It asks the audience to question who is using whom and if the usage versus the reward are worth the cost of the exchanges at play. It questions the nature of attraction, of love, in the face of profit and greed. Do Joel and Lana actually care for each other, or are they merely using the other as long as it remains mutually convenient and beneficial? Does it matter, or is it enough that they’re together, making love on a real train?

All that isn’t to say Risky is a perfect film or that it hasn’t aged a day, but rather that when talking about the film being a product of its time, you do so with a sense that it was trying to say something real, to push boundaries as much as a studio comedy could, and any missteps along the way weren’t malicious or due to a lack of care, but because what was presented were merely just the way things were in the early 1980s.

While the film has earned its rightful place in pop culture history, the sad truth is that, despite its significantly darker themes and seductive satire, Risky Business is not  remembered as anything more than another 80s teen sex comedy—albeit one that has aged better than most of its contemporaries (the racial and sexual politics present in Sixteen Candles don’t feel like a charming product of their time, but rather an uncomfortable reminder of what the past not only allowed but found funny). The film’s clear influence on the John Hughes movies that would come after it (a Chicagoan North Shore teen, riddled with anxiety over his future and success and pleasing his parents, wrecks a Porsche, anyone?) are noteworthy but the only people who care about that sort of thing already know about it. Most of the cast went on to have good careers (all of them are still working today) but most would never reach the height of Risky again. Writer-director Paul Brickman, a first-time director, let the bitterness over the fights in post-production with producer David Geffen and Warner Bros. sour him on Hollywood. Brickman wanted a different, darker ending for the movie than the one that made it into the final cut and after a long fight with the studio, he relented. His concession turned out to be almost for naught as WB decided that they still didn’t quite understand the movie and therefore wouldn’t be giving Risky Business a proper premiere, a real promotional tour, or open it any wider than a modest 700 screens. Despite the studio’s meddling and underselling, Risky made 10x its budget at the box office, but the brutal studio fights paired with sudden pressures of success affected Brickman, and he didn’t direct anything new for almost a decade after Risky’s release. In the intervening years, he still has only sporadically dabbled in Hollywood. Risky Business should have faded into obscurity when the MTV generation grew up and realized it was more difficult to show their kids an R-rated movie about sex work and the seductive dangers of capitalism than it was to show them one of John Hughes’ movies or Back to the Future.

And it would have. If not for its star.

'“Sometimes you gotta say ‘What the Fuck’, make your move. Joel, every now and then, saying ‘What the Fuck’, brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future.” [Risky Business, 1983]

When asked, Tom Cruise will tell anyone and everyone that he has wanted to make movies since he was four years old.

I believe him. But, despite his early passion for film and cinema and a clear desire to make movies one day, he didn’t become an actor through a carefully thought-out plan that he concocted and set in motion over years. Tom Cruise became an actor almost by chance. After years of dealing with his dad moving him and his three sisters every few months (he attended fourteen schools by the time he was a freshman in high school), his dad’s violent abuse, his parents’ divorce, living in poverty, his mom’s remarriage, and a final move to northern New Jersey, Tom Cruise was good at being the perpetual new kid. He knew he needed to join in extracurriculars to make up for the way his dyslexia made him struggle with school work. After a few misfires, he excelled with the wrestling team, making friends and putting down roots for the first time in his life.

Until he busted his knee his senior year of high school and found himself benched for the wrestling season.

With a suddenly open schedule, Tom was convinced, by friends and with the blessing of his wrestling coach, to audition for the school’s musical, Guys and Dolls. Despite never having acted professionally in his life, he was cast in the role of Nathan Detroit and was hooked. It must have been something to witness, someone so clearly born to do something come into that passion, because when he asked his mom and stepdad if he could skip his graduation and move to New York City to be an actor, they agreed.

In the summer of 1980, just shy of his 18th birthday, Tom Cruise moved to New York to be an actor. By the end of that year he would be cast in two movies, a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love and, after one of the leads didn’t work out, a starring role in Harold Becker’s TAPS. By the end of 1981, he was famous. Less than two years later, he was a household name.

“[Tom] Cruise in the mid-1980s wasn’t just a star; he was a supernova. […] Tom Cruise style was all about the message that you could fill your body with so much energy, charisma, and absolute coolness that your clothing took on those same sensibilities. Even a tank or a simple pocket tee was a fashion statement under this law. That’s how good he was.” [Taffy Brodesser-Akner, GQ.com, 2015]

Risky Business should not have been a hit. In his 2011 memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe mentions that consensus among their friend group was that Cruise was taking a massive leap of faith in tying his name and future success to the picture. Circumstances outside of Cruise’s control—bad blood between the first-time director and the studio meant that it was under-promoted, under-released, and wasn’t even granted the courtesy of a proper premiere—should have spelled the picture’s doom, leaving it to flop and fade into obscurity. But, it had him. On the Ringer podcast The Rewatchables, co-host Sean Fennessey once described Tom Cruise as “a human tractor beam of charisma.” I have yet to find a better description of the power Cruise holds when he’s on camera. He’s simply mesmerizing. And, despite the film predating me by a good twelve years, I like to think the people of 1983 knew exactly what they were watching when they sat down in the theater to watch Risky Business that August. I like to think they knew they were witnessing a once in a lifetime event. A supernova. The Birth of a Movie Star.

Despite Cruise’s constant presence in my life, I managed to avoid watching Risky Business in full until my mid-20s. It was like a switch went off in my brain. I understood and accepted the allure and appeal of Cruise before watching Risky Business, but Cruise’s performance, so young and unpolished, was captivating to witness. He exudes a confidence, a depth, even at 19, that instantly makes it clear why he is who he is. The vulnerability, sexually and emotionally, he brings to Joel and the movie itself fascinated me. It’s so rare, even now, to watch a movie where a male lead allows himself to be clearly insecure about his sexuality and the pressures of success without taking it out negatively on women, always keeping the joke on himself. He expresses anxiety and uncertainty with such earnest depth that, for a moment, you think he might not be in on the joke of the satire. It’s incredible to behold in someone so young and inexperienced. And yet, for all his vulnerability, he exudes a constant, magnetic confidence that allows the audiences to trust him to carry this story.

In the 2022 film The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s stand-in, Sammy, is confronted by Logan, a beautiful, antisemitic bully whom Sammy turned into the main character of their senior class beach day video, for making him look like a god:
“I made you look like you could fly,” Sammy cries.
“But I can’t,” Logan counters, shaken to his core by the otherworldly version of himself that was projected onto a massive screen in their high school’s gym.

As the local Cruiseologist, I’m often asked about star power, the It Factor, what it means and takes for someone to become a movie star beyond social media stans deciding that their new flavor of the month is one. The “Old Time Rock n Roll” sequence has gone on to transcend the movie itself and I have watched every parody and homage to it that I could get my hands on, searching for something but not sure what I was looking for, until I rewatched the original. In every imitation, there’s a split second where the person sliding into frame lets the fear of falling take over, and they shift their weight, breaking the smoothness of the glide. When Tom Cruise slides out into frame, there is no hesitation. He knows he’s going to hit his mark. He knows he won’t fall. He knows that, when he doesn’t fall, he will fly. He wants to fly. He wants to fly for us.

Tom Cruise has been a movie star, a household name, for forty years. He’s been one of the most famous people on the planet for thirty-seven of them. He’s gone through phases and changes and pivots over the decades as he, and Hollywood and the world, have changed. But he’s still there. He’s so omnipresent in culture, so ingrained into our collective psyche, that his existence and star power feels like innate knowledge. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Darth Vader is Luke’s father, and Tom Cruise is a movie star.

And yet, for all his omnipresence, Cruise remains an enigma. The most famous actor alive, possibly the biggest movie star to ever live, is somehow more unknowable now than he was when he slid into our lives in Risky Business. Cruise has so isolated himself from the average person that even now, forty years into being more famous than the human brain can comprehend, he still elicits a sense of awe, a constant wonder at what his deal is, even a wistful melancholy that we only get to experience him for so long. He slides in and out of our lives like a comet, briefly illuminating the world with the awesome power of superstardom, leaving so he may return again and remind us of why we made him who he is, why we crowned him a star.

“Newman, who played Cruise’s mentor in The Color of Money, considers the young actor’s competitors and says, ‘Tom may be the only survivor.’” [Playboy Magazine, 1989]

For all that Hollywood is a cutthroat industry, the movie star system is surprisingly democratic, if you think about it. Sure, to get the initial chance at success means wading through constant obstacles and gatekeepers, systemic discrimination and bigotry, but if you get that shot, if you can finally get the chance to show what you’re made of, all that matters is the audience. We decide who will get us to leave our houses and pay to sit in a theater just for the privilege of seeing them on a 30ft screen. We decide whose movies we want to own in our homes to watch over and over again. We either will pay to see you—not your director or your co-stars or the IP, You—or we won’t. In the end, the people choose their gods.

Stars come and go: some will always be stars but never shine as brightly as they once did, some reach for that peak of stardom but find themselves happier on another tier or as character actors, some never take off at all, and some are given chance after chance only for people to realize it’s been a decade of being told this person is “The Next Big Thing” and we’re still not totally sold on them outside of super recognizable IP that doesn’t need them to succeed. Stars come and go. Tom Cruise remains. 

“Ask Cruise whether audiences see him as an actor or a movie star, and he says, after a long pause, in an almost inaudible whisper:
‘It doesn’t really matter to me.’
Talking to Cruise about what a big movie star he is is a little unseemly. It’s stating the obvious. Tell him that audiences go to his movies not so much to see his characters, but to see him, and his eyes narrow.
‘That’s a real honor,’ he says. ‘Some people will hook into a character or a story more, I don’t know … But actor-movie star … I just do it.’” [Premiere Magazine, 2005]

Tom Cruise was elected President of Movies. Paul Thomas Anderson said as much while promoting Magnolia in 1999. We can all debate on when those first election results came in: was it after Risky Business? Did we wait until Top Gun was a hit? Maybe when Rain Man became the highest grossing movie of 1988 and won Best Picture? Perhaps it was as late as the one-two punch of Mission: Impossible and Jerry Maguire? Whenever it was, it doesn’t change the position he holds and that he’s been in it for decades. Tom Cruise is President of Movies for exactly the reason why he doesn’t see it as an issue that people view him as a movie star first, actor second, person third (if at all): he’s here to entertain us. He doesn’t care about pleasing a specific audience; he just wants to entertain the audience, everyone and anyone who might decide to watch one of his movies, through any means possible (but, preferably in a theater). Back in the 1980s and 1990s, that meant interpersonal dramas and comedies. In the 2000s and 2010s, that meant blockbusters that increased in size and scope with each iteration. And now, as he enters his fifth decade of movie stardom, he’s still reaching for the best way to entertain us. In an interview on TikTok for the Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One press tour, Tom Cruise jokingly quoted his friends Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott (whom he worked with on The Mummy and Legend, respectively) and asked, arms outstretched, “Are you not entertained?” We are, Tom.  

Tom Cruise deals in human fulfillment. He has spent the last forty years as a cultural icon. His movies have grossed roughly $12 billion at the global box office. He was the first movie star to have five films in a row gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office. There is a Tom Cruise Day every October 10th in Japan. Two of his films have won the Golden Bear. He has four Academy Award nominations, an Honorary Palme d’Or, and three (returned) Golden Globe Awards from eight nominations. That first Golden Globe nomination was for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical for Risky Business.

Time of your life, huh kid?

I don’t want to break my arm patting myself on the back here but, I have been told I am an excellent baker and cook. I like how it feels to create something with my hands that can be enjoyed by people I love. I love the joy of developing a new recipe. Cooking is both a grounding activity and good for my self confidence which, despite all of my bombast, does need boosting. Will I finally commit and send in that application to culinary school? Only time will tell. But, in the mean time, I will continue to bake and cook my silly little heart out.

Next week we return to Tom Cruise, international man of mystery, whom I’m watching give the movie star performance of a lifetime in Jerry Maguire as I write this. Man. This movie should not work if not for the full commitment of Cruise to the bit. What is cinema if not Tom Cruise having a manic episode and doing handstands in a hotel room at 2am while tanking his own career? And the rest of the cast! And Bruce Springsteen re-recorded and released Secret Garden just for this movie. And the script and the camera work! Just magnificent all around. But I digress. This week we take an interlude into baking. Bread baking, to be specific.

For all my baking success, sourdough bread was always my white whale. It eluded me in a way I found embarrassing, especially since everyone and their mother tried their hand at sourdough at the beginning of covid (mostly to middling success). Everyone but me. I, who have conquered recipes and techniques far more advanced than sourdough, just could not get it right. And so, a year ago I decided to make it my mission to master sourdough bread in all its forms.

Naturally, it turns out that when I finally set my mind to something I can usually master it fairly quickly and with usually positive outcomes. Tom Cruise, I’m coming for your manic pixie dream girl crown.

I now bake sourdough with the whimsy of Barbie as Odette in Barbie: Swan Lake in her father’s bakery and the single-minded focus of Tom Cruise as Vincent Collateral in COLLATERAL. The prettiest, most alluring master of my craft.

We start in the most obvious of places: the starter.

Sourdough starter is generally equal parts flour and water, left to ferment until natural yeast is formed. It is fed regularly by dumping out almost all of the starter and then mixing at least five times the remaining starter weight in both water and flour back into the starter. This encourages growth and yeast production. Because no one has the same water, air, and flour combinations, no two sourdough starters are the same. Each adds their own different flavor profile to bread. Snowflake shit, you know? The more active your starter, the better your rise and flavor profile will be.

Sourdough breads, like the artisan ones you see in bakeries, are typically made up of four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast (either conventional yeast or a starter). You can add more spices and other ingredients as your heart desires but I recommend mastering the basics first. Learning the rules to break them and all that.

The most important commodity in baking is Time. Much like onions, when you are baking bread you are on the bread’s time. It will not rise faster than it wants to and any attempts to do so will only end in tears. Once you mix the ingredients together, you are on bread time.

After replicating its success twice more, I feel comfortable sharing this moment of bread time. May you find it to be as rewarding and delicious as I do.

This recipe involves mixing by hand. Others often use bread machines or stand mixers to mix their dough and while I understand doing that I still refuse to accept it spiritually. So much of bread baking is about the physicality. Don’t be a wuss. Get in there and mix your own dough.

I weigh out the lukewarm water first before adding other ingredients. Some people add water last. That’s fine, but they’re wrong because I think the starter is more equally distributed this way. I will not hear otherwise argue with a wall.

[starter on left, lukewarm water on right]

Once the starter has been weighed into the lukewarm water, I mix it around until fully dispersed. If it looks gross and feels gross you’re doing it right.

Next I add the whole wheat flour because I once read that it requires more hydration than all purpose flour and my brain took that to mean it should hit the water first. It probably isn’t necessary, but it makes me feel better and that’s all that matters.

After the whole wheat flour has been thoroughly mixed (no lumps! can you imagine…), you may add your white flour. I prefer bread flour because of the increased gluten structure but all purpose flour will serve you just as well here. It’s about the ratios. Math. Baking is so much math. Who knew? Everyone but me.

Mix. Thoroughly. When your flour is almost completely hydrated, pause and add your salt of choice. I like a nice sea salt but I have been known to dabble in pink Himalayan. More foods should be pink, I think. Obviously. If you are also supplementing your starter with conventional yeast, now is the time to add that. Mix and knead everything together in the bowl until a cohesive, if slack and sticky, dough has formed.

Cover and let sit at room temperature until puffy. It should take about 20 minutes but that will depend on your definition of “room temperature”.

When your dough is puffy it’s time to make like my dog and Big Stretch.

You need to wet your hands, reach into the bowl, grab one side of the dough, pull it up towards the ceiling as far as you can without it tearing, and then fold it over the rest of the dough. turn the bowl 45 degrees and repeat until you’ve stretched and folded the dough four times.

Pick the dough up and flip it over so the smooth, non-folded side is facing you and the folds are at the bottom of the bowl. Cover the bowl again and let rest for another 20 minutes.

You’ll want to repeat that stretch x4 and flip at least twice more. I like to do it up to five times to really build the gluten structure. Makes me feel like I’m getting extra credit in Baking.

After you have sufficiently built up the gluten, you can either put your dough in the fridge to slowly rise overnight, or you can continue to the cut and form portion. The only difference overnight proving makes is a more developed flavor. If you don’t care about the flavor of your newly beloved bread friend, or you just don’t have time, you can start cutting and forming.

Now, I meant to take pictures of these steps but I forgot as I was also making moussaka at the time (it was delicious and perfect thanks for asking). So, just pretend that there are pictures to go along with my descriptions. In the immortal words of the Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2: use your imagination.

Pre-heat oven to 475F or as high as it will go if it doesn’t reach that temperature. Place your baking apparatus in the oven to heat with the oven. If you have a bread cloche, great. If you have a dutch oven, excellent. If you have neither, get a baking sheet and a heat-proof metal bowl and place them in the oven with the bowl facing down onto the baking sheet.

Ease the dough out of its container and onto a heavily floured surface. Cut the dough into two somewhat even halves and fold the ends in on themselves. Let the dough rest, fold side up, for at least 5 minutes. Take the edges of the rested dough and bring them to the middle to form a ball of sorts. Flip the ball over and with your hands along the sides, rotate the ball in a circle while sliding it slightly towards you with every spin. This will help create a more ball-like shape and create a better seam underneath. Do this with both of the rested dough halves.

If you have proving baskets, now is the time to transfer your dough to them. If you don’t you can always just leave your dough to prove, seam side down, on a floured dish towel. Leave to prove until oven is fully pre-heated or as long as you want. It’s up to you. You don’t have to do any of this. Fuck it up for all I care. It’s not my bread. Well, it is my recipe isn’t it? So I suppose, in a way, this is my bread.

Changed my mind. Don’t fuck this up for us.

When the oven has pre-heated, take your baking apparatus out of the oven and remove the lid. Carefully, transfer one of the dough balls to the base of the apparatus, shaggy seam side up. I know it looks weird. Don’t be mean to him. He’s doing his best.

Cover with the lid and place back in the oven. Set a timer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid on the bread and let the bread continue to brown for at least another 15 minutes. It should have a nice dark, golden color.

Remove loaf from the baking apparatus to cool on a wire rack and repeat with the other dough ball.

Ooooooo! Ahhhhhhh!

Look at him! He’s a star!

Specialest Boy in the Whole World!

I can’t tell you how to live your life but, you should let the loaves cool completely before slicing. When bread cools, the gluten solidifies its structure which is good because otherwise it collapses.

Once you have thoroughly photographed your masterpiece and bragged to your group chats (various) about how cool and talented you are, eat your bread.

So many of you need to eat good, fresh bread. Trust me.

RECIPE

• 750 grams bread flour

• 300 grams whole wheat flour

• 100 grams sourdough starter

• 25 grams fine salt

• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (optional depending on starter activity)

• 800 grams lukewarm water

I want to talk about Tom Cruise. 

No, not like that. Or that.

I want to talk about his filmography. His body of work, if you will. His oeuvre, as it were. I want to talk about his impact on culture. Maybe I'll sometimes bring up his personal life but, frankly, that's unavoidable. Tom Cruise has been in the public eye for over forty years and part of being a star is, for better or worse, the public having an emotional investment in your work and in you as a person. He is, after all, our last great movie star (sorry, Leo and Brad, but Tom won the "asked my 80-something year old Catholic grandma about him" test).

Okay, I'm going to talk about more than just his movies. But, I can't help it! I'm obsessed with him. I am absolutely and unapologetically fascinated with this very rich and famous man who is old enough to be my father. And can anyone blame me? Not Rosie O’Donnell that’s for sure. He's been at the absolute top of Hollywood for going on forty years. He has only ever acted in theatrical movies. His filmography is banger after banger and even his rare shit movies still have redeeming qualities. He has never been turned down for a role he's wanted. The list of directors he has worked with would make even the least film-oriented person seethe with jealousy. He's a massive film geek who just happens to be one of the hottest actors to ever be hot. His good looks are a reminder in the age of instagram that someone can be ridiculously attractive even when their teeth aren't perfect veneers and their nose isn't surgically straight. He has refused to age at normal human speeds (which is standard for someone of his wealth and profession but, he turns 60 years old in July of this year and, even his once-attractive peers are starting to look old-leather-y). He's had more hair style changes than even I have and all of them are saved in a little folder on my phone titled 'GENDER'. He had adult braces in his 40s and managed to pull them off. He's a fashion icon associated with at least two styles of sunglasses. He is intrinsically linked to Americana as we know it. His face and mannerisms were the inspiration behind the animation of the titular character in the 1992 animated film Aladdin. He is a race car driver, stunt driver, motorcyclist, airplane pilot, helicopter pilot, diver, mountaineer, skydiver, and is so proficient at sleight-of-hand that it was used as a plot point in the first Mission: Impossible movie. Just his running style is so iconic that it’s called The Tom Cruise Movie Star Run whenever other actors are taught how to do it. He's had some incredibly high profile marriages (as would I if I attracted beautiful, statuesque women the way he does) and some more covert relationships (he dated Cher in 1985? She essentially was living with him at the time? They only broke up because he went off to shoot Top Gun and their schedules were too complicated to coordinate and it was harder to be long distance in those days? She has publicly said that of all her lovers, he is firmly in the top five? Help!). 

Despite his shroud of mystery and rampant, un-confirmable tabloid speculation that surrounds him, everyone who has ever worked with him has only the best things to say about him, even extras and non-actor staff on sets who are so often treated neutrally or like shit by stars. Even decades later, long after his coworkers are no longer being paid to like him for the sake of a press tour, his former coworkers only have the kindest words to say about him. And if you don't believe me, just see how many times Renée Zellweger has brought her love for him or Kirsten Dunst and Dakota and Elle Fanning doing the same. Maybe even listen to what Paul Thomas Anderson said in 2017, Adam Sandler's experience with him, what Lea Thompson said he did for her back in 1983, Kevin Pollack's experience on A Few Good Men, or just check out this whole podcast. Trust me.

Really, I had no choice in the matter. I was always going to end up like this. My mom loves Tom Cruise. He is her blorbo from movies. Her little meow meow. Her babygirl adult man. The Original. And knowing that she graduated high school as The Outsiders and Risky Business were released, well, she never stood a chance. As they say, he had her — and so many others — at, "Hello."

Love him or hate him, you cannot deny the power of Tom Cruise. He has that ineffable star quality. He is proof that charisma is the most powerful force on the planet. He was the chosen protégée of Paul Newman himself. He looks you in the eye and the whole world falls away (just ask Matt Damon). He remembers your name after meeting you once and you know he means it when he says how nice it was to meet you. He’s so magnetic that you could put Jesus Christ on a stage with Tom Cruise and the spotlight would somehow still be on Tom. If Tom Cruise is the Unstoppable Force I would bet real money that he would win against the proverbial Immovable Object. He is undeniable. No one has, is, or ever will, do it like him.

He is ubiquitous. Just for fun, I searched "tom cruise songs" on Spotify and there were so many songs titled or about Tom Cruise that I scrolled for a full (and timed) thirty seconds before reaching the end of the list. I would not be surprised if the only two people alive more famous than him are Oprah and Beyoncé. He is what I call Mask Famous — recognizable even while wearing a covid mask and sunglasses. Everyone has an opinion on Tom Cruise. Everyone is a little fascinated by Tom Cruise. 

Tom Cruise ran so all these modern short kings could crawl in his shadow. 

And yet, for all that he is our last great movie star, he's almost underrated as an actor. We, as a society, have had him to bring us quality entertainment on the big screen for so long that we have almost taken him for granted. It feels silly to say, especially about someone who is so wealthy and famous, but Tom Cruise doesn't get the respect and admiration he deserves as an actor, as a producer, as an entertainer.

You see, Tom Cruise loves movies. Of all the conjectures about his life, no one will ever be able to accuse him of not loving movies. And motorcycles. But mostly movies. The guy has such a passion and admiration for the craft that is evident in everything he does. It makes you want to care even a fraction as much about movies as he does. He makes you want to care about the process, the product, and the experience of movies, as an art form and a way to tell stories. He doesn't need to attach himself to auteur directors anymore because he is the auteur. He's The Acteur. So, for all his quirks (a word which is doing a lot of work), I can't help but love and respect Tom Cruise. I would be his wingman anytime [insert crowd booing while throwing tomatoes here].

So, here I am. After putting off idea after idea for a newsletter for years, I have finally committed to the most shallow of topics: talking about Tom Cruise and his impressive body of work as Top Gun: Maverick and the final Mission: Impossible movies roll out and Tom enters the next phase of his career (and, inshAllah, finally receives the recognition from The Academy et al. that his work so deserves).

If you haven't hit the subscribe button already, just do it. The only person you'll find more committed to a bit is, after all, Tom Cruise.