I already live in Lisbon, with little to no significant south left to escape to. Lisbon is where I remain, stumbling over tourists every time I leave my flat, and watching the price of a glass of wine increase by three euros. Five, if you are particularly blond and have a rich-country accent and are over forty-five.

It’s fine. I’ve always enjoyed the heat, the suspension of obligatory interactions, and the emptier beaches. What I don’t do well with, though, is idle hands.

If I’m not doing something at least remotely productive, there is a very real chance I will instead do something stupid. And we all know how that tends to end: I have, after all, dedicated an entire blog to what I eat in the aftermath.

So, if you are anything like me, and need constant stimulation or a thing to do, here is something that will occupy you for a good hour or so. A properly caramelised onion is incredibly needy, but this is exactly what we are looking for. Remember: for as long as your hands are holding a wooden spoon, they cannot send a ”u up!?” message.

And at the end of that hour, you will have dinner instead of consequences to deal with.

Ingredients (serves 1, generously)

Puy lentils 100g / 3½ oz
Chicken stock 300ml / 10 oz
Yellow onion 1
Olive oil 1 tbsp
Salted (or compound, I loved using roasted garlic one here) butter 20g / ¾ oz
Manchego 20g / ¾ oz
Curly parsley a small handful
Fine salt maybe, to taste
Black pepper a lot

Equipment

• Mandoline, if available

• Medium frying pan

• Small saucepan

• Fine-mesh sieve

• Wooden spoon

• Cheese grater

Method

1. Peel the onion, halve it from root to tip and slice it thinly (this is where mandoline comes in helping ensure everything is even).

2. Heat the olive oil in a medium frying pan over medium-low heat. Add the onion with a small pinch of salt and stir to coat it in the oil.

3. Once light-golden, lower the heat, and cook for about 1 hour, stirring every few minutes. Whenever the onion begins sticking or colouring too quickly, add a small splash of water and scrape up anything catching on the bottom of the pan. Keep the heat low and continue until the onion is deeply golden, completely soft and entirely free of crunch.

4. During the final 10 minutes, add half of the butter to the onion. Continue cooking until it is glossy, sweet and almost jammy.

5. Once the onion has been cooking for around 30 minutes, rinse the lentils thoroughly under cold water.

6. Put the lentils and chicken stock into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, and let simmer gently, uncovered, for 25–30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

7. The lentils are ready when they are tender but still hold their shape, and almost all the stock has been absorbed. If they begin drying out before they are cooked, add a little water and continue simmering. If they are tender while there is still too much liquid in the pan, raise the heat slightly and let it reduce.

8. Stir the remaining butter into the lentils. Taste before adding salt — the stock and Manchego may already provide enough — then add a stupid amount of freshly ground black pepper.

9. Stir through the caramelised onion.

10. Transfer to a bowl. Finely grate the Manchego over everything, and finish with chopped curly parsley and more black pepper. The parsley can also be stirred through if decorative scattering feels beyond your present capabilities.

Chef’s Notes

• The onion is not ready while it still has any crunch. Add water whenever necessary and give it the full hour; time is the main ingredient here, unfortunately.

• Puy lentils should remain intact rather than collapsing into a purée. Start checking them after 20 minutes, as cooking time varies with age.

• The precise amount of liquid may vary. Begin with 300ml of stock and add water only if the lentils need longer.

• My chicken stock is unsalted, which makes it ideal here. If yours contains salt, wait until the very end before seasoning.

• Parmesan or Pecorino will work if you do not have Manchego, although the latter’s sweet, nutty flavour is particularly good with the onions.

• Flat-leaf parsley has not been invited.

Stock, essentially, is the cooking practice of refusing to accept that something has reached the end of its usability. The bones from last night’s rotisserie chicken, an onion still wearing its clothes, the Parmesan rind you have been throwing around the fridge for six months: all objectively bin-adjacent, and yet still capable of greatness.

This is not an argument for becoming emotionally attached to your trash. Keep the bones, delete his number. One becomes a savoury, gelatinous foundation for soups, sauces and risottos, while the other has already demonstrated his uninspiring limits.

Ingredients

Chicken bones 1–1.3 kg / 2.2–2.9 lb
Onion 1 large
Garlic 1 head
Olive oil 2 tsp
Rosemary 1 sprig
Thyme 2 sprigs
Bay leaves 2
Black peppercorns 1½ tsp
Lemon ½
Parmesan rind however much you like
Cold water 2 L / 8½ cups

Equipment

• Large roasting tray

• Large stockpot with a lid

• Fine-mesh sieve

• Large bowl or container

• Ladle

• Storage containers / jars / ice cube trays

Method

1. Heat the oven to 220°C / 425°F.

2. Arrange the chicken bones in a single layer in a large roasting tray. Cut the onion in half and cut the head of garlic horizontally across its middle, leaving the skins on both. Add them to the tray, drizzle everything lightly with the olive oil and toss to coat.

3. Roast for 45–60 minutes, turning the bones once, until deeply browned. Do not stop when they are merely beige and technically cooked. The colour developed here becomes the flavour of the stock, and we want that.

4. Transfer the bones, onion and garlic to a large stockpot. Pour a little of the cold water into the hot roasting tray and scrape up every browned piece stuck to its surface. Add this to the pot.

5. Remove several wide strips of peel from the lemon, avoiding as much of the bitter white pith as possible. Add them to the pot with the rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns and Parmesan rind.

6. Pour in the remaining cold water. The bones should be just covered; if necessary, add a little more water, but resist the urge to turn this into a swimming pool.

7. Place the pot over medium heat and bring it very gradually to the edge of a simmer. Skim off any foam or grey impurities that collect on the surface.

8. Lower the heat and cook, partially covered, at the gentlest possible simmer for at least 6 hours. The surface should tremble occasionally rather than boil violently. Check it periodically and add a little hot water if the bones become exposed.

9. Strain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean bowl, pressing lightly on the solids before discarding them. Do not mash them through the sieve unless cloudy stock is your particular aesthetic.

10. For a more concentrated stock, return the strained liquid to a clean pot and simmer uncovered until reduced to your preferred intensity.

11. Cool the stock promptly, dividing it between smaller containers if necessary, then refrigerate. Once completely cold, lift off as much or as little of the solidified fat as you like. If the stock sets into a soft jelly, congratulations: the bones did their job.

12. Keep refrigerated for up to 4 days, or freeze in useful portions for up to 3 months.

Chef’s Notes

• I make mine with whatever chicken bones have accumulated in the freezer: thighs, drumsticks, whole legs, wings, backs, necks, carcasses, anything will do. Wings, backs and necks are particularly good because they contain plenty of connective tissue, which gives the finished stock body rather than merely producing chicken-flavoured water, but this is absolutely not a reason to buy specific bones. Use whatever you have.

• Freeze bones and carcasses as you accumulate them. There is no need to defrost them before roasting, although they may require slightly longer in the oven.

• The Parmesan rind adds savoury depth without making the stock taste explicitly cheesy.

• Keep the lemon peel down to half a lemon’s worth. Its purpose is to brighten the stock, not turn it into chicken limoncello.

• Skimming during the first part of cooking removes the foam and impurities that rise to the surface. You do not need to stand over it obsessively, but a few attentive passes will produce a cleaner stock.

• A hard boil agitates the fat and impurities, producing a cloudier, greasier stock. This does not make it unusable, but a gentle simmer gives a cleaner result.

• For useful freezer portions, freeze some stock in 250–500 ml containers for soups and risottos, and some in ice-cube trays for sauces, grains and emergency interventions.

• Do not salt the stock. Season the final dish in which it is used, particularly if the stock will be reduced.

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Take one step at a time. Make each day count. Carpe fucking diem.

All of which makes me want to crawl inside a wall, because yes, thank you, Marcus Aurelius in a graphic T-shirt, I have not previously considered the possibility of experiencing time sequentially. What a breakthrough. Someone should embroider it on a tote bag and charge €42.

And yet. Annoyingly. Disgustingly. Sometimes the day is so stupid and shapeless that you do, in fact, need one step. Just because the alternative is sitting there idly, refreshing a page you should not be refreshing, waiting for something to happen that clearly isn’t going to. And you need a win.

It is one of the reasons I love cooking: everything is a task with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It gives you plenty of tiny little wins. And also because food is generally more reliable than people in your Slack chat (or Hinge — pick your torture device). Cabbage, for all its many aesthetic challenges, will not tell you it loves the direction and then disappear for three weeks.

This recipe is one of those, I think. You take something cheap, sturdy and so unglamorous, expose it to heat, brush it with honey, plop it on cold yoghurt, and cover it with crunch — and then boom, it looks like a proper side dish of a person who has it together.

And for one brief, golden, salty, charred moment, you get to be that person.

This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside, a collection built through pop-ups and private dinners. You can get the full set here, or just catch them as they appear on Substack for paid subscribers.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the cabbage

Green cabbage 250–300g / 9–10 oz
Olive oil 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Fine salt ¼ tsp
Honey 1 tbsp

For the tahini yoghurt

Greek yoghurt 80g / ⅓ cup
Tahini 1 tbsp
Garlic ½ small clove
Lemon juice 2 tsp
Fine salt a pinch
Cold water 1–2 tsp, if needed

For the anchovy and hazelnut crumb

Olive oil 1 tsp
Butter 1 tsp
Anchovy 1–2 fillets
Fresh breadcrumbs 20g / ⅓ cup
Toasted hazelnuts 1 tbsp
Lemon a pinch of zest

To finish

Fresh dill or parsley 1 tbsp
Lemon a pinch of zest
Black pepper to taste
Good olive oil a drizzle

Equipment

Baking tray
Small bowl
Small frying pan
Whisk
Sharp knife
Chopping board

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 230°C / 445°F.

2. Cut the cabbage into 2 thick wedges, keeping the core intact so the wedges hold their shape. Rub with 1 tablespoon olive oil and the salt, making sure the cut sides are lightly coated.

3. Place the cabbage cut-side down on a baking tray. Roast for 20–25 minutes, until deeply golden underneath, tender at the core, and crisp around the edges.

4. Stir the honey with the remaining 1 teaspoon olive oil and a tiny pinch of salt. Flip the cabbage and brush the exposed surfaces lightly with the honey glaze.

5. Return the cabbage to the oven for 3–5 minutes, until lacquered, blistered and just shy of burnt. Watch it closely here. Honey goes from glowing to tragic very quickly.

6. While the cabbage finishes, make the tahini yoghurt. Whisk together the yoghurt, tahini, finely grated garlic, lemon juice and salt until smooth. Add a little cold water only if needed — it should be thick enough to hold a confident swoosh on a plate.

7. Make the crumb. Warm the olive oil and butter in a small frying pan. Finely chop the anchovy and press it into the fat until it dissolves completely.

8. Add the breadcrumbs and cook, stirring, until deeply golden and crisp. Finely chop the toasted hazelnuts and fold them through with a pinch of lemon zest.

9. Let the cabbage rest for a few minutes so the glaze settles and the structure firms up.

10. Spoon the tahini yoghurt onto a plate and drag it into a wide swoosh. Arrange the cabbage on top. Scatter generously with the anchovy-hazelnut crumb.

11. Finish with chopped dill or parsley, lemon zest, freshly cracked black pepper and a thin drizzle of olive oil.

Chef’s Notes

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It’s not subtle or tidy or low maintenance. I wouldn’t order it on a first date. It’s rich, messy, and gastronomically very sexy, like most Italian-adjacent foods.

This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside — a collection built from pop‑ups and private dinners. If you’d like the full set, it’s available to purchase here. Paid subscribers will also get the recipes one by one right here on Substack.

Ingredients (serves 1)

For the ragù

Beef chuck, 4–5 cm cubes 200 g
Fine sea salt 3 g / ½ tsp
Black pepper to taste
Olive oil 15 g / 1 tbsp
Onion ½ medium
Garlic 2 cloves
Tomato paste 25 g / 1½ tbsp
’Nduja 20 g / 1½ tbsp
Dry red wine 80 ml / ⅓ cup
Crushed tomatoes, good quality 180 g
Beef stock 150 ml / ⅔ cup
Bay leaf 1
Fresh thyme 1 small sprig

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Not because it was a secret. Not because my grandma was one of those women who measured things in silence and refused to write anything down. It’s unavailable because of a choice I made for the first time almost two decades ago, and then kept making, again and again, until it stopped feeling like a choice and started looking like a life.

The choice not to live close to her. Close to anyone I’m related to, really.

It seemed like a no-brainer at the time: I was young, I had 2000 rubles to my name, and the world seemed obscene with possibility. Working, studying, travelling, sleeping with people of varied ethnicities – what kind of teenager would want to miss out on that? Moving was the obvious choice.

Then, at some point, committing to a dining table and an identity also felt inevitable. Living in a country long enough to get the passport. Learning the language well enough to argue about politics. Getting a dog, a cat, a favourite supermarket, a doctor who can sort of pronounce my name. Referring to this other place as home without putting the quotations marks around it. Staying was the obvious choice.

Then my country of birth started a war – an unimaginable, relentless, stupid war. Many lives of my compatriots (and those of the country they attacked) collapsed irreversibly. Many others shrank in less cinematic ways. Mine remained largely unchanged, which is its own ugly little privilege: I was safe as long as I didn’t set foot to Russia. Not going was the obvious choice.

And I knew I was going to miss things. Hello, I’m not stupid. I knew distance had a price. I just guess I imagined that the price would come as one grand punishment, like a tax bill, and not as a series of smaller instalments.

The difficult part is that there is no villain in this version of the story. No one exiled me. No one forced my hand in any way. I wanted a life, and I went looking for it. I chose movement, then independence, then safety, then the strange comfort of being far away from everything that made me. Some of those choices were brave. Some were definitely selfish. Some were the only sane option on the table. Most were probably all three.

And I just have to live with them.

I don’t mean standing at the window in a long black dress, regretting the terrible mistake of ever wanting more for myself. I mean the more humiliating adult variation, where you can know you did the right thing and still feel the weight of what it cost. Where no one owes you absolution, because no one accused you in the first place. Where you don’t get to turn the loss into injustice just because it hurts.

That is the part I find hardest: the absence of someone to blame.

Because if there were a villain, I could be angry. If there had been one obvious wrong turn, I could fantasise about going back and choosing differently. But there wasn’t. There was only a long chain of understandable, often boring decisions, each one leading me further into a life that is mine, and further away from a life where I might have known how my grandmother made that dish.

That doesn’t make the choices wrong. It just means there are things I don’t get to have.

So alas, I don’t have my grandmother’s recipe for you today. I have a grilled cheese sandwich with anchovy and jalapeño. Which, I admit, is an insane emotional pivot. But it is warm, salty, sharp, excessive, and very good at doing what food can sometimes do: give your hands something to make and your mouth something to want.

Ingredients

• Mozzarella, grated 50 g / 1¾ oz

• Gruyère or Comté, grated 30 g / 1 oz

• Young Gouda, grated 20 g / ¾ oz

• Mayonnaise (preferably Kewpie) 1½ tbsp

• Dijon mustard ½ tsp

• Lemon juice a few drops

• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

• Pickled jalapeños 6–8 slices

• Anchovy fillets, oil-packed 2

• Unsalted butter, softened 10 g / 2 tsp

• Sourdough bread 2 slices (about 2 cm / ¾ in thick)

• Salted butter 15–20 g / 1 tbsp

• Olive oil a few drops

  ---

  Equipment

  • Small frying pan

  • Mixing bowl

  • Spatula

  • Knife

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This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside, a collection built on recipes that have never been published before. You can get the full set here, or just catch them as they appear on Substack for paid subscribers.

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Something part-bitter, part-upbeat about turning 35 last week. About how time now moves at a speed that feels insulting, about how I still feel 26 on good days, 31 on bad ones, and how deranged it is that women are expected to receive “you look amazing for your age” as a compliment, rather than a reminder that i…

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Fold.
Reduce.
Emulsify.

I don’t want you ending up where Schitt's Creek left David and Moira — guessing and hoping for the best — so I put together a small glossary of the terms I use in my recipe collection (whic…

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However, there are still things that make me consider emigrating again and resetting my reputation, because the alternative (disposing of witnesses) is, unfortunately, illegal. Let’s see:

1. Saw a hot guy wave at me, got excited, waved back. He wasn’t waving at me. He saw me realise. I saw him see me realise.

2. In a Tokyo bookstore, panicked mid-transaction and said “Muito arigatou”. With full commitment.

3. Walking my dog, who was obsessed with plastic bags. He locked onto one, dragged me towards it, and very deliberately peed on it. It was someone’s groceries.

4. On a first date, confidently referenced a story “he told me before” to show I was paying attention. He had not told me that. My tiny brain had merged him with another man.

5. At a fashion show, was given shoes three sizes too big. Tripped, lost balance, grabbed the model in front of me. She fell. I didn’t.

6. At a bar, took a sip of something I thought was mine. It was not mine. It was very much someone else’s and they watched me do it.

7. Went to the vet to get a vaccine for my dog. Checked in, sat down, waited, got called in. Realised I had forgotten the dog at home.

8. Meeting a guy’s parents for the first time at a bougie restaurant: the waiter spilled a full glass of red wine down my white shirt. The staff gave me one of their uniform polos. Spent the rest of lunch looking like I worked there, hoping to die.

Times like these call for something that doesn’t require social skills, language, or dignity — just heat, time, and the ability to follow through.

This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside, a collection built through pop-ups and private dinners. You can get the full set here, or just catch them as they appear on Substack for paid subscribers.

Ingredients (serves 1–2)

• Leeks 2 medium (white & light green for roasting, dark green tops reserved)

• Chickpeas 240 g drained / 1½ cups

• Potato 200–250 g / 7–9 oz (1 medium)

• Garlic 1½ cloves (1 for roasting, ½ for finishing)

• Olive oil 1½ tbsp

• Fine salt ¾ tsp, plus more to taste

• Vegetable stock 450–550 ml / 1¾–2¼ cups

• White pepper to taste

• Black pepper to taste

• Neutral oil 3–4 tbsp (for frying)

• Sour cream 2–4 tbsp

• Good olive oil a drizzle

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If you spend time in the kitchen, this is a dangerous, dangerous place. Buy kitchen utensils you absolutely cannot justify transporting back home and deal with consequences later.

Go to Kewpie Museum

If you don’t want to go for the knowledge (they share the exact ingredients they use, as well as some trivia), go for the free bottl…

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The real difficulty isn’t the schedule. It’s the identities.

When you’re seeing different people, you inevitably show up as a different version of yourself. With one you’re thoughtful, warm, and charming — a great potential stepmother to their labrador. With another you’re always late, clumsy, and hilarious. With a third you’re suddenly outdoorsy, enthusiastically booking hiking trips (don’t forget to make sure you haven’t already committed to babysitting the labrador on those dates). None of it is fake exactly — it’s all you — but at some point it does start to feel like breeding a small roster of personalities. It takes a lot of energy.

Juggling careers is similar, but most of the time it works out just fine. Each version of you gets its allotted time and space. The designer takes the morning shift, serious and organised, moving things half a pixel to the left. Then the cook takes over, thinking about layering salt and what else they can pickle today. In the evening the writer arrives, slightly wine-soaked and ready to turn the whole situation into an essay.

Most days they take turns. Other days wires get crossed, memos get lost, and they all show up at once.

I’ll be halfway through replying to a design email about brand positioning and suddenly realise I can’t stop thinking about optimising the potato salad I made last week. Then I’ll be cooking something and catch myself wondering if the plate would work better within the Swiss grid, which is when I know the designer has followed me into the kitchen. At some point I will almost certainly draft the wrong kind of message to the wrong person (probably in the wrong language), the professional equivalent of texting “hey u up” to someone you only meant to split a bottle of wine with. Once.

Which is roughly the moment you realise you’re not really juggling jobs at all, but identities, and identities are far less eager to cooperate. Jobs can be neatly blocked out in a calendar, colour-coded if you’re that kind of person. Identities, though, have the tendency to bleed into each other, compete, and show up unexpectedly, just like the men you date.

Now, I’m not here to give anyone advice. If you find yourself in a similar situation — professionally, romantically, or otherwise — I wish both of us the very best of luck, strong organisational skills, and perhaps a slightly better memory.

I’m aware that at some point in the future a sensible adult (me) will probably have to sit down and make a decision about which direction this whole thing is going in. But for the time being, everyone seems to be having a good time, nobody is openly complaining, and frankly I’m quite enjoying the falalalala.

So for now I’m letting it run.

This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside — a collection built from pop‑ups and private dinners. If you’d like the full set, it’s available to purchase here. Paid subscribers will also get the recipes one by one right here on Substack.

Ingredients (serves 1 – 2 tacos)

For the chicken tinga

• Chicken thigh, skin-on, bone-in 1 large (280–300 g / 10–11 oz)

• Fine sea salt 3 g / ½ tsp

• Black pepper to taste

• Olive oil 5 ml / 1 tsp

• Onion ¼ medium

• Garlic 1 clove

• Tomato paste 5 g / 1 tsp

• Chipotle in adobo ½–1 pepper

• Adobo sauce ½ tsp

• Dried oregano pinch

• Ground cumin small pinch

• Crushed tomatoes 100 g / ⅓ cup + 1 tbsp

• Chicken stock or water 30 ml / 2 tbsp

• Bay leaf ½

• Apple cider or sherry vinegar 5 ml / 1 tsp

  The full recipe is available for paid subscribers below.

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Countries start meaningless wars. Men in power rape children while powerless men start podcasts on how to make women suffer more. Corporations continue setting fire to the planet while we dutifully rinse yoghurt cups and choke on paper straws. AI is swallowing jobs while somehow also making everyone dumber.

I have panicked about each of these things individually, with great commitment and an imagination that really does not need encouragement. And unfortunately, I’m not qualified to solve any of this.

My coping strategies are deeply unimpressive. I listen to a new album by an artist I like and pretend I feel what they felt when they recorded it. I reinvent my skincare routine, on the off chance the correct sequence of serums might finally unlock inner peace. I commit to morning yoga and evening Pilates.

I go on long “think walks,” which are basically regular walks but with a dramatic internal monologue. I download meditation apps that gently instruct me to observe my thoughts like clouds drifting across the sky, which is hilarious given most of my thoughts are more like raccoons fighting in a bin over a dirty napkin.

I drink electrolytes-infused water. I take magnesium before bed. I briefly consider gratitude journaling, then remember I hate gratitude journaling.

All of these rituals are supposedly about stabilising the nervous system. But what they really are, at least for me, is a small and ridiculous illusion of control. A reminder that while I alone cannot fix geopolitics, patriarchy, ecological collapse or whatever the tech industry is doing this week, I can at least take care of something small and immediate: my body.

Food works the same way. Cooking something properly — something warm, indulgent — briefly pushes the horrors out of the room. Not permanently, of course. Just long enough to sit down, eat, and experience thirty uninterrupted minutes of believing the humanity might actually be alright.

This recipe comes from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside — a collection of meals that previously existed only at pop-ups and private dinners, where they were cooked once and then vanished into the void. Now they’ve been written down, with chef’s notes and all the usual goodies.

The full collection is available to purchase here.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll also find all the recipes from the collection right here on Substack — one by one, like little emotional support dinners.

Ingredients (serves 2-3)

For the potato salad

• Starchy potatoes 700 g / 1½ lb
• Fine salt to taste
• Duck fat 60 g / 4 tbsp
• Black pepper to taste
• Sherry vinegar (or lemon juice) 1 tbsp
• Capers 30 g / 2 tbsp
• Fresh dill or parsley small handful
• Lemon a pinch of zest

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I had just become newly single in a way that felt less like a breakup and more like an identity demolition. I was thrilled to have my life back and also terrified by how much of it I had constructed around someone else’s. Freedom is wildly intoxicating until you realise it comes with absolutely no instructions.

Liver and lemon pasta. I ordered it because it sounded bold and self-possessed, which felt aspirational. It looked creamy but didn’t taste like cream, rich without being heavy, bright without pronounced acidity. It was controlled. I took one bite and thought that if liver — literal organ meat, historically misunderstood and often perceived as punishment — could reinvent itself into something this elegant, then so could I.

I could not stop thinking about that pasta for two years. Obsessively. It would resurface at random moments — on flights, in grocery stores, during completely unrelated conversations — like some Italian culinary ghost whispering, “You’re not done with me”.

It took a few attempts. The first one was too heavy. The second one was too loud, the liver taking over the entire plate (ahem). At one point I almost gave up and added cream like a fucking coward. But after enough butter, enough pasta water, enough humbling granular liver situations, I landed on something very close to what I ate in Bologna — silky, rich, uniquely savoury, held together by starch and promises fulfilled.

This is the second recipe from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside — the collection that has now officially been released into the world. Until recently, these dishes only existed offline — at pop-ups and private dinners, cooked once and gone. Now they’re written down properly.

The full collection is available to purchase here.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll also receive access to all the recipes from the collection right here on Substack — consider subscribing.

Non è finita qui

Ingredients

For the pasta

• Olive oil 7 ml / ½ tbsp

• Pancetta 12–15 g / ½ oz

• Unsalted butter 18 g / 1½ tbsp

• Shallot 1 small (about 20 g / ¾ oz)

• Garlic ½ small clove

• Chicken livers 40–45 g / 1½ oz

• Dry white wine 25 ml / 1½ tbsp

• Tagliatelle 90 g / 3.2 oz

• Parmigiano Reggiano 10 g / ⅓ oz

• Lemon ½

• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

• Fine sea salt to taste

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Usually, around this point in the month, I would be writing February Munchies — pretending I’ve been breezily cooking, reflecting, evolving in a very organic and well-adjusted adult way. I like that ritual. It makes the month feel observed instead of accidental. Never been a “go with the flow” kinda girl.

This time, though, there wasn’t…

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• Men who own one Japanese knife and pet it like it’s their favourite terrier

• Tasting with the communal spoon and putting it back in. Looking around to see if anyone noticed

• Announcing “I need to protect my nervous system” after a mild inconvenience

• Referring to salt as “sodium”

• Using truffle oil

• Anyone who calls themselves “an empath”

• Saying you are not politi…

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You see it everywhere, but nobody says it out loud. Plans that live permanently in the group chat. Messages that end in “haha yeah we should” and quickly expire. Restaurants that call something “house-made” because someone plated it with their left hand. Recipes promising flavour in twelve minutes, like it’s something you can unlock with wishful thinking.

I don’t think we are lazy. I think everyone is tired in a very online way — overstimulated but underwhelmed. We still want things to feel real, we just don’t want to be the only one putting in effort. So we almost always end up lowering the bar. We accept low-effort conversations, low-effort plans, low-effort dinners that technically exist and are generally fine, but don’t ever leave an impression.

Cooking is brutally honest about that distinction. You can’t gaslight salt into moving faster. You can’t manifest flavour. You either give something the time it needs, or you end up tasting the very corner that you cut.

I tried this chicken the impatient way first. Short marinade. Minimal commitment. The culinary equivalent of replying “sounds good!” to plans you’re already hoping get cancelled. It was fine. Fine like a date where nobody technically does anything wrong but nobody texts again.

The version that actually worked required a small but meaningful decision: loosen the skin, let the miso sit — really sit, walk away, and trust that time is doing what the men I date won’t: it’s best.

There’s something reassuring about food that refuses to rush for you. It doesn’t care about your calendar, your notifications, or whether you’re in your soft-life era. It just rewards attention. You show up, you wait, you let things develop — and for once, the effort comes back to you without needing a follow-up message.

I don’t think we’re done with effort entirely. I think we’re done offering it blindly — to situationships, to half-formed plans, to recipes that promise everything and deliver a personality-less dinner. Maybe patience isn’t the problem. Maybe misplacing it is.

So this is for when you’re done waiting for effort from everything else, but still willing to give a little of it to yourself — or at least to dinner. Which, unlike most things, will actually show up hot and on time.

It’s the first recipe from Dinners for When You Are Dead Inside, a collection I’ve been working on without lying it’s effortless (in all honesty, it’s probably going to kill me). If you’ve been following along, you already know what I’m about. If you haven’t, you can pre-order the collection here.

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