Friday favorites 7/8

Jackfruit burritos, reasons for a leisurely lunch, and a dairy-free jalapeño ranch recipe

Vegan jackfruit burrito from Roll Madrid

Hello, again! Considering this week’s Wednesday newsletter was just published yesterday, I hope I’m not overwhelming your inbox! We should be back to our regular schedule next week. Speaking of stuffed inboxes, if you’re a fan of #inboxzero, the Substack app is a great alternative. It feels like having your own curated reading list, and I like that you can archive each post after you’ve read it. Of course, traditional email is still cool, too, or you can also read Come como Kiki in a web browser (reading on a browser is actually the only way that the footnotes are hyperlinked, something that Substack is working on fixing in future updates of the app). However you manage to get here, I’m happy to have you!

In other news, I’m finally fully recovered from my stomach virus, so this week has been about making up for time lost. Find what made my list of favorites below!

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• I feel like I overuse the phrase “it’s been on my list for a while” when talking about trying new things, but the truth is that I have lots of lists and lots of things I want to try! Such was the case with jackfruit. Jackfruit is a type of tropical fruit related to mulberries and figs (my favorite!). You can eat it ripe, but in the past few years it’s gained fame in its unripe form as a meat substitute, more specifically for pulled pork. Most herbolarios¹ here in Madrid have packages of jackfruit that are pre-prepped for you to DIY your own meatless pulled pork at home, and more than once I’ve had a package in my hand and put it back on the shelf out of fear that I wouldn’t like it and it would be a waste. I ultimately decided it would be best to try it at a restaurant first, and my chance came this past Monday at Roll Madrid. They have several dishes featuring jackfruit, including the pictured burrito above. My verdict? The flavor was missing a bit of the smokiness and depth from pulled pork, but overall I was a fan. The burrito itself was delicious (I ordered it without cheese, and added guac on the side), and the texture of the jackfruit was very similar to meat. I think when I give it a shot at home, I’ll lean more toward a traditional barbecue flavor like this recipe I found from Minimalist Baker. I’ll report back once I try it!

• Recently France was in the news for the reinstatement of its law forbidding eating lunch at the office. This week Sarah over at Fine Kettle of Fish wrote a great article supporting the French with some fantastic points on why we all should step away from the desk for our midday meal. Even though I live in Spain where lunches are much more tranquilo², I’d love for Sarah’s newsletter to go viral and change the workplace culture in the US. Check out her article below.

  No More Lunch Crunch

• One of my favorite quick summer meals is a salad loaded with seasonal fruit and veggies, and I love adding different dressings and sauces to switch things up. My favorite for this time of year is a simplified and dairy-free version of the Roasted Jalapeño Ranch Dressing from Sprouted Kitchen. I haven’t eaten regular ranch dressing in years, so I can’t tell you if this tastes like the real thing or not, but what I can tell you is that it’s fantastic. I love drizzling it over a peach and tomato salad (you can see a recent version in the picture below), but any leftover dressing frequently ends up being used as a dip for raw carrots and cucumbers. The original version calls for roasting the jalapeño, and while I’m sure that’s delicious, I add it raw (mostly because I’m lazy, and I like my food spicy). Roasting mellows out the heat of the jalapeño, so if you’re less spice-tolerant, you may want to add that step back in. Serious Eats has a good primer on roasting peppers, and they actually suggest roasting jalapeños in the toaster oven which sounds kind of genius.

Dairy-free Jalapeño Ranch Dressing (adapted from Sprouted Kitchen Cooking Club)

Yield: About 1 cup

Dairy-free jalapeño ranch dressing drizzled on a recent summer salad

Equipment and supplies needed

• Food processor

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup mayonnaise (you could sub veganaise to make this fully vegan)

• 1/2 cup plain Greek- or Skyr-style nondairy yogurt (I use a soy-based yogurt, but any neutral nondairy base would work)

• Juice from 2 small limes (I add this poco a poco³, starting with one lime and adjusting to taste)

• 2 tsp white wine vinegar

• 2 tsp honey

• 1 tsp Dijon mustard

• 1 jalapeño, seeded

• 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled

• Handful of fresh cilantro leaves

• 1 tsp onion powder

• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, ground

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• Pinch of paprika

Directions:

• Add all ingredients to the food processor (you can add the lime juice little by little as I suggested above) and blend until smooth and cilantro is in small flakes.

• Taste and adjust salt (and lime) as needed.

Any leftovers can be kept in a sealed jar in the fridge for around a week for your veggie-dipping pleasure.

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Enjoy the rest of your Friday! Before you go, a quick reminder that a new Sunday Sobremesa will be up this weekend so be sure to pop over and check it out.

If anyone has any good jackfruit recipes or favorite dairy-free salad dressings, send them my way! You can send me an email or leave a comment below.

See you Sunday!

Ki

1. Herbolarios: An herbolario is technically a store that sells medicinal plants and herbs, but most here in Madrid now function also as health food stores, offering organic and vegan food products.

2. Tranquilo: Calm

3. Poco a poco: Little by little