The Fork

We were all geared up to make New Year’s resolutions about how we eat and where we go and the kinds of things we drink or, like, to even just get up once in a while when it dawned on us—we’re The Fork...when we go to sleep, nothing happens in the world.

It was a good break, though, if we’re being honest. We needed it, Fork Fanz. We needed it bad. We caught up on some reading, gave gifts like it was going out of style (L’Forkette made out like a bandit) and generally ate anything that came our way. Like what, you ask? Well...let us tell you!

As mashed potatoes are a must at any holiday meal (and because we make excellent mashed potatoes with chopped rosemary, some minced garlic and enough butter to give a lesser human a heart attack), we went to town on some of those bad boys. The topper? L’Forkette makes an excellent mushroom gravy. She won’t share her super-secret recipe (by which we mean she’s at work, so we didn’t want to call and bother her), but we found an intriguing little recipe on a site called Daring Gourmet-dot-com. Our advice? Make about half as much as the recipe suggests, because you 100% will wind up with more than you can eat, and it’s not as good the second or third time around. Invest in rosemary, too.

Mahi-mahi found its way onto our Christmas supper menu, and we absolutely KILLED it with a recipe we learned during our foodservice worker years. It goes like this:

You’ll need:

• Mahi-mahi steaks or the like
• 1/2 stick butter
• As much garlic as you like
• A Meyer lemon
• Olive oil
• Oregano
• Salt and pepper (you know, like a human person)
• A skillet you can also put in the oven
• Willingness to trust

To Cook This Thing:

1. Get you some mahi-mahi
2. Get you some butter and set it on the counter til it’s room temp
3. Pat the fish dry with a paper towel, because this one’s gonna be a sizzler
4. Season to taste with salt and pepper and a little bit of garlic, your choice—that’s what “to taste” means
5. Set it aside on the counter for a minute
6. In a bowl, combine a half stick of that butter, as much minced garlic as you like, some finely chopped oregano and a teaspoon of olive oil
7. Zest the entire outside of a Meyer lemon into the bowl, then chop it in half and squeeze the juice in. If you don’t have a zester, who even are you?
8. Stir a bit, but you don’t have to go nuts...just, like, fold it together, y’know?
9. Throw those ingredients into a sauce pan on medium low, and stir them constantly until they start turning into a sauce...not a thick sauce, mind you...maybe it’s even more of a glaze
10. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees
11. In a skillet you can also put into the oven, heat up two tablespoons of olive oil on medium; really coat the skillet
12. When it’s looking like it would melt your hand off, place the fish in the oil
13. It WILL sizzle in a way that scares your cats
14. Cook for roughly 4 minutes (if it’s 3-and-a-half, no big ... same goes for 5-sies)
15. Flip it over and stick it in the oven for roughly 4 minutes (if it’s 3-and-a-half, no big ... same goes for 5-sies)
16. Flip it over one more time and brush that sauce/glaze you made earlier on one side, let it cook for another minute—no more, no less
17. Carefully remove from oven, squeeze a little more of that lemon you already squeezed onto it and go to town

There! In 17 easy steps, you’ve got an amazing piece of fish. If you did it right, it’ll be flaky with a slight crisp on the surface of one side. We know people rarely make recipes such as this, but if you DO make it, let us know. We find it delicious and borderline tropical.

Over the break we also ate:

• An entire fucking yule log...like, we ate the WHOLE thing and then we felt disgusting but happy
• Cookies from L’Forkette that had choco chips AND M&Ms (she did this thing where she’d remove from the oven and bang the cookie sheet on the counter, and they were crunchy and delicious)
• So much kettle corn
• Rissoto with truffle flat bread
• At least five brekkie b’s from The New Santa Fe Baking Co.
• Pumpkin AND Pecan Pie
• A bunch of other things that would make us sad to list here

What’d y’all get into food-wise? Any recipes to share? Things you just would like us to know? Drop us a line—we’re back!

Also

-If you picked up the regular edition of SFR this week (which you damn well should have by now, shit), you’d have found a nifty little article about a local company that makes composting a whole lot easier for people. Reuinity Resources recently added home pickup to their already awesome list of restaurants from which they pick up food waste. For a scant monthly fee, they’ll deal with yours (and give you premium compost, too!).

-If you follow chef Mark Kiffin of The Compound on Instagram (which you should totally do), you’d know he’s on the lookout for a chef de cuisine. This is kind of a big deal, folks, since Kiffin’s been up there winning awards and preparing kickass salmon since way back. One of our writers apparently dropped him a line but hasn’t heard back yet, either way, we wish Kiffin luck and hope he wants to tell someone over here all about it.

-Corey Fidler of Hotel Santa Fe and the illustrious chef Martín Rios of Restaurant Martin have joined forces for Build-a-Bowl, Santa Fe’s newest pop-up from which hungry diners can assemble bowls from ingredients and then eat the things that are in those bowls. Yellowfin tuna? Yeah, they got it. Chicken, steak or tofu? You bet. SFR’s real staff already tells us they’ve sent someone to check it out, but we’re gonna go eat it, too. Dang.

-We’d tell you about more local stuff, but it honestly seems like people are taking their sweet time getting back to work and making things happen. You’ll have to make do with those three items for now.

It’s the magic number.

More Tidbits

-Coming in a strong contender for The Fork’s 2021 Who Caresies, McDonald’s announced it will release three new chicken sandwiches this February. How on earth are people supposed to be excited by this?

-A new law adopted in California will prevent food delivery apps like GrubHub and DoorDash and PostMates and DingusDorks (we made up that last one) from listing restaurants on their apps without the restaurants’ consent. In other words—and maybe you didn’t know this—such apps will sometimes position themselves as middleman types to restaurants who don’t want their services (or don’t know it’s happening). Basically, you place your order on the app and they, in turn, place it with the restaurant, acting like regular customers. We know this is a gig economy (which sucks), but this kinda screws restaurants and their employees. If you need to know more, Vinaigrette owner Erin Wade told us all about why the apps suck just last April. Hopefully similar laws get passed all over the place.

-In one of the saddest things we’ve ever heard news, doctors are growing more concerned by possible permanence for COVID-19 patients who lost their sense of smell and taste. Tasting things is the best, and it’s just another note in the first chord of the song called “COVID is the Effing Worst (Friends Forever).”

-We now assume Doritos has a Vex the Fork department, as not only are they releasing pointlessly puffy so-called 3-D chips (shoutout to Fork reader Sue B. who tells us she was once snowed in with nothing but 3-D Doritos on which to munch), there are apparently pickle flavored Doritos now widely available. Good lord. Y’all know pickles just exist, right?

-Viennetta, being the greatest dessert of all time according to L’Forkette, is making a comeback. Yes, that’s right—the ice creamiest, knife-needingest, tongue-tickiling-est, air-balling-est frozen snack cake...thing...of the 1990s should soon find its way to a freezer aisle near you. We’re pretty sure our mom, Mére de la Fourche, is here for it, too.

-Five, oh, it’s a slightly less magical nuuumber...nyah, it is, it’s a slightly less magical number.

Actually, THIS is the worst.

Finally

In the print edition of SFR, find the top stories of 2020 that you may not have read, plus a delightful interview with chef Fernando Ruiz of Palace Prime Steakhouse (he’s awesome).

A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence

Number of Letters Received 91 *We were really pumped right up until the moment we realized they were all X-mas auto-replies

Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader) “I don’t really like you.” *Who are you? Our mom?

Actually Helpful Tip We’ll hand it to Sue for the Doritos thing. *Do we need to try three-dimensional Doritos now?

Welcome to the first month of the first year of the rest of your lives,The Fork