The Art of the Pleasure Ritual
Turkish breakfast for dinner, dopamine plating, and other nervous system regulators for Taurus season
Hello cheese sluts, and a very happy Beltane eve to all who celebrate!
May 1st marks the midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. For a lot of us witches, the first of May is known as Beltane, and it’s actually the oldest holiday in Celtic mythology. This cross-quarter festival celebrates the high point of spring: nature is surging with fertile energy as the bees buzz among an abundance of colorful blossoms, and chirping birds forage for worms to bring back to their full nests.
Beltane sits in the middle of Taurus season, the fixed earth sign ruled by the planet of love. While this year has beat us over the head with tragedies and horrors, we now have an invitation to indulge. Spring, with her blossom-frosted branches and lilac perfumed air, summons us outdoors to feast our senses on her many gifts; smell the flowers, let the sun warm your skin and kiss your cheeks, and take a bite of a ruby red strawberry,
Though Taurus is the sign of Venusian delights, these little luxuries needn’t be expensive. It’s all about slowing down and finding the pleasure in our everyday rituals. Today I offer you a few opportunities to do just that: dopamine plating, candied flower petals, and a Turkish Breakfast for Dinner spread from a new book by a fellow substacker, Snacking Dinners by Georgia Freedman.
Dopamine Plating
A couple weeks ago, I read this essay on No Crumbs about “Dopamine Plating,” or combining the elements of color, texture, composition, and the unexpected to create a sense of whimsy in your plating. The concept is based on the ethereal styling of @plant_romance, artist Ana Snow’s instragram which features photos so bewitching even her dirty dishes are beautiful.
Even though I spend a lot of my professional time styling food, I tend to rush through the plating of my own meals due to hunger and time constraints. I love how dopamine plating provides an opportunity for creative expression by taking a few extra indulgent minutes. Kayla Roolart broke down the process here, and I highly recommend giving it a read so you too can transform your next snack plate into an edible work of art.
Candied Flower Blossoms
Did you know that the feathery blossoms of the Magnolia tree are edible? I did not, but apparently they taste of ginger and cardamom, which sounds delicious. Emily Spurlin, the beloved pastry chef behind sour bitter salty, just shared a video on candying these fragrant blossoms, if you‘re interested in making them (I very much am). She also posted a recipe for Magnolia roasted rhubarb, which I’m also lusting over. Harvesting petals for baking projects does seem like a perfect Beltane/Taurus season ritual to me.
Turkish Breakfast for Dinner from Snacking Dinners by Georgia Freedman
My favorite thing about Substack is the ease of access to other creators’ work. It’s like an art gallery of newsletters, except all the artists are right there ready to engage with each other. A few months ago, fellow substacker Georgia Freedman reached out about her new book, Snacking Dinners. It’s a feast of low-effort, beautiful recipes presented as elegant grazing plates and spreads. This is exactly how I want to eat, especially in the springtime when the sunlight is waxing warm and I crave luxurious leisure.
The recipes that intrigue me most are the cheese-based ones, naturally, including the broiled feta & tomatoes with crusty bread, a kimchi melt with potato chips inside (!!!), and the Turkish Breakfast for Dinner, an opulent assortment of snacks and spreads lends itself well to the ease of Taurus season. Below, I’ve shared that recipe with you, as well as my interpretation, featuring gems found at the farmer’s market here in Chicago.
Turkish Breakfast for Dinner, an excerpt from Snacking Dinners by Georgia Freedman
Breakfast Spread:
2 to 3 ounces (60 to 85 g) feta
Turkish bread, like simit or pide, or similar, such as focaccia
Sliced cucumber
Wedges of tomato
Assorted olives
Clotted cream
Honey
Assorted jams and preserves, such as fig, sour cherry, bitter orange, and/or apricot
Menemen
2 eggs
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons Turkish pepper paste
½ small tomato, diced
Arrange the feta, bread, cucumber, tomato, olives, cream, honey, and preserves on plates and in small bowls.
To make the menemen, beat the eggs with a pinch of salt and set them aside. Melt ½ tablespoon of the butter in a small nonstick pan over medium heat, then add the tomato and pepper pastes and toast them, stirring with a rubber spatula, for 1 minute. Add the diced tomato and cook until the pieces start to soften, about 1 minute, then push everything to one side of the pan and turn the heat to low.
Add the remaining ½ tablespoon of butter to the cleared side of the pan and let it melt, then remove the pan from the heat and add the eggs to the melted butter. Scramble the eggs gently, tipping the pan as needed to keep them on one side, separate from the tomato mixture, and putting the pan back on the heat only as much as needed to cook the eggs to soft curds. Stir the tomato mixture into the eggs just as they finish cooking.
The ever seasonal person I am, I subbed in some gems from my Farmer’s Market haul: roasted asparagus with Herbes de Provence and breakfast radishes in lieu of cucumbers and tomatoes. I also whipped some Purple Haze with cream in place of clotted cream and replaced the feta with Meredith Dairy marinated goat’s cheese (because now I have a giant jar from Costco). I also served up some honey butter, strawberries and raspberries macerated with pink peppercorn, and samoon bread from an Iraqi bakery here in Chicago.
Other Spaces:
A Very Gouda Adventure: we need all the dopamine hits we can get right now, and this children‘s book from author Kristin Reagan really soothed my frayed nerves. It follows a wheel of Gouda on an adventure around the world with his friend Mozzarella. It’s just the sort of uplifting tale we need right now.
The hottest cheese subscription out there: my friends at Philly Cheese School just launched a new cheese subscription with Third Wheel Cheese Co. It‘s only $60 for three curated artisanal cheeses and an accoutrement which is very reasonable in this economy, IMO.
Immortal Milk Mother’s Day Collection: if you’re in the Chicago area, the city’s biggest cheese talent Alisha Norris just released a stunning spread for Mother’s Day featuring a selection of 5 cheeses and exquisite housemade accompaniments like whipped citrus butter and pink peppercorn candied lychee. Pickup only on 5/10. Click here to order.
Sinners: this vampire horror set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932 has everything: musical allegory, Michael B. Jordan playing twins ala The Parent Trap, and stunning costumes that are haunting me nearly as much as the film’s most chilling moments. I don’t want to say too much, but as of this writing, it’s my favorite film of the year.
That’s all I have for you today! I hope you are all taking a moment to indulge in your own pleasure rituals, no matter what that means for you.
Cheesus bless!
🖤 Erika
Thank you to Kristin Regan and Georgia Freedman for sending me copies of your beautiful books!
Beltane! Love learning about this holiday ✨