GIMME! Vol. 4: A Really Good Pita Recipe
Plus the return of recommendation corner, the results of the Taylor Swift Cringe Bracket, and ruminations on TTPD.
NYT Cooking is my chosen app for what I like to call “benevolent scrolling.” It doesn’t make me insane like TikTok and “X” or depressed like Instagram, and it feels vaguely productive to scroll through something like 40 Recipes We Can’t Wait To Make This Spring even though I’ve let my fair share of asparagus grow slimy and floppy in the back of the fridge. I try my best not to waste food, and making this pita bread began as an attempt to use up a past-its-prime eggplant languishing in my produce drawer. This occurred through a type of convoluted but actually very valid give-a-mouse-a-cookie logic: I needed (NEEDED!!) to use up the eggplant, but the eggplant was becoming as soft and pockmarked as the face of a kindly old farm wife, so I thought some sort of mashed-up baba ghanoush situation would work best. And if you make baba ghanoush, you should probably—definitely—attempt to also make pita bread from scratch.
Armed nothing but with this recipe and a dream, I dove in, and was handsomely rewarded at every step of the process. Making the dough, I felt like a child at a sensory play table: you get to stir flour/water/yeast into a raggedy clump, then knead it with your hands until smooth, let it rest for a few minutes, knead it again until smoother, let it rest for a few minutes, knead it again until smoother-er, then let it rest for an hour. After that, the dough will be doubled in size and smooth and shiny, and you roll it into eight little balls, which you then roll out with a rolling pin. Simple tool, soothing activity! Then, the real fun begins. You bake each little dough disk on a preheated cookie sheet for 2 minutes on one side, open the oven to see that the disk has puffed up fantastically, flip the now whoopie cushion-shaped bread over and bake for one more minute. That’s it! And then you have a pile of soft warm pita. You’ve used up that soft eggplant and all it took was 2-3 hours of totally unrelated effort. But it tastes amazing! Enjoy! And I mean that! And you will!
Abridged Thoughts On TTPD
“I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for you tho, or sorry that happened” - A meme
TTPD is here and it’s so long (London). I initially balked at the sheer number of songs—seemingly over a thousand but actually 31—the way you mentally about-face after discreetly checking the price tag at an expensive boutique. Sorry, nevermind! One more lap around the store to be polite and then I’m outta here. A few last polite laps later, though, wouldn’t you know it, the album’s grown on me.
Much hay has been made about some extremely questionable lyrics, some that are downright unforgivable (“the 1830’s but without all the racism” is just bad bad bad no matter the wider song context, sorry). The biggest tragedy is how much these dunk-on-able lines distract from the full songs, which are all pretty enjoyable.
In But Daddy I Love Him, beyond the yuck title, there are certainly some puzzling lyrical choices, like “I’m having his baby / No I’m not but you should see your faces”. “Baby” doesn’t rhyme with “faces,” obviously, but on top of that, it’s absolute catnip for Swifties hopelessly locked in a parasocial relationship where they’re convinced Taylor is breaking the fourth wall and trolling them specifically. My FYP is packed with TikTok reaction videos to that line that all like “You got me good, Taylor!” Maybe she did put that line in there specifically to punk her fans. A more artful read could be that it’s commentary on the fixation of those “Sarahs and Hannahs” on her romantic life. Ultimately, I have no idea what that line is all about. On my first listen, it annoyed me. By my second, I stopped caring. Reader, the song is good. That lyric is bad, but I love how the song sounds like a late 90’s Shania Twain song. So High School’s “You know how to ball / I know Aristotle” is criminal, but I love how the song sounds like something that would’ve played on One Tree Hill. “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” is gross, but with it Taylor expertly evokes a disgusting high school basement romance as vividly as she evokes a New England summer fling or a lonely creaky cabin in other songs.
With But Daddy I Love Him, there’s definitely irony at play with the title and lyrics—it’s borderline camp—but it also continues my excruciating personal trend of the most heinously cringe titles belonging songs that end up being some of my favorites. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Hits Different: both songs I really like with titles that make me wish Taylor Swift had never been allowed on the internet. But Daddy I Love Him is another one of those: the title is so embarrassing but I can’t stop listening to the song. It feels like it was intentionally designed to humiliate me when someone asks me to name a Taylor Swift song I like. I think maybe Taylor is trolling me specifically.
The Taylor Swift Cringe Bracket: Post-Game Analysis
Last month, in anticipation of the new album and in an attempt to better articulate my own thoughts on the matter, I put out a call to close friends, colleagues, and instagram followers: What do you think is the most cringe Taylor Swift song? I received a wide array of replies. They spanned many albums but tended toward tracks from Reputation and Lover, with a sprinkling of 1989 or Red here and there. Here was the full spread by album:
Reputation boasted the most individual song nominations, but Me! (feat Brendan Urie) and You Need To Calm Down, both from Lover, were among the only songs to receive 5+ repeat nominations. Midnights also had a respectable showing, with multiple repeat nominations for the sexed-up Vigilante Shit and pseudo-self-deprecating Anti-Hero. Only the OG self-titled Taylor Swift, also known as “Debut,” was spared a single nomination—maybe it was saved by how earnestly teenagery it is. In any case, there were still a few upsets. You Belong With Me, for example, was knocked out in the first round against So It Goes… which I’d attribute to both the inherent cringiness of the Vonnegut-ripped title (I doubt many could even remember the song’s melody or any of the lyrics off the top of their head—I sure can’t) and maybe a sense of nostalgia for Fearless-era Taylor. Better Than Revenge, most well-known for its catty slut-shaming, lost out to the femini$t anthem The Man. There was one first-round tie between Only The Young and Snow On The Beach, but OTY ultimately won in OT. All in all, it was a thrilling tournament with a lot of tight matchups, but there could only be one winner. And, squeaking by with just 54% of the vote, that winner is:
Damn…is it just me or is this song kinda catchy?
Catchiness, of course, does not negate cringe—and cringe, in reasonable doses, does not turn a good song bad. It might make it uncool, but not bad, and if you require only music that makes you feel cool, I hope you own a minimalist teak shelf large enough to house all your Morrissey vinyls. The inspector is on his way to your apartment now!
Okay, you made it this far, so you can have the recipe for the baba ghanoush too: prick your eggplant a few times with a paring knife, then broil it for 10-15 minutes, turning it a couple times, until it’s totally soft and maybe a little charred (some recipes recommend doing this on the grill; if you own a grill, you can probably just have your butler do all of this). Let the eggplant cool, then discard the skin and mash up the eggplant guts with a food processor (I use a smoothie Ninja) or a fork/potato masher. Add lemon juice, garlic, tahini, mint, parsley, cayenne, salt, and a little olive oil. Mash/whip/process that shit up together and enjoy with your mandatory homemade pita. - MM
Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott: I borrowed this from another writer friend a shamefully long time ago, which is not a reflection of how enjoyable or devourable it was—it took me awhile to finish because reading it makes you want to write, so I took a lot of writing breaks. Highly recommended reading for any writer or person who wants to be creative without driving themselves insane—it’s like a gentle brain massage.
Dominique Ansel Bakery in SOHO, NYC: They are famous for the cronut but have so many other delicious baked goods and are very nice. They import their flour from France so it’s fine for people with gluten sensitivity (but probably not for celiac) - Henrik Blix
Reply All #158: The Case Of The Missing Hit: It’s very famous so many people might already know it, but it kind of fits with the theme of this newsletter, but I don’t want to say why so as to avoid spoilers. It’s about a guy who can remember hte lyrics and melody to a pop song from the 90’s but can’t prove that the song ever existed and the hosts help him try and find out if the song is real or something he imaged. It’s so good! And I think it fits into the idea of consuming in that it can be so incredibly fleeting but also stick with you for a lifetime. If you haven’t listened, it’s worth it! - Henrik Blix