May in Potsdam is the kind of month that makes you want to cook more slowly. The farmer’s markets are full again. There is light till late evenings. The windows stay open (especially considering I don’t have a ventilator lol). Something about all of this makes me reach for recipes that feel a little more considered, not elaborate, but intentional.

This is the first of what I hope will be a monthly series: a small record of what has been on my table, what I tried for the first time, and what I will almost certainly make again. No strict themes, no meal plans. Just an honest account of a small home kitchen in May.

The spicy tofu I almost didn’t try

I found this one on Pinterest, as I find most things. Spicy tofu in a creamy coconut sauce, pan-fried tofu tossed in coconut milk, red curry paste, and sambal oelek. I had never cooked tofu this way before, and I was not entirely sure about it. I made it anyway.

It was one of the best things I cooked all month. Rich and warming with a heat that builds slowly. The kind of dish that makes a Tuesday evening feel worth sitting down for. I served it with basmati rice and will make it again very soon. If you are not a spicy lover, you can just tone it down with the sambal oelek. The recipe is by Lisa Lin, you can find it at Healthy Nibbles: Spicy Tofu with Creamy Coconut Sauce.

The viral bowl I’m obsessed with:

Minced beef, sweet potato, avocado, and cottage cheese. When I first saw this combination everywhere, I found it slightly suspicious. But I had all four things in the house one afternoon and decided to try it. And let me tell you: THIS DISH IS AWESOME.

It works. I do not know how, but it works. The sweet potato is roasted until soft, the beef is seasoned simply, the avocado adds richness, and the cottage cheese (I know lots of people don’t like it), which I expected to ruin everything, somehow ties it all together. I didn’t make the hot honey; however, I just added some chilli oil on top with honey, and it worked great. It is the kind of meal that requires very little effort and rewards you more than it should. Plus, it is very filling and has lots of protein.

Oriz me kaqika — my boyfriend’s favourite

This is an Albanian dish, rice cooked slowly with chicken drumsticks until everything is soft and deeply flavoured. It is simple in the way that only old recipes can be simple. My boyfriend (Portuguese) asks for this regularly, and I am always happy to make it. There is something grounding about cooking a dish that someone loves. If you want to make an easy Albanian dish, this is the one I’d start with. I will write a proper recipe post for this one soon.

Pasul me mish — Kosovo style

White beans slow-cooked with smoked meat, paprika, and a softened onion base. This is Albanian comfort food at its most honest, the kind of thing that fills a kitchen with a good smell for hours. I grew up eating this dish. Cooking it now, far from where I was born, feels like a small act of keeping something alive. A recipe post will follow.

Pasta puttanesca on a Friday night

For my birthday last year, my friends gave me a cooking class. I took the S-Bahn to Charlottenburg, walked into Goldhahn und Sampson (which is one of my favorite places in Berlin), and spent an afternoon making pasta from scratch with a group of strangers.

I had always assumed fresh pasta was the kind of thing other people made. People with marble countertops and Italian grandmothers. Not me, a person who always bought store pasta.

But here is what I learned that afternoon: pasta is not complicated. It just requires someone to show you that it isn’t.

Olives, capers, anchovies, tomato, and garlic. One pan, twenty minutes, very little patience required. Note: your kitchen will be filled with awesome smells, but your stove will suffer a bit from all the oil, haha. Puttanesca is one of those Italian recipes that has been made by everyone and never gets old.

That was May, more or less. A mix of things I had never tried and things I have always known. Which is, I think, exactly how a kitchen should be.

If you try any of these, especially the tofu, I would genuinely love to know.

— Mimoza