You Give Slop a Bad Name

The internet, to put it mildly, is a bleak place these days.

It'd be hard to believe it if you didn't experience it first-hand, but this wasn't always the case. The internet was once a vibrant, useful and occasionally even aesthetically-pleasing place! Sure, there might've been banner ads and pop-up windows, but there were also websites, places you'd bookmark and visit daily, cycling through fresh, original content made by real people.

That's hardly the case today, of course.

The once-fertile ground of the internet has eroded into a barren hellscape of recycled, decontextualized and outright fake content. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than on Facebook, a place I used to go to keep up on my friends' post-collegiate lives that's now just a broken ATM spitting out Russian dashcam videos, nonsensical household hacks, faux-inspirational drivel and uncanny-valley-creepy AI-generated images.

A term has emerged to attempt to describe this flow of subprime content: slop.

It's an apt term, one that captures the feel of the internet today, but it's one that I can't help feel a little sad about, because... well, I love slop. It's one of my favorite genres of food! To me, slop has always meant the meals I make and consume when I'm utterly unconcerned with the tastes and/or judgment of others–meals I make for pure comfort and indulgence. Back in my marathon-running days, there was nothing I loved more than coming back from an hours-long training run and constructing a big bowl of delicious slop.

(This usually consisted of some frozen-bagged grain from Trader Joe's, a random protein, an egg, cheese and hot sauce. It would probably kill me today.)

I can't singlehandedly turn the internet of 2025 back into the internet of my memories. I'm just one man, and the big tech companies are making too much money burying us in garbage.

But I can continue to fight my battle to reclaim the good name of slop.

Friends, it's Friday again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

I think you already know that I've got some tasty slop lined up today, but that's not all I've got. We're heading full-steam into the weekend with:

• A small victory in the ongoing battle between my kids and flavor!
• A smoothed-down and gussied-up version of one of my favorite cocktails!
• Great music and book recommendations!
• A great moment in being a particular kind of Dad!
• Pets, and more!

It's Friday. Let's slop it up.

The Long and Winding Road to Flavortown

My children have been eating solid food for the better part of a decade now, and for the vast majority of that time, they have been at war with the idea of flavor.

They're not entirely-unadventurous eaters, mind you; I've documented here before my son's surprising willingness to try things like oysters, mussels and escargot. They'll generally try new foods. Seasoning, however, remains their mortal enemy. If I serve them anything more heavily-seasoned than a Raising Cane's chicken finger (that is to say: seasoned at all), I'm sure to be confronted with crinkled noses and "what's this stuff on it?" accusations, as though I were attempting to poison them with dried herbs.

Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when a dinner at one of Dishoom's London locations this summer, they tried and loved the "Gunpowder Potatoes", a dish of roasted new potatoes liberally dressed with a complex Indian spice mixture. I referenced this in my travel-recap post after returning, but I had to put the dish to the real test: recreating it at home and finding out whether it was a new front in the fight for flavor, or simply a fleeting mirage of Vacation Brain.

Gunpowder Potatoes (ala Dishoom)

• 2 pounds small new potatoes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
• 1-1/2 tablespoons garam masala
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 3 tablespoons ghee (or melted butter)
• 1/2 bunch green onions, chopped (discarding the ends)
• 1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
• juice of 1-2 limes (depending on size)

Start a large pot of salted water, and preheat the oven to 400F. Boil the potatoes until they're mostly floating, about 8-10 minutes. Drain, then cut the potatoes in half; I used kitchen scissors to get a nice rough cut. Toss the cut pieces with the olive oil, then spread on a baking sheet, turn on the broiler, and roast them for 5-10 minutes.

While they're crisping up, toast the seeds in a dry, hot pan for 1-2 minutes until just-fragrant but not smoking, then grind in a mortar and pestle. (Using ground spices and skipping the toasting would work if you don't have one.) Mix the ground spices with the garam masala and salt.

Remove the roasted potatoes from the oven, and toss in a large bowl with the spice mixture, ghee, green onions, cilantro and lime juice.

I am pleased to report that these turned out as good as I could've hoped for when attempting to translate a restaurant dish to home cookery—and even more pleased that the kids once again loved them.

The war on flavor isn't over, but I've finally scored a significant victory.

Slop It Like It's Hot

Of course, I couldn't just serve them potatoes for dinner. (I could serve myself just potatoes for dinner, but only when no one's looking. Refer back to today's intro.)