a new name, and a caprese salad choose your own adventure

welcome to 'mostly french', the same idea but a new (more on-the-nose) name

When I started my substack adventure, I named the blog after our company—Okay, Perfect. A brand that I have been quietly building, behind the scenes, for sometime now. It’s the holding company for La Pitchoune/La Peetch, the production company we’ve started (more on that another time, and has a lot of neat news around it, but I digress….), the restaurant, my business coaching work for people who actually want to build companies not just followers, the leadership work I do for humans who live at what is typically called ‘the margins’, and maybe most importantly…The Online Courageous Cooking School (relaunching May 1st!!!!)

(Before you ask: Yes, what I do is quite multi-faceted. And a lot of it I don’t talk about very publicly (yet). And yes, I do sleep. Generally speaking 8 hours a night. :) )

And as I’ve written here, I have realised that this isn’t a space for my company. But a space for me. Me as a cook, as a mother, a recipe developer, and as a business owner. And I want something that represents that.

Me.

Not my business. Not La Peetch. Just me.

So welcome to mostly french. (Which means I get to call readers em-effers, which frankly, warms the cuckolds of my grieving, tired-of-social-media heart).

A space for me. And you. And all the multitudes you have and are (and me too) While this space is mostly recipes, that are mostly French or French adjacent in style. It is also very much a space that is constantly changing. Evolving and growing.

Also, as we launch and grow the other facets of our business, I want it to feel like you’re hearing from me, directly. Not as ‘CEO of Okay, Perfect’ but rather just from my kitchen, home, and brain to yours. I’m *hoping* that as our company grows and evolves, you might get a kick out of hearing from me, through all the ups and the downs. And through the lens of food. But from a place that is far more personal, and less as ‘news from the Okay Perfect CEO’.

So hi. I’m Makenna, a writer. A mama. A CEO. A mentor. A cook. A teacher. A TV host. And the writer of this here substack. A place that is solace in the noise of there internet (for me at least).

But mostly, I’m just mostly French. Not really all French. Not really an ‘American’ any longer. Never really gonna be French either, even if they do grant me citizenship someday. Just kinda. Adjacently. Mostly.

To celebrate, I wrote a very not French, but also, it’s kinda south of France too, recipe. Next week, I’ll be sharing an extended version of this, as a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ cooking sketch. Paid subscribers will also get access to these sorts of sketches included in their membership (which starts at $7 a month). They are drawn by my friend Marta Spendowska. We’re still working out the kinks in workflow (see also: I am a master procrastinator on writing, so I need to get ahead of the game so she can deliver them.

But in the meantime…

Cilantro, Chili Crisp-ish, Caprese Salad

I had some good friends over this past weekend, and I had tomatoes leftover from my very exuberant and perhaps a bit foolhardy, first of the season tomato haul. (I bought four pounds. Reader: Unless you want to live on a pure tomato diet, please remember that tomatoes—once they arrive—last the rest of the season. So you need not buy EVERY PRETTY ONE ON THE SUPERMARKET SHELF).

After nearly 8 meals in a row, with a version of a tomato salad. I fell upon this one that I feel like it worth sharing in full. It all came together because of the following exhibits….

A) Obscene abundance of tomatoes (oh so many.)

B) Chilli crisp making spree

C) Bunch o’ Cilantro in need of being used before it gave up the ghost and morphed into compost/chicken food.

Re: exhibit B: I had been on a chilli crisp making spree (last week, I shared a Chilli Crisp recipe from

Sohla El-Waylly

, it’s a good one that I cannot replicate because of ingredient availability in France). So I ahve been playing with what I can make myself, with ingredients from my local-ish Asian grocery store.

But you, if you’re US based, can also buy it easily. I cannot, because #france. (Hence the making spree.)

Two of my favs if making isn’t in your interest set/you don’t have enough spices?

Fly by Jing

Burlap and Barrel

What I can get here are spices (I buy Burlap & Barrel in bulk because we use them in recipe-development for the restaurant, and the Courageous Cooking School. Because we want you to be able to get some of the dang ingredients at home that we use in France.)

If you don’t want to fuss with my Mexico-inspired flavor profile that I pushed into a typical Chinese condiment, don’t! I just wanted a caprese salad that wasn’t in the normal flavor profile. And I had a lot of beautiful things on hand. But almost all chilli crisps (at least the ones I have met) will work fine with this recipe, even if you don’t follow mine.

Caprese with Jalapeño Garlic Crisp