Ham El-Waylly’s Comfort Food

Plus: He really wants you to cool it at the farmers market.

Hi and welcome! This newsletter is The Dinner Plan’s weekly recipe dispatch and cookbook giveaway. But the full conversation is only on the podcast—find The Dinner Plan on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast player.

Ham El-Waylly could have written a restaurant cookbook, highlighting dishes from his Brooklyn spot, Strange Delight. Instead, with Hello, Home Cooking, he’s applying what he’s learned as a chef to comforting dishes you can whip up tonight.

“I wanted to write a book that people used,” Ham tells me.

Restaurant cookbooks can be beautiful, he says, but “there’s something special about opening a book that’s dirty and tattered and dog-eared because you’ve used it so much. Those are the types of books that stick around with families.”

Ham’s wide-ranging repertoire of comfort food draws on his childhood in Qatar and visits to family in Egypt and Bolivia, and his years developing dishes for restaurants in the States. One minute, you’re scanning his salad matrix, which pairs red leaf lettuce with canned fish and potato chips, or watercress with tender herbs and corn nuts. The next you’re using chamomile tea as the liquid for a creamy, 5-ingredient broccoli soup.

There’s a tribute to Costco muffins, and one to the empanadas Ham’s mother would make when she was feeling homesick in Doha. There’s cheesy rice, and giardiniera rice, and chicken and rice flavored with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and black lime.

“I think comfort isn’t linked to a specific combo of flavors,” he tells me, describing Egypt’s creamy macarona bechamel, which he sometimes bakes in a loaf pan for a weeknight dinner.

“I wanted to explore all these things that brought me, personally, comfort,” Ham says. As the book took shape, he cooked from his mother’s recipe notebook—the one thing of hers he’s carried around since she died suddenly shortly after he moved to the US at age 19.

He thought back on the video games and wrestling shows he’d loved as a kid in the ’90s, and combed through his memories “of being a 12-year-old Ham, growing up and going through the trials and tribulations that a teen goes through,” he says. “I really wanted to get into that mindset when developing the bulk of the recipes in this book.”

So often, those comfort foods are the things we want to cook for our own families, and I’m always curious about the ways that chefs approach the dinner routine at home. Ham recommends always beginning by moving your ideas and kitchen inventory out of your brain and into a list.

Tune into the full conversation for Ham’s opinion on the best way to shop the farmers market, and scroll down for his recipe for a family favorite: creamy tahini-roasted swordfish, finished with almonds (or pine nuts) toasted in butter.

Win a copy of Hello, Home Cooking

This one’s a great addition to your shelf. Please read carefully as the instructions to enter have changed.

STEP 1:

• Hit “follow” on The Dinner Plan podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you’re already following on one of the above, move on to the next step!

STEP 2: You have two options! Pick one of the below.

• The simplest way to enter this week’s book giveaway is to sign up as a paid subscriber to this newsletter by end of day Wed, March 25, 2026. Paid subscribers also get access to this handy list of spring dinner ideas and the guide to every cookbook recommended on The Dinner Plan so far.

• Or, free subscribers can enter the giveaway by sending in a “what’s in my fridge right now” voice memo for us to play on the podcast. We’ll come up with a dinner idea just for you based on what you have around. Follow the full instructions here by Wed, March 25, 2026.

Winner will be alerted by Substack DM and email. 18+, U.S. and Canada addresses only. Giveaway not sponsored or administered by Substack. Ends March 25, 2026. This send includes affiliate links; a commission from your purchase helps to keep this newsletter going.

Ham mentioned:

• Wonton soup (Serious Eats)

• Amina Al-Saigh’s Macarona bechamel—find Ham’s version in the book!

• Grape vendor at Union Square Greenmarket: Locust Grove Fruit Farm

• FreshDirect Giardinera

• Hank’s Giardiniera

• Ali Slagle’s recipes on NYT Cooking + 40 Ingredients Forever

• Ali Slagle’s crispy rice and chicken appears in her book, I Dream of Dinner

• Hind Qasim on Instagram @bookofdishes, especially her Egyptian goulash

• Nini Nguyen’s Đặc Biệt: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook (Bookshop / Barnes & Noble)

• Noor Murad’s Lugma: Abundant Dishes And Stories From My Middle East (Bookshop / Barnes & Noble), especially the matchbus and madruba

• Keshia Sakarah’s Caribe: A Caribbean Cookbook with History (Bookshop / Barnes & Noble), especially the “green fig” salad from St. Lucia

• Albert Adria’s first pastry book

• Martin Picard’s Au Pied de Cochon Sugar Shack (eBay here, writeup on Eater)

• Jacqui deBono’s Spaghetti frittata

• Omelet soufflé (Serious Eats)

From the ad break:

• Rouxbe Online Culinary School: Get 30% off your first course with code DINNERPLAN30

• Dirty Labs: Use code THEDINNERPLAN to get 15% off your first order

• Society Insurance: Find your agent at SocietyInsurance.com

• Made In Cookware: Head to madein.cc/dinnerplan to unlock your discount offer.

Maggie mentioned:

• Viral dumpling lasagna (TikTok)

• The Pasta Book by Marc Vetri (Bookshop / Barnes & Noble), including the duck and espresso ragu, and the monkfish puttanesca

---

A NOTE FROM TODAY’S SPONSOR

House Foods offers tofu in a variety of different firmness levels, so you can find the perfect fit for whatever you’re cooking. Crumble the premium extra-firm tofu and roast for a wonderful crispy texture, or add premium soft tofu to soups or your next protein-packed smoothie. Find House Foods tofu wherever you shop and on Instacart.

---

Photo: Laura Murray

Tahini-Roasted Swordfish

Convert the fish hater in your life (there’s always one).

Excerpted from Hello, Home Cooking. Copyright © 2026 by Ham El-Waylly. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, A division of Penguin Random House LLC.

One of the few ways my fish-hating sister would eat the stuff was when my mom roasted fillets in a tahini sauce and topped them with fried pine nuts and parsley (a favorite Lebanese preparation). The tahini bakes into a rich, luxurious sauce that pairs especially well with meaty swordfish. But don’t limit yourself to fish. Tahini roasting works great with everything from thick slices of eggplant and zucchini to skin-on chicken breasts and lamb meatballs. Just make sure to give everything a strong sear first; it won’t get any additional color or crisp once you’ve slathered it in tahini.

Serves 2

• 2 skinless swordfish fillets (10 to 12 ounces)

• 2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil

For the Tahini Sauce:

• ½ cup tahini

• ⅓ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 2 lemons), plus more as needed

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 1½ teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt, plus more as needed

• 4 garlic cloves, finely grated

For the Topping:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• ½ cup slivered almonds

• ½ cup parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

• 1 lemon, cut into wedges

• Rice and salad, for serving (optional)

1. Set a wire rack on a baking sheet.

2. Pat the swordfish dry with paper towels and season all over with the salt. Put the swordfish on the rack and let the fish sit in the fridge, uncovered, for at least 3 hours or up to 12 hours.

3. To make the sauce: In a medium bowl, whisk together the tahini, 1 cup water, the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and garlic. Taste and adjust the seasoning with more lemon juice or salt as needed. It should have the consistency of a melted milkshake. Add water a tablespoon at a time if it is too thick or a tablespoon at a time of tahini if it is too thin. (Taste and reseason if adjusting the consistency.) Set aside.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

5. Place a large oven-safe pan over medium-high heat until lightly smoking. Add the neutral oil, swirl to coat, then add the swordfish. Press down firmly on the swordfish with a spatula to ensure maximum contact with the pan. If you have some kind of press, this would be your big moment to use it. Cook until the swordfish is golden-brown on one side, 2 to 4 minutes. Kill the heat, flip the swordfish over, and pour all the tahini sauce on the fish. The fish should be completely enveloped.

6. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake until the swordfish is cooked through; a skewerlike object should pierce the flesh without much resistance, and if you poke a fillet, it should no longer feel fleshy, 12 to 14 minutes.

7. While the fish roasts, make the topping: In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter and almonds and cook, stirring frequently, until the almonds are lightly toasted, 3 to 5 minutes. Kill the heat and add the parsley. Stir to combine.

8. Transfer the fish and tahini sauce to a serving platter. Top with the almond mixture and serve with the lemon on the side. Serve with some white rice and a salad if desired.