Returning, Remembering, and Cooking Forward

Notes from Australia, intentions for the year ahead, and a soup for winter nights

NIK SHARMA Jan 11, 2026

Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

I’m freshly back from Australia, where I celebrated my cousin’s wedding, spent time with family in Melbourne, escaped to Tasmania, and rang in the New Year in Sydney. Every time I visit, I somehow fall a little more in love with the country and the people. It’s becoming a pattern. A very pleasant pattern.

My biggest folly this trip? Packing. I confidently assumed “summer in Australia” meant I could live exclusively in shorts and breezy shirts. The weather had other plans. It turned out to be cooler than expected, which meant I spent part of the trip mildly underdressed and dramatically layering whatever warmer pieces I could find, looking like I had packed for three different climates and committed to none.

At the risk of sounding delightfully unadventurous, I don’t have any extreme, cinematic goals for 2026. I’m not climbing Everest. I’m not jumping out of planes. My ambitions are gentler, but just as heartfelt: I’d love to finally take a bonsai class, start a personal photography project I’ve been putting off, get better at my Lagree Reformer workouts (which I fell in love with last year), read more books, and spend a little less time staring into the glowing rectangle in my hand pretending it’s “research.”

Small shifts, soft goals, and hopefully fewer packing mistakes.

On a much more sobering note, we lost the incredible and deeply generous Chef Elle Simone Scott this week. I had the privilege of meeting Elle during my very first days at America’s Test Kitchen, and even in that brief window, her presence left a lasting imprint on me.

Elle was the first Black woman to join the ATK show, and for so many people, she was not just a familiar face on television, but a symbol of possibility, belonging, and excellence. When I met her, she greeted me with an ease and warmth that immediately put me at home. She was open, encouraging, and genuinely invested in helping newer voices find their footing, their confidence, and their place.

In a kitchen—and an industry—that can often feel intimidating, Elle led with kindness. She made space. She lifted people up. And she did it all while carrying her own quiet strength. She will be deeply missed, and her impact will live on in the many people she encouraged, inspired, and welcomed in.

Chorizo and White Bean Soup

Inspired by Goan and Iberian flavors, this is the kind of soup that smells like you’ve been cooking all day, even though you absolutely have not. Smoky chorizo releases fat-soluble flavor compounds into the pot, creamy white beans thicken the broth naturally with their starches, and a final hit of greens and acid wakes everything back up so it doesn’t taste like winter fatigue in a bowl.

In other words, it’s comfort food engineered for maximum flavor efficiency.

You can find the full recipe over at America’s Test Kitchen — and I highly recommend putting it into heavy weeknight rotation while pretending you planned it days in advance.