Good morning. The weekends have been filled with frustration lately, all kinds of broken things that need to be fixed before anything fun can happen: the frost-killed hose bib out front; the 30-amp fuse in the hydraulics on the skiff; the shorted-out taillight on the trailer beneath it. That’s often the way of the world:…
Good morning. Chicken Vesuvio (above) is a Chicago dish, a taste of broad-shouldered Italian America, salt-crispy with a zing of lemon, meltingly tender, with wine-kissed peas and roasted potato wedges gone soft in the sauce. You can knock it out in an hour and should do so this evening, to welcome the weekend in true…
In the vexing moments when we stumble on an abandoned package of chicken thighs in the back of the fridge, we really have to consider two questions: Is it spoiled? And will it make us sick? They aren’t the same thing. The organisms that spoil food make their presence known, causing it to smell funky,…
In the vexing moments when we stumble on an abandoned package of chicken thighs in the back of the fridge, we really have to consider two questions: Is it spoiled? And will it make us sick? They aren’t the same thing. The organisms that spoil food make their presence known, causing it to smell funky,…
Good morning. It’s Mother’s Day weekend for all those who celebrate, which is many of us, even if she’s been gone a few years now and didn’t like the holiday anyway. Mom’s getting younger, in memory, and we’re getting older to meet her at the pass. The relationship’s deepening. It’s easier to understand some of…
Hello! Mia here. Melissa Clark and I swapped days this week, and she’ll be with you on Saturday with a very special Cooking newsletter. My colleague Priya Krishna has a wonderful new article for The New York Times, writing about how cooking has connected her and her mother. Priya writes: “There’s something about cooking together…
Good morning. It was peak cherry blossoms last week where I stay, the flowers almost ready to spring off their branches to blanket the curbs like drifts of snow. There was a deep humidity in the air and it made me think of summer down south, the way the atmosphere can seem almost liquid under…
Of all the crispy fried cutlet variations that have tantalized me over the years, Kay Chun’s chicken katsu might be the most weeknight friendly. Instead of turning to the usual messy deep-fry, Kay shallow-fries the cutlets by using just enough oil to submerge them halfway. The thin disks of meat emerge golden, crunchy and juicy…
Do you ever see a recipe and know immediately that, yes, you’re going to make that? You don’t bother checking what the ingredients are or how long it will take or who created it — you just know that you need to eat that dish. That’s how I felt about this aloo chicken. Of course,…
Good morning. It’s been nearly a decade since the designer Steven Stolman taught me to make his chicken Provençal (above), and I’ve made it one gajillion times since (approximately). It’s a staple for dinner parties and Sunday suppers in my house — an excuse to iron napkins and use the plates we inherited from my…
