Good morning. I took a long walk with friends along the bayside beach at Breezy Point the other day, Queens looking north at the rise of Manhattan in the distance, and when it was over we went to L&B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend for lunch. I ate my pizza under an umbrella in the restaurant’s front yard and thought: Spumoni is such an excellent word, the plural form of spumone, from the Italian spuma, or foam. It refers to any layered or molded gelato, basically, with candied fruits and nuts, and often whipped cream. Spumoni makes me think of summertime, of whales, of Naples but really of Brooklyn.
And now it makes me think of spumoni ice cream cake (above), a recipe that Ali Slagle just built for us out of reporting and practice, and that you could make yourself with store-bought ice cream, amaretti and Maraschino cherries. (Speaking of which, did you read Ian Frazier on “The Maraschino Mogul’s Secret Life,” in The New Yorker?) You really could make that cake today, right now, soon as you’re back from the store, and then serve it this evening to cheers after a simple dinner of grilled sausages with onions and peppers piled into a hero roll or baguette. American-Italian food for the win.
For Monday dinner, when some eschew flesh, you might try this outstanding new recipe from David Tanis, for rice salad with currants, almonds and pistachios. And perhaps for dessert, now that you’re making them more regularly, this blackberry jam crostata from Melissa Clark?
Tuesday calls for grilled fish with salsa verde, at least if you can find some good fillets at the market. If you can’t: chicken with salsa verde instead? Or this awesome recipe for tuna salad that Tejal Rao learned in Mexico City?
On Wednesday evening, I’m thinking you could go with pasta with seared scallops, burst tomatoes and herbs. (Attend well to the notes on that recipe, please. Like some correspondents, I generally make most of the sauce before searing the scallops, so as to serve them hot.)
And then you can head into the weekend with Alexa Weibel’s ace new recipe for zucchini salad with pecorino, basil and almonds. It reminds me fondly-sadly of The Red Cat in Chelsea, which closed in December, and which I wrote about for The Times.
There are thousands of other recipes to consider cooking this week awaiting your attention on NYT Cooking. Why, here are 14 stunning summer fruit desserts right now! Yes, you do need a subscription to access them. We are a subscription-based business. But you can see what we’re up to for free on Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. (Check me out, too, if you like: @samsifton.)
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Now, it has very little to do with cooking, but there is a big kitchen, so… would you buy Kid Rock’s house in Detroit?
