Good morning. A happy Juneteenth to you, a holiday that celebrates the recognition of freedom for enslaved Africans in the United States while at the same time displaying its cost in blood-red food: crimson barbecue sauce for the chicken on the grill, for instance; watermelon lemonade; a strawberry slab pie (above), for dessert. Eat big and reflect on where we’re at, and where you think we need to go, and what you can do to help that happen. Joy and sorrow march together always in America, and that’s O.K., so long as we know it and aim to make things better.
So that’s today, solemn reflection and sweetness combined. Later this week, you might follow my lead and cook without a recipe, because you don’t always need one to make good food. And for that, I’m thinking grilled squid salad, because squid are running hard in the waters near where I live, and the market has dish tubs full of them for sale. (Also, they’re delicious, though you could use shrimp in their place, or even cubed chicken thighs.)
Squid are best and certainly cheapest if you buy them whole. To clean them, cut each one in half just below the eyes, separating the tentacles from the head and setting them aside. Then hold the body gently with your non-dominant hand, and use the other to pull out the head, ink sac and intestines, followed by the clear skeleton, which will slide out like a straw. Move to the sink and rub at the skin of the squid until it comes up a little and you can grasp it. Peel it off and rinse the body and tentacles. This takes about four minutes total, and is very satisfying.
Then fire up your grill. Toss the bodies and tentacles with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill them fast over high heat, until they’re just charred and tender. Roughly chop the tentacles and then slice the bodies into rings. Mix them in a bowl with a handful of drained capers, the juice of a couple of lemons, a glug of olive oil and a little more salt and pepper to taste. Add a lot of chopped parsley and some greens of your choosing, then toss gently and serve.
Other things to cook in coming days: I like this one-pot pasta with ricotta and lemon, very summery. Also this luscious vegetarian shawarma with mushrooms, on pita. If you liked the squid salad, you could move on to chicken piccata. Or swordfish piccata! I do love a cacio e pepe. And a cherry-almond smoothie.
You can find thousands more recipes on NYT Cooking, at least once you’ve taken out a subscription to our site and apps. Go browse around a while and see what appeals. You can get more inspiration on our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages — including this nice new jam from Alison Roman, cooking a kind of chicken confit. Like and subscribe!
And if something goes wrong along the way, either with our technology or your cooking, just reach out for help. We’ll provide the best we can. Write: cookingcare@nytimes.com.
Now, why don’t you spend a little time reading our journalism. Here’s Kim Severson on the rise and fall of the gender-reveal cake. Also, with Neil Genzlinger, on the life and career of the celebrated food writer Molly O’Neill, who died this week at 66. And here’s Eric Asimov with a full-throated call to rethink wine criticism in the wake of the retirement of Robert M. Parker Jr. Follow Michael Ruhlman on the trail of the best fried chicken in the United States. Lastly, do read Pete Wells on Van Da, a new Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan.
It doesn’t have a whit to do with spring rolls or pinot noir, but you should also absolutely read William Langewiesche’s “What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane,” about the disappearance in 2014 of Malaysia Airlines’ Flight 370, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. That’s in The Atlantic.
Finally, pride month continues, and I really don’t know about this new Taylor Swift thing, “You Need to Calm Down.” So here’s Tom Robinson Band live in Manchester in 1977, “Glad to Be Gay.” I’ll be back on Friday!
