Finally, I’m definitely making a platter of her fancy canned cranberries, because it’s such a clever, chic idea: wit and deliciousness combined. To slice canned cranberry sauce as if it were a ripe tomato is top-drawer Alison. It’s my favorite thing.
How about you? You can use our Thanksgiving menu planner to figure out some of what you want to cook at the end of the month, or you can browse through our turkey recipes, to see what appeals. (This mojo turkey is no joke.) It is absolutely the right time — it is always the right time — to think about pie.
As for dinner tonight? I was fishing east of the Breezy Point jetty over the weekend, maybe a mile out from the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, drifting quick on the tide. The water was sparkly and ocean clear, run through with striped bass sipping sand eels and the occasional late-season bonito beneath them. One of those grabbed my big Clouser fly, did some head-shaking runs and eventually came to the boat, and that was my dinner a few hours later, no recipe required.
I had thought to make poke. But one of the kids asked for sushi, and so sushi I made: the fillets of fish cut as carefully as I could manage, then placed onto thumbs of sushi rice and rolled into tubes of nori and finally eaten on its own, sashimi-style, when we ran out of rice. With soy sauce to cut the sweet fattiness of the meat, a little wasabi powder mixed with water for a fiery paste to do the same, and some of the dry Japanese seasoning known as furikake, but which my kids call “shake,” it all made for a simple dinner of incredible elegance, wild perfection, the best sort of way to honor the harvest. Try it with the best and freshest fish you can find at the market.
Or don’t!
You might prefer quick-roasted chicken with tarragon, or perhaps a nice big bowl of pasta alla Norma sorta, from Colu Henry. I’m not judging, either way.
You’ll find thousands more ideas for what to cook on NYT Cooking. (Yes, you need a subscription to access them.)
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And please write if anything goes sideways. We’re here to help. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We will get back to you.
Now, it’s really nothing to do with cooking or eating, but if you can make it to David Byrne’s “American Utopia” at the Hudson Theater on Broadway, I think you’ll find it a remarkable, uplifting, cheerful, strange and smart affair. I couldn’t have imagined, way back when, that Byrne would someday take on the role Fred Rogers used to play, but here I am in the neighborhood again, feeling good about the future, despite all.
Speaking of which, please read Michael Schwirtz and Gaelle Borgia on Russia’s meddling in the election of the president of Madagascar, in The Times. The Kremlin wants what’s in the ground in Africa so bad.
Finally, back on the subject of food, I’ve been loving the strange explorations of Chinese cuisine brought forth by “Flavorful Origins,” on Netflix. Check it out. I’ll see you on Friday.
