Good morning. American pie culture is, mostly, sweet. In Britain, the flavors often run savory — as in this delicious Guinness pie I once adapted from the cooking of Fergus Henderson and Jamie Oliver. Now comes Yotam Ottolenghi with a brilliant new recipe for fish pie with a crust of sourdough croutons (above). I think it would be a marvelous thing to make and eat this weekend, alongside a cucumber salad.
It’s remarkable, really, how the bread that makes the crust can be both crisp and soft, how the fish can be both firm and flaky, how the mustard powder and copious chopped herbs in the sauce make the dish taste light even when it is hugely substantial. There’s a weekend project right there!
One weekend project, anyway. I had someone in my inbox recently calling for advice about this great recipe for grilled pork and peaches that I learned from the chef Francis Mallmann, and which is best cooked on a plancha or in a cast-iron pan set above an open fire. Could he cook it with a tenderloin? The answer: Of course, though the tenderloin has less fat and will cook far more quickly than the pork butt I call for. Act accordingly and, perhaps, increase the amount of butter used with the peaches.
Also from the mailbag, I got a request for a weekend no-recipe recipe, a prompt to cook something instead of strict instructions on how to cook it exactly. I thought immediately of a dish of clams I had the other day at Red Hook Tavern, Billy Durney’s new spot on Van Brunt Street in Brooklyn, where Allison Plumer is running the kitchen. It was like a bowl of linguine with clam sauce, hold the linguine, extra chile oil across the top, with toast points for dipping, oh man.
You know how to do that, I bet: a lot of butter and a lot of garlic foamed together in a pot, with red-pepper flakes and parsley. Add clams and a glass of white wine, cover and cook until the clams are open. Pull the clams and divide them into bowls while the remaining stock cooks down at a furious simmer. Mount a little more butter into that deliciousness, hit it with lemon juice and serve with toast, a fork and a spoon. That’s a fine weekend meal.
As is Gabrielle Hamilton’s recipe for schav, tart and cold! As is the beet dip with labneh Tejal Rao learned to make at the Los Angeles restaurant Botanica. As is, to round things out with a spicy bang, Jim Harrison’s Caribbean stew, which a reader who calls herself Gables Girl let us know is called “Key West Pork Chops” in her family.
There are thousands more possibilities for what to cook this weekend waiting for you on NYT Cooking. You could make lobster summer rolls. Watermelon chaat. Chicken salad!
Yes, we do require that you take out a subscription to access them. That’s so we can pay for the lobster and watermelon, also for health insurance and shoes. (Hey, maybe you have a subscription already. Perhaps you’d like to buy a gift subscription for someone? They’re great gifts for groomsmen, bridesmaids and high-school graduates. Maybe for your aunt on the occasion of her birthday?)
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Now, it’s a long, difficult walk from the pantry and kitchen, but you should watch Rukmini Callimachi in the latest episode of “The Weekly” on Hulu, about how ISIS killed four cyclists who were traveling around the world.
I’m still looking for the song of the summer. Looking for same, The Fader asked 11 artists to deliver a perfect summer playlist. Here we go!
Slipknot has a whiskey now? These are marketing end times.
Finally, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York commissioned the fascinating “Bastard Cookbook: The Odious Smell of Truth,” which was published at the start of June. It’s by the restaurateur Antto Melasniemi and the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. The book wreaks havoc on the notion of authenticity and most cleverly offers a recipe for bastard pad Thai that marries the Thai dish to one of Finland’s favorite meals by cloaking the noodles in custard and grated cheese, then baking it to serve under sprays of ketchup and mayonnaise, along with cilantro leaves and roasted peanuts.
Would eat. See you on Sunday!
