Good morning. Took a drive with a kid and a dog on Sunday morning, out to where the people drop away and the oystercatchers skim the shoreline, to where it’s quiet but for wind through the spartina, and the slap of the bay against the peat. We walked in companionable silence. I thought about how you’re doing, cooking every day for the first time in ages if ever, and running into recipes that may call for things like escarole and preserved lemons, crème fraîche, maple syrup, Champagne vinegar. Maybe you don’t have those ingredients. Maybe that freaks you out.
It shouldn’t, though the emotion is understandable. We’re all looking for the delicious, and recipes are a good way to find it. But the idea that you have to follow an ingredients list closely to do so is bunk and always has been, unless you’re working a restaurant line. And I say that as a recipe merchant! They’re just sheet music. You can play them in all sorts of ways.
Have confidence at this strange, sheltered time! Use your bean. Escarole’s a bitter green, a member of the chicory family, a cousin to endive, to radicchio. So you could substitute either of those. You could use frisée if you have it. You could use kale, arugula, watercress. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you could make Alison Roman’s chicken and escarole salad with anchovy croutons (above) with frozen chicken nuggets and a bunch of torn iceberg lettuce, and you’d end up with a very good meal.
No preserved lemons? Mix lemon zest with a little salt. Or sauté a few thin slices of lemon in olive oil with a spray of salt. No lemon at all? You have a lime? A splash of orange juice? Say you don’t have crème fraîche? It’s just sour cream with an advanced degree! Yogurt will work as well. For maple syrup, you could deploy honey or molasses, agave nectar or corn syrup. They all taste different, to be sure. But they act the same. There’s no Champagne vinegar in your extensive modern pantry? There’s none in mine either. See crème fraîche: White-wine vinegar works in its place. So does rice-wine vinegar.
Above all do not worry greatly about making the one correct substitution. Instead, think generally and taste as you go. Acids swap for acids. Sweets for sweets. Fire for fire. Texture for texture. The results of substituting ingredients can be magical, and they make the recipe your own.
Speaking of recipes! Here are a whole host of easy ones for when you’re staying put in your home. (Here are even more!) I like the idea of a French onion grilled cheese today. Also, perhaps, creamy pasta with smoked bacon and peas. And could you make a St. Louis gooey butter cake? Lentil soup with sausage? That would make for a killer lunch tomorrow, if you can get yourself away from your screens for an hour and you should.
There are many more recipes waiting for you on NYT Cooking. A lot more than usual of them are free to read even if you haven’t yet subscribed to our site and apps. (Though I hope you do subscribe, so that we can keep doing this.)
Please keep in touch with us, as well, on our Instagram page. We post about news on Twitter, and upload videos to YouTube. Your fellow readers are gathering on Facebook to help keep one another sane in our community group. And you can always write us at cookingcare@nytimes.com for help. Someone will get back to you. (You can reach me directly at foodeditor@nytimes.com to beef or to cheer. I’m getting too much mail these days to be able to respond to each message. But I promise I read and consider each one.)
Now, it’s nothing to do with deglazing your pan with strong tea because you’re out of red wine, but I think it might be good to spend a little time in the wayback machine this evening. You can watch “King of New York,” with Christopher Walken and Laurence Fishburne, on Amazon Prime. (Or read “Great Expectations,” by Charles Dickens, on Project Gutenberg.)
Here’s Joe Coscarelli in The Times with another ace “Diary of a Song,” this one devoted to Grimes, “Delete Forever.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York may be closed, but you can still go to the website and learn all about Gerhard Richter. (Please do.)
Finally, here’s Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Marrakesh Express” and “Blackbird,” Woodstock, 1969. (Nerd alert: The set list shows they actually played “Blackbird” first, then “Marrakesh,” and then Neil Young joined them and things got crazy.) Stay safe, everyone. I’ll be back on Wednesday.
