Good morning. Julie Powell famously learned to cook by making her way through all of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” an endeavor she chronicled in a blog that became a book and then a movie.
I tried a similar march with Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby’s “Let the Flames Begin” when I was coming up, but no blog or culinary bildungsroman emerged from the process, much less a Hollywood film. Still, I got very good over the fire. I used the book to practice and then to master (maybe?) the art of American grilling, and the confidence it gave me eventually allowed me to stray from the recipes, to adapt them and eventually to make them my own.
This recipe for grilled soy-basted chicken thighs with spicy cashews (above) is one of my favorite examples, an adaptation of an appetizer dish that Schlesinger and Willoughby developed at the turn of the century. The skinless meat browns beautifully over a medium flame and a basting of gingery soy sauce and brown sugar lacquers it beautifully at the end.
Featured Recipe
Grilled Soy-Basted Chicken Thighs With Spicy Cashews
I serve the chicken over salad greens, generally, with white rice on the side, with plenty of sriracha-roasted cashews for texture and heat. But you could freestyle a po’boy if you prefer, with shredded lettuce, a little mayonnaise and just as many cashews. That’s a fantastic weekend-ender, just the sort of meal to combat the Sunday scaries.
