Good morning. There was a bald eagle flying up Shin Creek in the Beaverkill Valley, in the Catskill Mountains of New York. I was driving alongside her, on the roadbed above the stream. The eagle was looking for trout, as I would be later, she undoubtedly more successfully than me, and fair play to her for that. A bald eagle is an apex predator. I’m an amateur with a fake bug on the end of a 20-foot leader, waving a stick to send it in the direction of the fish whose head I saw rise on the edge of a riffle, near that stick that points sideways toward the rock — no, the other rock.
It got me thinking about dinner. We had that in common, anyway, the bald eagle and me. For her, rainbow trout sashimi, no soy sauce. For me, spicy sesame noodles with chicken and peanuts (above), though with ground pork in place of the chicken and spaghetti in place of the fresh ramen noodles, because that’s what’s in the cupboard. It’s one of those dinners that comes together fast, with big flavor, and at the end of the week that’s generally what I’m looking for: easy preparation, with significant returns on a modest investment.
Featured Recipe
Spicy Sesame Noodles With Chicken and Peanuts
And then: all-purpose biscuits in the morning, to split, butter and griddle. I’ll use those for midmorning egg sandwiches, with melted Cheddar and crisped bacon, ahead of a long drift on the river, or a short walk followed by a long nap.
For dinner (if you take the buttering of those biscuits seriously, there’ll be no need for lunch), how about grilled lemongrass pork, with some rice vermicelli noodles, roasted peanuts, sliced cucumber, cilantro, mint and a lot of lime wedges?
