Good morning. The autumn migration continues along the East Coast, with striped bass and false albacore oozing south to the Carolinas, feasting on bait. Here are Bluefin tuna in close to shore, whales, gannets divebombing in formation. It’s wild. They’re harvesting Canada geese in western Nassau County, a bag limit of eight a day. Some sharpies I know pile the breasts into smokers, make what amounts to avian ham.
That’s good eating and seasonal and the sort of thing to remind you that this beauty is fleeting. Soon the harvest will be over. Soon our recipes will fill with root vegetables. Soon there will be stew.
So let’s celebrate while we can. Tautog is in season where I buy my fish, so this week I’ll use the fillets for Julia Moskin’s pan-roasted fish with herb butter (above), the single-greatest fish recipe I’ve ever used, mostly because it gave me a technique for fish cooking that I will use for the rest of my life — frying the fillets hard and crusty on one side, then turning them over for just a kiss of extra heat and a bath of butter.
I’ll cook beets and broccoli this week as well, and carrots and eggplants. I’ll slice radishes thin for use in sandwiches with good butter and salt. I’ll have salad for dinner, as often as possible.
But I won’t have it every dinner! No, it’d be great to eat some orange beef this week, to drink a Nor’easter, to enjoy some roasted porgy with aligot.
And absolutely I’d like to make a weeknight pie or galette, something to remind me that even as we commute in darkness, even as we light fires against the chill of morning, that sunlight and heat are nearby, that they will return again. And so: this fruit galette with apple-cider caramel; this apple pie; this foolproof tarte Tatin.
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Now, how much experience do you have with putting up clams? I’m starting with an old Irish recipe I found: “Boil them from the shells, and take them out with a skimmer and put them into a basin; take of their own liquor half enough to cover over them, and the same quantity of strong vinegar. Whole pepper, allspice and mace, each a teaspoonful; make this hot and then pour it over the clams. After 24 hours, they are fit for eating, and will keep good for a long time.” Really? Any and all advice welcome.
