Good morning. My pal Nick has some pork for me, off the two pigs he raised for slaughter up in the Catskills this year. My brother’s got some goat and lamb and venison, and it’s a long story where that all came from, but the meat is good and there’s a lot of it. In addition to smothered chops and roasts and curries and pies, I’ll be making a lot of spiedies these next few months.
Of course you can follow the recipe (above). But having done so once or twice, you can also veer off into our Wednesday tradition of cooking without one, and simply respond to a prompt: Bloody Mary-marinated spiedies, meat of your choosing, broiled crisp and salty and tight. So: tomato juice, vodka, salt and pepper. Loads of hot sauce and lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, whisked with olive oil. Some like a punch of garlic, onion powder, some celery seed. I demand a big hit of horseradish. Slide some cubed protein into that and let it sit for a day. Then thread the cubes onto bamboo sticks and broil them, turning them often to crisp and cook them through. Serve with cheap Italian bread, warmed and buttered, and Utica greens.
I like to marinate spiedies for a long time, like 24 hours. So tonight maybe I could cook linguine with shrimp and these lemon-pistachio-mint bread crumbs that Colu Henry came up with the other day. Though maybe this vegetarian carbonara with spinach might be easier than arguing with the children about whether they actually dislike shrimp. Or halibut with brown butter, lemon and sage? (That’s a great dish even if halibut’s not a fish you can get. Try it with flounder or snapper, grouper or sea scallops instead.) “But I don’t like halibut,” says a child. Ah, who needs the conflict? Chicken teriyaki for the win.
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Now, please do take some time to read Priya Krishna on free lunch in corporate America. It’s remarkable the lengths employers will go to keep their workers in the building, on campus, at their desks, toiling away. (He typed while drinking free tea, ahead of eating a gratis morning banana from the stack in the pantry.)
It’s a far distance from salad bars and unlimited toast, but what do you make of this Sally Rooney and her “Conversations With Friends”? I’m late to it but reading with deep interest.
I know as much about Phish as I do about golf, but I do enjoy the passion of those who follow those pursuits. Here’s lost footage of the band’s concert at Amy’s Farm in Auburn, Maine, Aug. 3, 1991.
When you misspell a name, they call it a typo. But when you mistakenly add a suffix to one, it’s like a hiccup of the brain and more embarrassing. That cool photograph I posted of Nancy Pelosi the other day is of her standing with John F. Kennedy, not with his son John F. Kennedy Jr. Derp.
Finally, listen to Spike Lee on “Here’s the Thing,” with Alec Baldwin, talking “On the Waterfront” and a whole lot more. It’s great. See you on Friday.
