Today we have for you:
A salmon dish that’s simple perfection
Good morning. You can love your life and still fantasize about another. I’m lounging under Northeastern black walnut trees in the manner of a king, eating corn and clams and tomatoes and scup, the sky pink and blue, everything perfect in the slightest breeze. Still, my imagination soars: I could be in the middle of an endless Alaska day of netting salmon and picking cloudberries, and wouldn’t that be nice? It sent me to the market, to the glistening slabs of king salmon over ice, a summertime splurge for a New Yorker with wanderlust. What I want to cook: chan chan yaki (above), a miso-butter salmon of rare distinction, Japanese in flavor and execution, exactly what I’d make if I were camping in Homer, down on the Spit. “Chan chan” is onomatopoeiac: the sound of two metal spatulas chopping and mixing vegetables and fish on a griddle. But Marc Matsumoto’s recipe, adapted by our Mia Leimkuhler, requires no such gymnastics: You chop cabbage, onions and carrots in advance of the cooking, sauté them in a skillet, and then put the salmon, daubed with miso butter, on top of them to steam until it has just cooked through. It’s simple perfection, excellent with rice cut through with crumbled, dried seaweed and an ice-cold beer. Won’t you join me this weekend in making that, wherever you stay? Featured Recipe Chan Chan Yaki (Miso Butter Salmon)Other things I’d like to cook in the next couple of days: the navy bean soup that’s been on the menu at the United States Senate Dining Room for more than 100 years; this blueberry, almond and lemon cake; some vegan mapo tofu. I’ll cook over charcoal, too: simple grilled lamb chops with blistered fairy tale eggplants and goat cheese on the side. You don’t need a recipe for those. Just trim their tops, toss them with olive oil and roll them around on the hottest part of the grill until they’re charred and bursting their seams, soft at the centers. Tong them into a bowl, toss with dabs of goat cheese, add salt and black pepper to taste and then drizzle the mixture with a whisper of pomegranate molasses if you have any. Lamb chops love those eggplants deeply. For dessert, maybe some melomakarona, little cookies rich with olive oil and honey? Fantasy No. 2: We’re in Greece! There are many thousands more ideas for what to cook this week awaiting you at New York Times Cooking. (You need a subscription to access them, though. Subscriptions make this whole enterprise possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you please think about subscribing today? Thanks.) Holler for help if you find yourself in a jam with our technology or your account. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me if you’d like to lodge a complaint or offer a compliment: hellosam@nytimes.com. I can’t respond to every letter. But I read each one I get. Now, it’s a considerable distance from anything to do with marjoram or maple syrup, but I enjoyed my colleague Alexis Soloski’s new novel, “Flashout.” (And I was delighted to see that Catherine Chidgey, reviewing the book for The New York Times Book Review, felt the same.) The giant concrete awning over the doors to the Clark Street subway station in Brooklyn Heights collapsed earlier this week, a fact I bring up because usually my bicycle is parked underneath it. Missed me! You should read Jane Mayer on John Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” in The New Yorker, where the piece originally ran. Finally, here’s Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, “New Threats from the Soul,” music for the preparation of salmon. I’ll see you on Sunday.
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