Good morning. I’m going to let you in on a secret. I peddle recipes for a living, but I don’t always use them. You shouldn’t, either. Cook from recipes just as musicians play from scores, but not every time. You shouldn’t be bound by recipes. You can, and ought to, improvise. The act of doing so rewards your kitchen confidence. It compounds it.
Start today, simply. Go to the fish counter and find a big, beautiful fillet of salmon. (If there’s wild king salmon in from Alaska, splurge on that.) Then use it to make roasted salmon with brown sugar and mustard (above).
It’s easy work. Heat your oven to 400. Make a mixture of brown sugar and the mustard you like, in whatever ratio pleases you — I use just enough brown sugar to bring a slight sweetness to coarse-grained Dijon, myself. Then place your salmon on a foil-lined sheet pan, shower it with salt and ground black pepper, slather it with the mustard mixture and roast it until it’s just cooked through. (That’s probably about 10 minutes or so.) Then serve with braised greens and rice, as if it’s a magic trick.
Featured Recipe
Roasted Salmon Glazed With Brown Sugar and Mustard
As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
Sarah Copeland brought us this recipe for tofu makhani, a vegetarian riff on butter chicken. It’s rich and velvety, really great. Sometimes I make it with heavy cream, other times with coconut milk. Which is better? Who’s to say?
Tuesday
Pesto alla Trapanese is Sicilian, a mixture of almonds, garlic, mint and tomatoes that’s excellent with pasta or spooned over roasted fish. Sherry Rujikarn’s recipe was adapted from the London-based chef Giorgio Locatelli and it’s fantastically easy, just the thing for a weeknight feast.
Wednesday
My colleague Alexa Weibel adapted this recipe for a perfect tuna melt from the one Sam Yoo serves at his Golden Diner in New York. I don’t like to be bossy (ha!), but make sure to use salt and vinegar potato chips when you assemble the sandwich. Their tang is important to the overall success of the dish.
Thursday
Kayla Hoang brought us this smart recipe for a Vietnamese-inspired summer roll noodle salad, no rolling required. Instead, you just toss everything that would go into the roll with a muscular dressing that’s like a hybrid of peanut dipping sauce and nuoc cham, and serve to applause.
Friday
And then you can roll into the weekend with Elyse Inamine’s recipe for mochiko chicken, adapted from one she learned from a Hawaiian food blogger, Relle Lum, whose mom and grandmother made it without a recipe (to end where we started) when she was growing up. It’s great with roasted pineapple and mac salad, if you have the time.
There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Explore our offerings and see what sparks desire. (You need a subscription, of course. Subscriptions make this whole enterprise possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you think about subscribing today? Thank you.)
And please reach out for help if you find yourself caught crosswise by our technology or at odds with your account. We’re at [email protected]. Someone will get back to you. You can also write to me if you’d like to deliver a compliment or a complaint: [email protected]. I can’t respond to every letter. There’s a lot of mail. But I read every one I get.
Now, it’s nothing to do with turmeric or rosemary, but I’ve been having fun watching Josh Holloway strut around on “Duster” on Max. Mopar forever!
You should read Merve Emre on the history of advice columns, in The New Yorker.
And I quite liked Peter Nichols’s dark Maine novel “Granite Harbor,” from last year.
Finally, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on this day in 1900. He published “The Little Prince” 43 years later, and launched a million dreams (at least!). Take care of yourself. I’ll be back next week.
Sam Sifton is an assistant managing editor, responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage, and the founding editor of New York Times Cooking.
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