Hi. Kim here, pinch hitting for Melissa.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably Wednesday. And if you’re like me, you’re probably at work. (Actually, this is my work, but let’s not get lost in the details.)
A question: What gets you through the workday, besides taking a moment to read newsletters? For me, it’s my work wife. You may know her as Julia Moskin.
From the moment I moved to New York from the Bay Area several hundred years ago she has given me the kind of invaluable information only a New Yorker can give. Like: If you look cabdrivers in the eye while you are crossing the street, they are less likely to hit you.
We’ve been through endless editors and Thanksgivings. We wrote a cookbook and helped beget New York Times Cooking. Her love of Le Creuset runs deep. She wrote about it this week. When I got married, she gave me a Le Creuset Dutch oven in classic flame. I say “me” because I kept it in the divorce.
She also has given me recipes (finally, she gets to the damn food!). Just last night I made sauce gribiche with the recipe she got from the editor Judith Jones. It’s the best thing for lightly steamed spring asparagus.
Julia has a thing for fried chicken, and one of her best recipes is this super crispy yangnyeom dak, or Korean fried chicken, which she adapted from Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee. It’s fast, because you are frying boneless thighs (although wings work) that have spent an hour or so in a bowl with onions and garlic before getting tossed in cornstarch, and gently dropped in oil. You probably have almost everything you need for the simple gochujang glaze already.
Featured Recipe
Korean Fried Chicken
Let’s move on to some risotto from Martha Rose Shulman, another cook I hold in high regard. You know how people say some houses have “good bones”? Well, NYT Cooking has good bones because of her recipes. They always produce the results I’m looking for, and I use this mushroom risotto recipe a lot. Right now, at least in some parts of the country, it’s the perfect vehicle for some springtime morels and fresh peas.
Here’s a recipe for Greek yogurt-marinated salmon, a new one from Lidey Heuck. She spent seven years working for Ina Garten, which is good enough for me. Lidey’s trick is the yogurt, which she punches up with garlic, ginger and a spoonful of Dijon. It makes the fish especially tender.
I’ll also be making Yewande Komolafe’s saag shrimp, a recipe she picked up from the chef Pourin Singh at Le Taj in Montreal. Assembling the ingredients is the hardest part (I’ll be using Southern gulf shrimp, of course). The cooking part is easy. The results will make you feel like a restaurant chef.
And speaking of great Southern things, Easter is coming, which in my kitchen means it’s time to make this lemon cheese layer cake from Edna Lewis. The name is very Southern, where a certain segment of cake bakers refers to lemon curd as lemon cheese. I use Meyer lemons for the curd, which I layer on thickly and let fall in lazy sheets over the sides.
Well, if you’ve made it this far and aren’t already a subscriber, you might want to know that you will need to subscribe to get these excellent recipes, along with thousands of others available at New York Times Cooking. If you need any help with a technical issue, don’t ask me! The experts are at [email protected]. And I’m [email protected].
Kim Severson is an Atlanta-based reporter who covers the nation’s food culture and contributes to NYT Cooking.
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