Good morning. My pal Peter Kaminsky has written roughly one million cookbooks over the past couple of decades. One of them, “Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way,” written with the chef Francis Mallmann, is among the best books on cooking over live fire you’re ever likely to find. For those who thrill to exploration of what Mallmann calls “the uncertain edge of burnt,” it’s a revelation.
Peter calls such cooking “Maillardian,” a tribute to the early 20th-century chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described the chemical reaction created as the sugars and amino acids on the surface of food combine in the presence of high heat. That chemical reaction creates all sorts of fascinating, delicious results. (Try this grilled pork and peaches situation and you’ll see.)
But not all live-fire cooking is about the Maillard reaction, as you’ll discover if you follow Peter’s lead, and make his new recipe for lomo al trapo (above), a spectacular Colombian preparation of beef tenderloin.
Featured Recipe
Lomo al Trapo (Salt-Grilled Beef Tenderloin)
It’s simple stuff, in the way that jumping off a high cliff into deep water is simple stuff. It’s not so much difficult as scary. You crust the beef with mustard, herbs and a ton of kosher salt, then wrap it in a clean, wine-soaked dish towel, tie everything off and … lay the package directly on a bed of glowing coals.
Cook, carefully flipping the tenderloin a few times, until the internal temperature of the beef is 110 degrees, then take the package off the coals and let it rest until the temperature reaches 120. Unwrap the (now-ruined) dish towel, use a hammer to crack the salt crust, clear everything away and cut your tenderloin into thick slices. Serve with chimichurri, you hero, and take plenty of pictures of everything to send to me at [email protected].
No? Throwing a dish-towel-wrapped beef tenderloin into the fire is not something you’d like to do? That’s cool. I understand. We have thousands and thousands of other recipes to make this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking.
It’s Eid-al-Adha, for instance. We’ve got recipes for the Tashreeq days. Maybe a lamb biryani, or a Kerala-style vegetable korma? I like this recipe for polo ba tahdig, Persian rice with a bread crust on the bottom. Also, this one for a Syrian walnut baklava.
Alternatively, I could see myself consuming a Cobb salad this weekend, or this crunchy spring iceberg salad. Also, some polenta with asparagus, peas and mint. The strawberries we’ve been getting lately have been great, if a little bit watery from all the rain — which makes them perfect for cooking: say, a strawberry spoon cake? That would be terrific this weekend, too.
Go see what you find on our site and app, and cook what you’re moved to cook. (Yes, you need a subscription to do that. Subscriptions make this whole dance possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you consider doing so today? Thanks.)
And please write for help if you find yourself at odds with our technology or your account: [email protected]. Someone will get back to you.
Now, it’s some considerable distance from anything to do with pea shoots or duck legs, but Chris Pavone’s latest novel, “The Doorman,” sees him far from his usual international haunts. Instead, he writes about New York, exploring class and race, greed and lust, wealth and deceit and so forth, really getting his Tom Wolfe on. The first sentence: “Chicky Diaz stands on his little patch of the earth, the clean, quiet sidewalk in front of the Bohemia Apartments, thinking: There sure are a lot of great places to kill someone in this city.” Let’s go!
There are few better sportswriters than Mark Kriegel, as he shows in this epic accounting, in Esquire, of the June 27, 1988, boxing match between Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks at the dawn of the Tabloid Decade.
I raced through S.A. Cosby’s latest thriller, “King of Ashes,” in advance of its release on June 10. Get on that when you can.
Finally, Miley Cyrus spoke with The Times’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro about her new album, “Something Beautiful.” Here’s track nine, “Walk of Fame,” featuring Brittany Howard. Disco’s back? I’ll see you on Sunday.
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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