Today we have for you:
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Mark Bittman’s five-star salmon burgers
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A hardy, crunchy broccoli salad
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And ranch water to wash it all down
Good morning. You miss me? I drove east from New York and made it as far as Prince Edward Island before the clock rang and I had to start for home. It was a week of dusty miles and chugging ferry boats, sweet Atlantic halibut, fried things, huge tides and hydrangeas everywhere. I didn’t cook at all.
Not that I didn’t think about it.
I tore through a fish cake at a bar in Halifax, and though it was delicious, I dreamed that night of the wild salmon I had in the freezer, how I’d make it into salmon burgers (above) as soon as I got home, thick and juicy to serve above buttered toast, with a cidery green salad on the side.
Featured Recipe
Salmon Burgers
I had a fine seafood risotto at a knockabout English snug in Charlottetown, and all I could think about was how much better I’d make it at home, with lobster stock and seared Shinnecock scallops, some pan-seared tautog, perhaps a scattering of crabmeat.
Cereal and thin milk in a motel lobby at dawn? I resolved to make granola soon enough, to eat with thick yogurt and slices of peach. But not then. We filled our water bottles and got on our way, toward forest baths and endless stretches of beach and rock and meadow.
This was hardly a bummer. I’m always thinking of the meals ahead. It was glorious to be out in the world exploring with family, off the grid, far from the deadlines and responsibilities of regular life. It was “Anne of Green Gables” country, and I thought of the books as we walked: “Look at that sea, girls — all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”
I’ll hold those memories tight now, as I cook. Those burgers first, of course, slathered with Kenai dip, a recipe my friend Julia O’Malley adapted from one that the Alaska cookbook author Maya Wilson came up with to ape the one sold by Echo Lake Meats in Kenai, Alaska, since the 1970s. (Julia eats hers with potato chips on the banks of the Kenai River while fishing for salmon.) With maybe a broccoli salad to go with? And a summer berry buckle for dessert?
I’ll put up some waffles for breakfast tomorrow, then follow them with kimbap for lunch and a fine dinner of pollo asado, with rice and beans and a few ranch waters to wash it all down. Lovely.
I’ll have that granola for breakfast on Sunday (please join me!), and leftover chicken for lunch. The risotto will follow for dinner, even if I have to make it with clam stock instead of lobster, and porgy in place of the ’tog. It’s so fantastic.
Then a nectarine tart for afterward, with vanilla ice cream. I’m holding onto summer for as long as I can.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with all-dressed potato chips or coquilles St.-Jacques, but one of the great pleasures of vacation is time spent in used bookstores, looking for gems. For instance: Dick Francis’s “Smokescreen,” from 1972, about an action movie star who is also an expert horseman and scratch detective, facts that take him from England to the hippodromes of South Africa, where danger awaits.
A few hours well-spent and not at all taxing: the new Billy Joel documentary on HBO Max, “And So It Goes.”
I came to it late, but don’t miss “The Crypto Maniacs and the Torture Townhouse,” by Ezra Marcus and Jen Wieczner, in New York Magazine, about just that.
Finally, here’s new Ghostface Killah, “The Trial.” Very American! 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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