Good morning! Today we have for you:
Awesome sauce
A moment of affirmation for anyone in need: It is completely acceptable to love a recipe just for its sauce. Melissa Clark’s five-star pork bulgogi with spring vegetables is a perfect example of an “I’m just here for the sauce” recipe. It’s a lovely vehicle to showcase all sorts of warm-weather produce — she calls for snow peas, radishes and mushrooms, and she notes that you can swap in other quick-cooking vegetables like zucchini or broccoli florets. And if pork isn’t your pick, you can use chicken, tofu or the classic beef. The real draw here is that sweet-and-spicy bulgogi marinade, punched up with plenty of garlic and ginger. Half the marinade is set aside for drizzling over your finished dish, which you could eat piled on top of rice or wrapped into lettuce leaves. Basically, use this recipe as a template for quick and easy meals all summer long, with a rotating cast of proteins and veggies. But as Meg, a reader, states, “Don’t mess with the sauce — it’s marvelous!” Featured Recipe Pork Bulgogi With Spring VegetablesSummertime, and the cookin’ is easyVietnamese-inspired roast chicken: I’m sharing this Eric Kim recipe with you today, Thursday, so that you can plan ahead and make it your Saturday dinner. The chicken is dry-brined with pho ga-inspired spices — fennel seeds, cinnamon, coriander and cloves — for up to 24 hours, and then gets a brush of butter (and some onion, ginger and cinnamon sticks tucked around the meat) for its hour-plus stint in the oven. No part of the process is hard work, and the payoff for a little bit of planning is a bronzed, super-aromatic bird to adorn with lots of fresh mint, basil and cilantro. Za’atar chickpea and tuna salad: Sometimes I want a creamy, mayo-based tuna salad for my sandwiches or lettuce greens, and sometimes I want a brighter, brinier mix that goes big on crunch and crispness. This new Ifrah F. Ahmed recipe, with chopped cucumbers, pert olives, fresh dill and lots of lemon, falls squarely into that second category. Miso mustard green beans: The next time you’re at the grocery store or the farmers’ market and the green beans catch your eye, remember this Ali Slagle dish. Taking inspiration from gomaae, it pairs blanched green beans with a nutty miso dressing that’s perked up with mustard and lemon. These beans, some grilled salmon and a bowl of white rice? My dream dinner, right there. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started.
And before you goSometimes it takes just one dish for an ingredient to click with you. That was me and okra, thanks to the shirasu-don (boiled baby sardines with blanched, sliced okra on rice) that I ate on repeat in Japan. So now I’m on a mission to more fully explore this summer crop, and naturally this new column from Yewande Komolafe — “A Shrimp and Okra Soup That Feels Like Magic” — caught my eye. “I find myself craving it,” she writes of okra, “roasted in a hot oven until crispy and brown in spots; spread in a skillet in an even layer over a hot flame until seared and lightly charred; and bathed in hot oil to fry into shatteringly crunchy nibbles. But my favorite preparation — and okra’s simplest form — is in a soup, specifically a draw soup.”
Thanks for reading!
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