And what a summer it has been: waiting
on a 40-yard-long line for farm-stand tomatoes, staying locked inside my
car during a drive-in showing of “The Seven Year Itch,” and watching a
gloved, masked fisherman place a box of lobsters at the end of the dock
while I waited at a safe distance.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I
found plenty of solace from strange moments, like those, in cooking.
Looking forward to homemade chocolate-chip cookies at night got me into
the kitchen, and through a lot of hard days. Six months in, the prospect
of a cookie — or even a whole sleeve of Thin Mints — isn’t quite
enough.
So why do I still get excited about new
recipes? I haven’t had time to make popsicles for years, but last week I
thrilled to the possibilities of Samantha Seneviratne’s yogurt and jam
pops (above). (I miss my favorite Pinkberry cups.) I won’t be serving
the pla goong that Francis Lam picked up at the Thai Consulate in New
York any time soon, since my only chile-loving child just left for a
(covid-induced) gap year. But in my mind, I tasted its red bird chilles,
lime juice, mint leaves and fish sauce.
Today, I might only have the
energy for yet another dinner of basic BLTs (here’s a recipe for a less
basic one) and boiled corn. But spotting our new succotash from Vallery
Lomas brought me back to the rhythms of a normal summer. (So did my
recent reporting on pizza farms.)
What I’m saying is: Even when you’re not
up to cooking — and that is fine, in fact go ahead and have cereal for
dinner tonight — there is still pleasure in recipes. It’s not much of a
leap from cereal to making Genevieve Ko’s crunchy, sweet-salty new
version of Rice Krispies Treats, or rediscovering the pleasures of a
margarita made from scratch.
Should you happen to encounter a cool
evening — they are coming — this Ottolenghi baked chicken with rice and
fragrant spices is one of my all-time favorites, and this vegan version
of Cantonese corn rice from Hetty McKinnon scratches the same itch. It
would also be a good time to start mastering the art of reading
Scandinavian thrillers. (This guide our Books section published recently
helped me get started.) Or to watch “I May Destroy You,” now that it’s
bingeable.
I hope my conviction that recipes can
cheer and comfort will hold true for you, too. Of course, they also need
to be well-written, beautifully shot, and supported by a great story —
that’s what we aim for every day at NYT Cooking. You can access all of
them with a subscription, which also gives you our recipe collections,
cooking guides, and the ability to use your Recipe Box like a champion.
(We’re standing by to teach you how. Confused? Send us a note at our EMAIL, and someone will get back to you.)
And of course, we are on Instagram, Twitter & FaceBook.
I’ll be back Soon. In the meantime, find me on Twitter and Instagram.
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