Good morning. It was peak cherry blossoms last week where I stay, the flowers almost ready to spring off their branches to blanket the curbs like drifts of snow. There was a deep humidity in the air and it made me think of summer down south, the way the atmosphere can seem almost liquid under the sun, everything ripe, everything slow. I made sweet tea and drank it over an enormous amount of ice, on the stoop, marveling at how sometimes sweet tea is the best tea, even if you usually drink tea straight, no sugar, with not even a lemon to counter the tannins.
Sweet tea is reckless tea, unhealthy tea, a liquid candy bar, not something to drink every day. But it has its place, and I made enough of it so I could use the leftovers as a brine for Millie Peartree’s luscious roast chicken (above).
It’s a dead simple recipe, perfect for a Sunday dinner. Combine the tea with a big handful of Cajun seasoning and marinate chicken legs in it all day. Then roast them on an oiled sheet pan in a hot oven for a little over 30 minutes, until they’re crusty dark brown and cooked through to the bone. Baste with the juices and serve with baked sweet potatoes, oh my.
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Sweet Tea-Brined Roast Chicken
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That’s Sunday sorted, then. As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
I scored some thick fillets of tautog the other day and used Julia Moskin’s recipe for pan-roasted fish fillets with herb butter to coax them into a state of perfection: crisp on one side and softly just-done within. Use whatever fish you can find that is local and fresh and you’ll experience similar joy.
Tuesday
Here’s a recipe for chicken galbi noodle salad from Kay Chun, a weeknight special inspired by Korean beef galbi. Kay’s recipe simmers ground chicken in a simple sauce with garlic, ginger, scallions and sesame oil, then tosses that mix with bell peppers and basil before swirling it all into glass noodles. Eat warm or at room temperature.
Wednesday
Ali Slagle developed this midweek banger, a horseradish and Cheddar tuna melt that comes together quickly and seems expressly designed for the broil setting on a toaster oven. I like them on Bays English muffins, but there are no rules here, only guidance: any bread you find delicious will work.
Thursday
Tantanmen is a Japanese take on dan dan noodles, from the Sichuan province of China. Hetty Lui McKinnon’s vegan tantanmen with pan-fried tofu is maybe better than either one, substantial in its salt-fiery sesame broth. “My gawd this slaps,” one reader wrote on the recipe.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with Alexa Weibel’s recipe for arrabbiata sauce, the classic Italian tomato sauce, fired up with crushed red pepper and run through with olive oil and garlic. It’s great served over penne with a shower of Pecorino, but lately I’ve found it a terrific sauce for pizza, a three-alarm margherita.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with tempering chocolate or deveining shrimp, but you should absolutely read Sally Jenkins in The Washington Post, on the rodeo star J.B. Mauney, “the first man to get legit rich at bull riding.”
Here’s Danny Lyon in The New York Review of Books, on his decades-long quest to take photographs of every building in his neighborhood in lower Manhattan, before the city knocked them down.
