Cooking
Your task for this weekend is to prepare something delicious and serve it to people you care about. I know you’re up to it.
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Good morning. I got lucky last week, down in the Florida Keys. Friends dropped off some cobia they’d caught offshore, and we grilled it crusty to eat with tartar sauce and a salad. It was sweet and mild and meaty, a perfect end to a day spent in the basins north of Big Coppitt Key hunting tarpon in the shallows.
The best food is local food, ingredients that have either been taken or grown with passion, skill and luck combined, made into something delicious. And it’s what you ought to make this weekend, as a reminder that the supply chain doesn’t need to be long or complicated. Cook what comes from closest, if you can. It’s special every time.
In the northeast right now, maybe that’s cod from Georges Bank, baked with brown butter and pine nuts (above), sweet and soft and saline all at once. Down south it might be wild shrimp, cooked with curry and sweet potato. Californians might find early season asparagus, for a creamy asparagus pasta with peas and mint.
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Cod With Brown Butter and Pine Nuts
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Of course, it’s not always possible to do that, especially in this shoulder season between winter and spring. There’s a reason we eat corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, and not spring lamb. (The lamb’s not ready yet, while the beef’s curing in a barrel in the basement, alongside the totes of cabbage and potatoes.) That’s cooking: We make do with what we’ve got.
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