Good morning. Mark Bittman is a freewheeling cook, a minimalist, open to improvisation. His recipes are often set-it-and-forget-it in style. If I were writing his biography, I’d title it “Largely Unattended.”
Kenji López-Alt is the opposite: an exacting, scientifically minded kitchen authority who employs terms like “polysaccharide glue” to explain why, for example, his Parmesan-crusted roasted potatoes (above) are so shockingly crisp and delicious. Kenji’s recipes aren’t difficult, but they do demand attention so that you can achieve outstanding results — in this case, that marvelous, cheesy crunch, like a cross between Italian frico and the crust of a Detroit-style pizza.
Read the recipe a few times before you make it, and then watch him make the dish on our YouTube channel so you’re well acquainted with the process. You’ll see. These are superior potatoes, amazing potatoes, just the dish to accompany a cast-iron steak that, when you’ve come to the end of the cooking process, you should take off the heat and baste in butter, with a healthy sprig of rosemary and a couple of cloves of garlic. Dinner is served.
Featured Recipe
Extra-Crispy Parmesan-Crusted Roasted Potatoes
Say that’s your meal tonight. (It oughta be!) Tomorrow you might ship up to Boston, and enjoy Sarah DiGregorio’s recipe for baked cod with a buttery cracker topping. If cod’s unavailable, don’t substitute. Make Gabrielle Hamilton’s fried saltines with Cheddar and onion instead.
And how about some banana pancakes for breakfast on Sunday? You could eat those, go for a very long walk, skip lunch and make a big pan of kalpudding for dinner: a deconstructed Swedish meatloaf, essentially, with deeply caramelized cabbage.
Alternatively, you could bail on breakfast, get to the pork store for cold cuts and make an Italian hero for lunch. Then follow it up at dinnertime with a spicy peanut and pumpkin soup.
Or, if it’s gotta be three squares, you could start with a Denver omelet as the sun begins its rise, make some kimchi tuna salad in the middle of the day and then finish up with spaghetti al limone for dinner, a day well spent.
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Now, it’s far from the subject of gastronomy or its practice, but I’ve been enjoying “The Gold,” on Paramount+, a series inspired by a 1983 robbery in London in which some 26 million pounds’ worth of gold bullion was stolen by a gang of thieves who then conspired to launder it. The language is fantastic: villains and pinches, bent money and all matter of rhyming slang.
A New Yorker social-media algorithm served me Ian Parker’s 2018 investigation into the serial deceptions of the thriller writer Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn. Thank you, machine.
Definitely read Soraya Roberts in The New York Times Magazine, on the long, licentious history behind that Calvin Klein ad starring Jeremy Allen White.
Finally, here’s Dolly Parton covering Billy Joel’s “The Entertainer,” proving that she really can do anything she wants. Enjoy that with your potatoes and I’ll see you on Sunday.
