Good morning. There was a bald eagle flying up Shin Creek in the Beaverkill Valley, in the Catskill Mountains of New York. I was driving alongside her, on the roadbed above the stream. The eagle was looking for trout, as I would be later, she undoubtedly more successfully than me, and fair play to her for that. A bald eagle is an apex predator. I’m an amateur with a fake bug on the end of a 20-foot leader, waving a stick to send it in the direction of the fish whose head I saw rise on the edge of a riffle, near that stick that points sideways toward the rock — no, the other rock.
It got me thinking about dinner. We had that in common, anyway, the bald eagle and me. For her, rainbow trout sashimi, no soy sauce. For me, spicy sesame noodles with chicken and peanuts (above), though with ground pork in place of the chicken and spaghetti in place of the fresh ramen noodles, because that’s what’s in the cupboard. It’s one of those dinners that comes together fast, with big flavor, and at the end of the week that’s generally what I’m looking for: easy preparation, with significant returns on a modest investment.
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Spicy Sesame Noodles With Chicken and Peanuts
And then: all-purpose biscuits in the morning, to split, butter and griddle. I’ll use those for midmorning egg sandwiches, with melted Cheddar and crisped bacon, ahead of a long drift on the river, or a short walk followed by a long nap.
For dinner (if you take the buttering of those biscuits seriously, there’ll be no need for lunch), how about grilled lemongrass pork, with some rice vermicelli noodles, roasted peanuts, sliced cucumber, cilantro, mint and a lot of lime wedges?
I’ll make some charred cabbage slaw to go with it. You don’t need a recipe for that, only vague instructions, what we call a no-recipe recipe in my neighborhood. Put a small whole cabbage onto your grill while the flames are high, the coals not yet fully formed. Roll it around every once in a while, so it burns all over and begins to sweat from within. This should take around 30 minutes.
Make a dressing in the meantime: mayonnaise, a lot of sweet Thai chili sauce, rice wine vinegar or lime juice, a hit or two of soy sauce, everything to taste.
Take the incinerated cabbage off the fire, let it cool slightly, remove all the burned outer leaves, halve the head, cut out the stem and slice the cabbage into shreds. Dress judiciously and taste. It probably needs a little salt. Serve that with the pork and accept your accolades.
Huevos rancheros for breakfast on Sunday? Creamy white beans with herb oil for lunch? Yes, and I’ll honor the eagle at dinner, with a version of Tamar Adler’s recipe for fireplace trout, cooked on the stove because I don’t have a fireplace.
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Now, it has little to do with chives or chervil, but I think you should read my colleague A.O. Scott on the originality of modern literary fan fiction, an essay that helps explain our — or at least my — love of Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead” and Percival Everett’s “James.” (Scott’s also very good on the poetry critic Helen Vendler, who died this week at 90.)
Mark Krotov has a great dispatch in n+1 from this year’s New York International Auto Show in Manhattan, which reminded me of the outsized role the show played in my own childhood, when I went every year to gape at cars we’d never own.
Rachel McAdams is terrific in Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane,” just as Jesse Green says in his Times review of the play. It’s tough stuff to watch: “The death of the self in the love for one’s child,” Jesse wrote. Go if you can.
Finally, here’s Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Hawkmoor,” music for birds of prey. I’ll see you on Sunday.
