Good morning. There are a few things I want to cook this weekend beyond the usual Saturday morning waffles and bacon.
One is an awesome new recipe that my pal and colleague Alexa Weibel adapted from Carolina Doriti’s new cookbook, “Salt of the Earth: Secrets and Stories from a Greek Kitchen.” It’s for shrimp saganaki (above), so named for the small, two-handled frying pan in which it was traditionally prepared and served. A pound of shrimp cloaked in a delicate tomato sauce that’s run through with olives, ouzo and feta? Yes, please. I’d like that with bread and a glass of assyrtiko.
Shrimp Saganaki
Another is my new favorite indulgence, the cheeseburger quesadilla. I don’t have a recipe for it. It’s what we call a no-recipe recipe. I make a kind of chopped cheese situation out of well-salted, not-lean ground beef and diced onions, letting the meat develop a nice sear before I take to it with a bench scraper: chop, chop, chop. Then I slide that mess onto a flour tortilla in the pan, add cheese — I like American here, though be careful to make sure you’ve got all the plastic off the slices — top with another tortilla and flip, flip, flip. Serve that with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and a drizzle of mayonnaise cut with hot sauce and ketchup. You’re welcome.
I’d be up for corning some beef this weekend, too, for corned beef and cabbage next weekend, for Irish tacos the following day, for corned beef hash on the morning after that. Corn your beef once, and you’ll never buy the store-bought, ready-to-cook version ever again. I’m already salivating.
More weekend cooking: gilgeori toast, the salty-sweet Korean egg sandwich; smashed zucchini with chickpeas and peanuts; a Bloody Mary tomato salad.
And to round everything out on Sunday, while watching your Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Las Vegas Raiders at 3333 Al Davis Way in Paradise, Nev.? Try these sticky harissa chicken wings that Eric Kim cooked up for The New York Times Magazine. The wings are dressed in harissa paste, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and honey. That’s a fantastic mixture.
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Now, it’s about as far as you can get from matters of curds and whey, but the release of what may be the final season of “Top Boy” on Netflix is my excuse for telling you to watch the series from the top, with “Top Boy Summerhouse.” Pick your fighter: Sully or Dushane. Discuss!
There’s been lots and lots and lots of talk about “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s biography of the mercurial tech billionaire (here’s our review, by Jennifer Szalai). The book is worth reading yourself, if only to see the man up close in all his complicated, problematic otherworldliness.
Here’s Wyatt Williams in the Bitter Southerner, on “Lucinda Williams and the Idea of Louisiana”: ghosts and beautiful writing.
Finally, get a load of this new Cat Power track, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “You Belong to Me,” live at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Listen while you’re cooking, and I’ll see you on Sunday.
