Good morning. I woke up chuckling.
I’d eaten the night before at Le Veau d’Or, Manhattan’s oldest French restaurant, brought back to life last year by the chefs and restaurateurs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr. The meal had unspooled like a series of magic tricks. Among them: ethereal clouds of fried potato with caviar; crisp nuggets of headcheese with sauce ravigote; frog legs sizzling in butter and garlic; a ruddy duck breast positioned above tangy-sweet stewed cherries. The menu is prix fixe — $125 a head — and the savory portion of it ends with a simple green salad.
It was the salad that had me grinning, eight hours after I’d consumed it. I’m a pretty good cook, a more than passable mimic. I’ve built a career of sorts eating in good restaurants, asking lots of questions and then coming up with cover-band recipes for my favorite dishes. But I realized that morning after my meal at Le Veau: There is no way, no earthly way, that I could ever cook anything on the menu at that restaurant myself, no matter how many questions I asked, no matter how many times I practiced the dish. Even that salad. I wouldn’t even try.
This wasn’t humbling. It was awesome. That’s what restaurants like Le Veau d’Or are for.
Instead, I’ll embrace minimalism this weekend, simplicity, bold flavors easily coaxed from good ingredients, and make Sarah Copeland’s fine recipe for broiled fish tacos (above). I’ll use mahi-mahi or halibut, if I can find any — or flounder or swordfish, if I can’t. (Truthfully, it’d be pretty good with industrial tilapia, if that’s all you can get. The spice rub of salt, paprika and coriander goes a long way.) Sarah serves the fish with warm corn tortillas, a brilliant salad of lime and herbs and a drizzle of crema. You should as well.
Featured Recipe
Broiled Fish Tacos
I could go for some buttermilk pancakes this weekend, too, and classic tuna salad sandwiches for lunch. There’s not much easier than a five-ingredient creamy miso pasta for dinner on Saturday night, with a freestyle fruit salad with yogurt to follow in the morning: orange, pineapple, banana, mango, under a shower of lime juice.
A grilled PB&J for Sunday lunch? Yes, please, I’m keeping it simple — at least until late in the afternoon, when I’ll turn to my old book of spells and make this recipe for chicken adobo that I picked up by asking a lot of questions of the chef Romy Dorotan, who used to make the dish at his Purple Yam restaurant in Brooklyn. Chicken adobo is one of my magic tricks. I practice it all the time.
If none of those appeal, though, there are thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (You need a subscription to browse the aisles. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you don’t have one yet, would you consider taking one out today?)
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Now, it’s a considerable distance from anything to do with flageolets or turnips, but I enjoyed the premiere of the crime drama “MobLand,” on Paramount Plus, starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth wrote and Guy Ritchie directed, so you know what you’re getting: plenty of violence and colorful language.
When it comes to book recommendations, there’s nothing better than a serendipity machine. Molly Young built one with her “Read Like the Wind” newsletter for The New York Times Book Review. Go check it out.
Here’s a dark one out of Florida, where a neighborhood is fighting developers eager to build homes on top of decades of hazardous waste. It’s by Jordan Blumetti, for the Oxford American.
Finally, here’s This Is Lorelei, “Dancing in the Club (MJ Lenderman Version).” Listen to that while you’re cooking. I’ll see you on Sunday.
