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.
Featured Recipe
Cod With Brown Butter and Pine Nuts
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.
Put another way: You can make your own luck. Coq au vin will show you that plain, if you prepare it this weekend. So will ribollita, and these marvelous roasted winter tomatoes that the chef Amanda Cohen taught us to make. Perhaps a roasted golden beet and winter squash salad? Or Boston baked beans?
The overarching idea — of this newsletter as of this entire enterprise — is to prepare something delicious and to serve it to people you care about, to show them the magical properties of food prepared with attention, affection, intention and care. That’s your task for this weekend. I know you’re up to it.
If the recipes I chose don’t appeal, there are many thousands more to consider waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go browse our digital aisles and see what draws your attention, what demands to be made. (Lately, for me, it’s been these skillet poached eggs from Genevieve Ko.)
If you run into problems with your account, please write for help: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (You do have an account, right? You need one. If you don’t, would you consider subscribing today?) Or you can always write to me, if you want to raise a flag or wave hello: hellosam@nytimes.com. I cannot respond to every letter. But I read each one I get.
Now, it’s nothing to do with macaroni or mussels, but the death of Gene Hackman sent me into the archives. I spent an enjoyable 99 minutes watching him play a private detective in “Night Moves,” from 1975.
Rebecca Yarros’s romantasy novel “Fourth Wing” has been on our New York Times best-seller list for 84 weeks, so I figured I ought to see what the fuss is all about. It’s a page-turner?
My colleague Alissa Wilkinson just published a book about Joan Didion, “We Tell Ourselves Stories.” Charles Finch gave it a fine accounting in The New York Times Book Review.
Finally, here’s Panda Bear to play us off, “Ferry Lady.” “Now we’re taking a bow.” Listen to that while you’re cooking, and I’ll see you on Sunday.
