Good morning. When there are snapper bluefish running in the bays nearby, I like to catch a couple and break them down into chunks and fillets — the chunks for a freestyle ceviche with mango, jalapeño, red onion and tons of lime, and the fillets for slathering with mayonnaise and mustard and roasting into excellence, just as my grandparents did, just as my parents did and, hopefully, just as my children will, down the generations. Mustard and mayonnaise are a phenomenal combination.
There haven’t been many bluefish this season, though. So this weekend I’m taking the compound — Dijonnaise, in the language of menus and recipes — to the poultry section of the food store, and making Ali Slagle’s new recipe for Dijonnaise grilled chicken breasts (above).
It’s so great. The cloaked meat is insulated from the heat of the grill and made tender by the acidity of the mustard. It picks up a bronzed crust, with just a hint of smoke, that responds well to a squeeze of lemon juice and an additional dollop of Dijonnaise. You could serve the breasts on a Caesar salad or — though it’s early for it — alongside a few ears of grilled corn.
Featured Recipe
Dijonnaise Grilled Chicken Breasts
Even better, maybe: Take the finished, rested chicken and slide it into a sandwich on toasted potato buns, with a smear of Dijonnaise, a few sliced pickles and a handful of shredded lettuce. That’s a taste of summer you won’t soon forget.
Other things I’d like to cook this weekend include these fresh spring rolls, with vermicelli noodles, shrimp, sliced cucumber and carrot, lots and lots of herbs. Dragged through nước chấm or peanut sauce (both in my case), they make a great argument for a roll-your-own, low-heat, high-reward meal.
Also: lychee cake, a joy of the Chinese Jamaican bakery life, in which layers of sponge are filled with a lychee cream and topped with a lychee glaze. That’s a fine dessert after another Sino-Caribbean gem, Trini-Chinese chicken, to serve with rice and fried plantains.
And if that bluefish ceviche continues to haunt me, as I know it will, I’ll stanch my cravings with sushi-grade tuna and make this poke bowl instead.
There’ll be scrambled eggs for breakfast, with oven bacon, pancakes and fruit salad. There’ll be radish sandwiches for lunch, with watermelon lemonade.
There’ll be a lot of cooking, because that’s what weekends are for.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with strawberries or smoked eel, but I found myself pulled back into the fifth season of the jittery, multilingual French spy series “The Bureau,” streaming on Amazon Prime. Malotru is in fine fettle.
I don’t know how I missed William Finnegan’s profile of the legendary surfer Jock Sutherland, in The New Yorker. Catch up with that now.
Also of recent vintage: Walt Hunter’s poem, “Translation Without Angels,” in The New York Review of Books.
Finally, for The New York Times, Jon Pareles and Lindsay Zoladz decided on “The 40 Best Songs of 2024 (So Far),” a playlist for your weekend and an absolute trove of delight. Listen to that while you’re cooking. And I’ll see you on Sunday.
