Good morning. I had a wonderful conversation the other day with Kate Reid, Australia’s queen of croissants, whose wise and ambitious cookbook, “Lune: Croissants All Day, All Night,” has just been published in the United States. Kate’s recipe for extraordinary croissants runs pages, takes three days and results in a croissant you’ll be extremely proud to have made and delighted to eat.
But that’s probably not a recipe to start on a Sunday afternoon. Instead, you should try out a hack Kate offered me for enlivening stale or not extraordinary store-bought croissants, which the excellent Claire Saffitz wrote about for The Times in 2021: almond croissants (above).
Make those in the midday hours and serve with afternoon tea. Later you can assemble Melissa Clark’s new recipe for roasted ginger chicken with peanut sauce, and bring your nutty day to a close.
As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
Ali Slagle has a new recipe for pan-seared boneless pork chops with charred pineapple that’s as delicious as it is simple to prepare. It’s a beautiful Venn diagram of spicy, sweet and salty that serves to remind us why pork and pineapple are such a classic combination.
Tuesday
It’s Fat Tuesday, and even if you don’t celebrate, it’s still a great day to make Julia Reed’s excellent recipe for shrimp and grits. Bring your own private French Quarter to life. Let’s eat!
Wednesday
Kay Chun’s coconut-caramel braised tofu with charred green beans is a wonder: a simmering mixture of coconut milk, miso, ginger and garlic, reduced into a rich caramel sauce that envelops the tofu. The green beans add subtle smoky notes, but you could use broccoli or cauliflower florets instead, with equal results. Serve with rice, and make enough so that you have plenty left over to put in the refrigerator for. …
Thursday
… Kay’s recipe for bacon, egg and cheese fried rice. If you don’t have leftover rice, you could use leftover farro or barley, but don’t make this dish with freshly cooked rice. (People may tell you otherwise, but it’ll clump, sure as taxes.)
Friday
And then you can greet the weekend with Naz Deravian’s comforting casserole classic: hot chicken salad, a creamy-crunchy, nostalgic joy.
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Now, you’d have to do a lot of work to make it have anything to do with veal stock or oatmeal cookies, but you should still read this Dwight Garner review, in The Times, of Priscilla Gilman’s memoir “The Critic’s Daughter.” Boy howdy.
You know what’s a pretty satisfying rewatch after 10 years? The first episode of the first season of “Ray Donovan,” now on Amazon Prime.
Tom Jokinen has an article in The Walrus about how to make peace with Canada geese. It raises an interesting point. Which of us is really the invasive species?
Finally, the musician Steve Nieve turns 65 this week. You may know him from his work playing keyboards with Elvis Costello, but here he is solo, performing “Muriel on Main Beach” (which the video title card renders as “Muriel on the Beach”). Enjoy that, and I’ll see you next Friday.
