How to bake wild salmonI've written a lot about salmon farming for The New York Times in recent years, and what I've learned about salmon's sustainability has persuaded me to use wild Pacific salmon from Alaska whenever possible. I buy it frozen in individual vacuum-sealed portions and stash it in the freezer. Submerged in a bowl of warm water, the slim fillets defrost in about 15 minutes and cook even faster. It makes a deluxe last-minute meal when the cupboard seems bare. Lately, my go-to cooking method has been slathering the pink fillets with a mix of mayo and sriracha (sometimes mixed with grated lime zest if I'm feeling energetic), and then broiling. But I'm going to try Ali Slagle's new recipe for baked wild salmon the next time I hear that salmon siren song. Her technique calls for brining the fillets for 15 to 30 minutes before baking them at a very low heat. This keeps the lean flesh from drying out, giving you moist, rich fish with a deep saline character. Serve it with a punchy sauce on the side (garlicky yogurt, chili crisp, aioli) for a simple and very satisfying meal. Featured Recipe Baked Wild SalmonI also choose frozen wild Gulf shrimp over farmed when I can get it, for similar reasons. It lives next to the salmon in the icy ocean of my freezer, at the ready for a quick midweek meal like Dan Pelosi's linguine with zucchini, corn and shrimp. The key to his recipe is to barely cook the vegetables, which stay intact and firm, adding texture along with their inherent summery sweetness. On the other end of the vegetable texture spectrum, the blistered tomatoes and red onions in Yasmin Fahr's sheet-pan garlicky chicken singe at the edges and get silky soft as they collapse under the broiler's blazing heat. To keep the chicken from drying out, Yasmin smartly coats it in an herby, lemony yogurt, some of which is saved to serve as a sauce on the side. It's visually stunning too, especially if you use a mix of tomato varieties. Also colorful: Ali's roasted red peppers with beans and greens, which you can make with any mix of red, yellow and orange bell peppers. Her recipe is sort of like bean-stuffed peppers turned inside-out, with the white beans cooking at the bottom of the pan along with dark leafy greens. The big advantage here is that by leaving the peppers whole, their juices don't evaporate, but instead concentrate and turn even sweeter than usual. A little drizzle of vinegar at the end provides a tangy contrast. Maybe less brightly hued, but just as wickedly delicious, is Andrea Nguyen's mapo tofu, her take on the Chinese classic. You can find the fermented chile bean paste, Sichuan peppercorns and fermented black beans at many Asian markets. Once all the ingredients are assembled, it's a 30-minute meal with depth, zing and loads of tingly, mouth-numbing heat. You could probably guess that, with my giant sweet tooth, I'm an incorrigible cookie dough nibbler — as in, I'll whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and only half of it makes it to the oven. But there are risks involved with all that raw dough consumption (the eggs, the raw flour). So Melissa Knific has enabled nibbling without fear with her recipe for edible cookie dough, which has all of the brown-sugary, bittersweet allure of classic Tollhouse dough, but without the downsides. Don't try to bake it off though; it's made for instant gratification of the stickiest kind. And as always, you'll want to subscribe to read all these amazing recipes and so many more (approximately tens of thousands more). If you need any technical help, the thoughtful people at cookingcare@nytimes.com are there for you. I'm at hellomelissa@nytimes.com if you want to say hi. That's all for now. I'll see you on Monday.
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Monday, June 10, 2024
How to bake wild salmon
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