The best things I ate all summer

Clam-chowder pizza and a Coke float.

View in browser|nytimes.com September 6, 2024 Sam Sifton's clam-chowder pizza. Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky. It's clam chowder (pizza) season By Sam Sifton Good morning. What is the best thing you've eaten this summer? I've had some stellar corn, about 1,000 excellent tomatoes, two great lobster rolls and a beautiful wood-roasted leg of lamb. A buddy dropped off some bluefin tuna caught not a dozen miles south of Montauk, N.Y., at the eastern end of Long Island, and we inhaled it in chunks, with dabs of soy sauce against the fat. Wood-roasted strawberries at Peasant on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan? I'll be thinking of those when there's sleet scuttering against my window in February. But here's what I'm inscribing into the permanent record for Summer 2024: a modified Coke float I put together in a Wawa in New Jersey and the clam-chowder pizza (above) that followed when I got home. You could make both this weekend, and ought to. For the pie, you'll need a round of Roberta's pizza dough, a recipe Anthony Falco taught me to make a decade ago. To top it, you'll make what amounts to a clam-chowder glaze, and add torn mozzarella and a spray of red-pepper flakes to it. I call for a finish of lemon zest in my recipe, but lately I've gone a step further and squeezed lemon juice onto the finished pizza as well. Please follow that lead. Featured Recipe Clam-Chowder Pizza View Recipe → As for the Coke float, it's a no-recipe affair: a suggestion to follow when you've found an exceptional convenience store, the sort where there are slushie machines alongside the urns of coffee, next to the hot-dog rollers, near the chips aisle. What you want is a cup of Coke slushie filled almost to the brim. Take that and head over to the coffee bar. Add a floater of light cream or half-and-half, and watch as the white liquid falls through the ice to turn the whole affair into a caramel cloud. Get a top on that and a straw into it. You'll see. It's the taste of the end of an actual Coke float, made with soda and vanilla ice cream, but not quite as sweet, with what the food fancies call an exceptional mouth-feel — a perfect dessert to suck down between meals, in a car, listening to The Cars as you speed toward your destination, feeling as if you've gotten away with something. It's my new taste of summer. If neither of those ideas seem appealing, head on over to New York Times Cooking and see what you find. Lemon pesto pasta, perhaps? A zucchini salad with sizzled mint and feta? This chicken and herb salad with nuoc cham would be aces this weekend, I think. And if you're pressed for time because the kids wanted to stay at the beach an hour longer than you thought they would, or because you were running errands and got caught in traffic or took a short nap that turned into a long one, well, you can make it with a store-bought rotisserie bird and have dinner on the table in a half-hour. Feel free, by the way, to send these recipes — or any of them — to someone you like. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we've given Times Cooking subscribers unlimited gift recipes for September. Just tap the "Give" icon on any recipe to create a paywall-free link to share with friends and family. Now, it has nothing to do with pole beans or backfin crab meat, but I happened across a terrific novel this week and want to commend it to you: "Distant Sons," by Tim Johnston. It's a crime novel far more literary than that description suggests, with a big heart and violence to match. For The Times, my colleague Lydia DePillis took a deep dive into Alaska's fishing economy, which has been beleaguered, she wrote, by "a mix of geopolitics, macroeconomics, changing ocean temperatures and post-Covid whiplash that piled on top of long-building vulnerabilities in the business model." It's a yikes. Of course you're going to want to read Molly Fischer in The New Yorker this week. She profiled Ina Garten, after all. Finally, here's LL Cool J to play us off, with Eminem: "Murdergram Deux." Those old boys are having fun — but none more, as my colleague Melena Ryzik reported last week, than LL himself. I'll see you on Sunday. IN THIS NEWSLETTER Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini, Chicken and Herb Salad With Nuoc Cham  By Yewande Komolafe 35 minutes Makes 4 servings Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Simon Andrews. Roberta's Pizza Dough Recipe from Carlo Mirarchi, Brandon Hoy, Chris Parachini and Katherine Wheelock Adapted by Sam Sifton 20 minutes plus at least 3 hours' rising Makes Two 12-inch pizzas James Ransom for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Lemon Pesto Pasta By Anna Francese Gass 30 minutes Makes 4 servings Sign up for the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter Fresh dinner ideas for busy people who want something great to eat, with NYT Cooking recipes sent to you weekly. Get it in your inbox Sign up for The Veggie newsletter Tanya Sichynsky shares the most delicious vegetarian recipes for weeknight cooking, packed lunches and dinner parties. Get it in your inbox Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Cooking from The New York Times. To stop receiving Cooking, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to NYT CookingGet the NYT Cooking app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018