Credit…Kelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Roscoe Betsill. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.
Good morning. The guests are gone, let’s hope, and the house brought back to order after Thursday’s feast and a couple more epic meals behind it. You’ve consumed enough butter, starch and sugar to consider bearlike hibernation for the next week. This is not a day for fricassee.
But would you consider this ginger-scallion steamed fish (above) for dinner?
Ali Slagle adapted the recipe from one developed by the chef Connie Chung, of Milu in New York City. Chung’s recipe is itself an adaptation of a classic Cantonese banquet dish, simplified for the fast-casual needs of her restaurant. Hers uses cubed fish steamed with a mixture of soy sauce and a ginger-scallion stock. Chung calls for salmon (her mom’s suggestion!), but any firm-fleshed fish will work. Where I shop, that might be tautog or black sea bass. Where you are it might be lingcod or Pacific whiting. Pair with white rice and perhaps some steamed broccoli or quickly sautéed greens.
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Ginger-Scallion Steamed Fish
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As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
I know you’ve eaten plenty of turkey in the last few days, but there’s probably still some in the fridge. My recipe for turkey à la king will make the most of it: a comforting dish, soft and creamy, salty-sweet. It’s excellent over biscuits if you have the time to make them, but toast works, too.
Tuesday
I love Yewande Komolafe’s recipe for glazed tofu with chile and star anise, inspired by Sichuan twice-cooked pork. “A quick, very tasty dinner,” one of our readers noted below the recipe. “Highly recommend.”
Wednesday
David Tanis adapted this recipe for winter squash and wild mushroom curry from one he learned from the celebrated Indian chef Madhur Jaffrey. It’s vegan, if that appeals, and is a wildly comforting meal to consume on an autumn evening alongside a drift of steamed basmati rice.
Thursday
There’s a lovely Southern Italian dish called eggs in purgatory, in which eggs, perhaps standing in for souls, float in a spicy red sauce that represents the abyss of suffering. (Dramatic! But delicious.) Sarah DiGregorio’s recipe puts shrimp in place of the eggs, and amps up the sauce with red peppers and capers. Dante would approve.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with a classic recipe from our archives: Pierre Franey’s chicken breasts with lemon, which made its debut in The New York Times in 1992. I love how the brightness of the lemon interacts with the butter added at the end, making for a silky, emulsified sauce that’s lively and elegant.
Thousands more recipes are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking, including this lovely collection of light weeknight dinners. Yes, you need a subscription to read them. Subscriptions are what makes this whole enterprise possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you please consider doing so today? Thanks extremely.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with Bresse chickens or Iberico pigs, but you should read Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ new poem in The New York Review of Books, “Key West.”
The Taylor Sheridan universe now includes “Lawmen: Bass Reeves,” a “Yellowstone”-adjacent Western based on the life of Reeves, the first Black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River. Click if you like horses, gunfights, retribution.
Michael Kimmelman, in The Times, is very good on the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, which just opened in Washington, D.C., in what was once the Newseum. Adaptive reuse! It’s what downtowns need, Michael argues.
Finally: Look, it’s been a very busy few days. Chill out with Andre 3000’s new woodwind track, “Dreams Once Buried Beneath the Dungeon Floor Slowly Sprout Into Undying Gardens,” 17 minutes of reverie. Discuss! And I’ll see you next week.
