Latest news with #Mia Leimkuhler
New York Times
a day ago
- General
- New York Times
‘This Was a Revelation in Cooking Eggplant'
Good morning! Today we have for you: A reader-favorite (and me-favorite) eggplant dish A tomato salad for that nice tinned fish you picked up Plus, strawberry and sesame swirl soft serve 'This was a revelation in cooking eggplant' By Mia Leimkuhler It's hit that time of the summer when, if I'm at the farmers' market and standing in front of a table heaped high with baskets of eggplant, I must tell myself the same thing my mom told me in front of the supermarket candy display: just one. If I don't, I run the risk of bringing home too much eggplant. The shiny, almost black Italian eggplant. The lavender-smudged Rosa Bianca eggplant, as bulbous and knuckly as the heirloom tomatoes. The long, slim Chinese and Japanese eggplants, the adorable fairytale eggplant. I want all the eggplants, but they won't all fit in my bike panniers (of course I've tried). So this week it'll just be some Japanese eggplant for Sue Li's five-star sweet and sour eggplant with garlic chips. (I've also made this with larger eggplant varieties; just cut them into slenderish batons.) If you're not so into eggplant — or you're cooking for the eggplant-avoidant — this recipe is a great place to start your eggplant journey. Any lingering bitterness is completely canceled out by the pungent garlic oil and the assertive soy-vinegar sauce that's sweetened with brown sugar. And the garlic chips (the tasty result of that garlic oil) add a solid crunch to counter the eggplant's melting softness. I usually eat this dish with rice and a fried egg, but it's occurring to me now that, for a really nice dinner, I could serve it as a side to a roast duck I pick up from an Asian grocer. Oh, or a plate of pan-fried dumplings, also snagged from said grocer. Maybe some cold, fresh tofu? More reasons to leave room in the panniers. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
08-08-2025
- General
- New York Times
A Salmon Dish That's Simple Perfection
Today we have for you: A simple Japanese salmon dish A no-recipe recipe for blistered eggplant with goat cheese Plus, Yotam Ottolenghi's five-star blueberry, lemon and almond cake Good morning. You can love your life and still fantasize about another. I'm lounging under Northeastern black walnut trees in the manner of a king, eating corn and clams and tomatoes and scup, the sky pink and blue, everything perfect in the slightest breeze. Still, my imagination soars: I could be in the middle of an endless Alaska day of netting salmon and picking cloudberries, and wouldn't that be nice? It sent me to the market, to the glistening slabs of king salmon over ice, a summertime splurge for a New Yorker with wanderlust. What I want to cook: chan chan yaki (above), a miso-butter salmon of rare distinction, Japanese in flavor and execution, exactly what I'd make if I were camping in Homer, down on the Spit. 'Chan chan' is onomatopoeiac: the sound of two metal spatulas chopping and mixing vegetables and fish on a griddle. But Marc Matsumoto's recipe, adapted by our Mia Leimkuhler, requires no such gymnastics: You chop cabbage, onions and carrots in advance of the cooking, sauté them in a skillet, and then put the salmon, daubed with miso butter, on top of them to steam until it has just cooked through. It's simple perfection, excellent with rice cut through with crumbled, dried seaweed and an ice-cold beer. Won't you join me this weekend in making that, wherever you stay? Featured Recipe View Recipe → Other things I'd like to cook in the next couple of days: the navy bean soup that's been on the menu at the United States Senate Dining Room for more than 100 years; this blueberry, almond and lemon cake; some vegan mapo tofu. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
