Good morning. Pete Wells has a terrific story in The Times today about a surprising development in the quarantine many of us are living under still: Americans are cooking a lot of fish. With no restaurants to visit for shrimp scampi (above), broiled salmon, fried squid or sole meunière, we’re turning to the homemade variety instead and learning, perhaps, that the fears some have about cooking fish at home — that it’s hard, that it smells up the joint — are largely unfounded. Sales of canned and frozen seafood were up 37 percent in April, Pete found, and 13 percent for fresh.
Will you join the party? Fish tacos are a nice place to start. So’s this speedy fish chowder. I scored a delicious batch of ramp pesto from a friend who’d made a lot, and used it on oven-baked salmon with leeks and potatoes, along with dollops of ricotta. You could try something similar, off that prompt. You could make Tejal Rao’s recipe for chepa vepudu, a simple fish fry from southeastern India. Or Melissa Clark’s big-flavored fish cakes with herbs and chiles.
There are many thousands more ideas for what to cook right now waiting for you on NYT Cooking — many more than usual are free to use even if you aren’t yet a subscriber to our site and apps. (I hope you will consider subscribing all the same, though. Subscriptions support our work.)
Now, it’s a long, terrifying distance from chicken and waffles, but I think you should read Lawrence Wright’s new pandemic thriller, “The End of October,” which was reviewed in The Times by Douglas Preston.
Podcast alert: Reena Flores of The Washington Post talking sourdough with Karen Colberg of King Arthur Flour and the bread maker Seamus Blackley.
Here’s Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes,” from the Secret World Live tour, 1993.
Finally, Pam McCarthy is stepping down as deputy editor of The New Yorker, a job she’s had since 1995: a champion of change, as the editors note in her final issue. Hers will be big shoes to fill. I’ll be back on Friday.