Three Things

Miso-marinated fish, the gift of food, a fun giveaway

Mar 31, 2026

Greetings friends and happy Passover to all who celebrate. A few things making me happy lately: The impossibly thin pancakes we ate family-style at my sister’s al fresco birthday brunch last week; the gardenia diffuser in my foyer that smells like spring all year long; my Jane Eyre book club; Jodi’s watercolor-a-day commitment; that surreal UConn shot and all the meta-content that has trickled down from it; Lena Dunham’s new memoir Famesick; the Billy Collins poem “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant” (via Susan Cain); standing lunch and dinner dates with old friends; tickets for two upcoming shows (one on Broadway, one Off); a barrel-aged vinegar that has dinner guests asking “What’s in this dressing?” mid-bite. Grickle! The NYC restaurant guide I’m working on for you that’s been curated by my twenty-something daughters and nieces. (Think: affordable and adventurous!) Just a reminder: You must be a subscriber to access restaurant guides, travel content, and all the archived recipes I link back to in my newsletters (including this one). You can take care of that right here »»

And now, Three (more) Things I’d like to tell you about this week…

1. Miso-Marinated Salmon

We went through a Miso-Marinated Black Cod phase two decades ago, right around the time Nobu Matsuhisa’s L.A. restaurant made it famous. (Or well, made it famous in this country at least.) It was the kind of recipe that felt like magic — a piece of fish marinates for three days before being broiled or grilled, and the result is a deeply sweet-and-savory flavor with an almost buttery texture. I used to love serving it to people for the first time because inevitably the reaction was confusion, followed by a reverent silence, followed by a What TF am I eating and why is it so good? As I type this I am sure you are doing the math: If I shop now, marinate in an hour, then maybe I can have it by…the weekend? You can and you should, but also know that there’s a world where you can have an adjacent experience without the wait. Perfect being the enemy of good and all, I whisked up the same marinade last weekend, let a salmon filet steep in it for most of the day, made rice and a quick Bok Choy with Sesame-Soy Dressing then sat down to a perfect Sunday dinner.

Miso-Marinated Salmon

Adapted only slightly from Nobu’s famous. Serves 2-3.

1 pound salmon preferably center cut
1/4 cup sake
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup white miso paste
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
Kosher salt

Place the salmon in a ziptop plastic bag or a glass storage dish like the one shown. Bring sake and mirin to a boil in a small saucepan over high heat for about 20 seconds. Turn the heat down to low, add 1/4 cup white miso paste and 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, and whisk until the miso and sugar have dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Pour the miso mix all over the salmon and seal or cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for as long as you have, preferably six to eight hours.

Heat your broiler. Line a baking sheet with foil and grease the middle of the foil with cooking spray or (using your fingers) a light coating of neutral oil. Place the fish skin-side down in on the greased foil. Broil, checking every few minutes and rotating the baking sheet as needed, until the fish starts to flake and the top is dark golden brown and charred in spots, 8 to 12 minutes.

2. Awesome Sauce

There was a time in my life when if I thought about sauce, particularly the kind of sauce that makes food taste better, my brain would head in the…comment-dit-on…French direction: Like the way one might add a few knobs of butter to a reduction, or a little bacon fat to the shallot dressing, or fold in a creamy béchamel to thicken a baked pasta. But ever since I adapted a more plant-forward way of eating, the sauces I crave aren’t based on animal fats, and they’re not rich and creamy at all — they’re herby, vegetable-based, tangy and bright, and when executed correctly, they really take dinners from good to great. I’m thinking of an herby green sauce on top of a slow-baked salmon or a spicy tomatillo sauce on refried bean and mushroom tacos, or a quick-as-lightning Romesco sauce that absolutely transforms my go-to brothy beans (above) while not letting them stray from Team Vegan. I have several dozen pages in The Weekday Vegetarians and The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple devoted to this topic (SEE: “Magic Blender Sauces”) but I wanted to share the Romesco here so you really know what I’m talking about.

Romesco Sauce

In a blender or small food processor, combine 1 (12-ounce) jar roasted sweet red peppers (completely drained), 1 garlic clove (peeled but whole), 1/2 cup blanched sliced almonds, 1/3 cup olive oil, 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, and blend until emulsified. It should be on the thicker, chunkier side. Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 10 days.

Use on top of brothy beans or under grilled fish; whisk into a vinaigrette, or use as a dip for vegetables.

Yup! (From my 2016 book *How to Celebrate Everything*)

3. Food Gift Prompts

Last week, I had the great honor to join food writing veterans Lukas Volger and Elinor Hutton on SALT PIG: A Home Cooking Podcast. The topic was Food Gifting, a subject near and dear to my heart, and I found that even though we touched on a lot — what to give someone who has just had a baby or who is going through something tough, or who is just hosting dinner — I looked at my preparation notes afterwards and realized we barely scratched the surface. So please go listen to it, download all of their wisdom, then come back here to cut and paste these prompts into your notes app. Hopefully they will serve to remind you that when the question is What should I give? The answer, almost always, is food.

For someone who’s lost their job: A CSA gift subscription. When this happened to one of my college roommates last year, another roommate organized an eight-week subscription for her, which I thought was the best idea — precisely because it’s the kind of special thing that would be the first to go when the budget gets tight.

For a birthday: Was there a cocktail that your friend or partner loved at a restaurant? Or a dish they particularly loved? Pick up all the ingredients to make it, and write on the note “Remember how much fun we had that night at ____.”

For a friend who could use a pick-me-up: Do you have any funny private jokes? Go to your favorite bakery (or Carvel!) and have them pipe it across the top, the more random the better.

For an older parent: Is there a food they feel particularly sentimental about? I once made my father the homemade version of an Entenmann’s cake we both loved in the 1980s that has since been discontinued. Any other Sour Cream and Chocolate Chip Nut Loaf fans out there?

For a small-gesture or “I’m thinking of you” gift: The single-batch cocktail. I’ll never forget that time during the early days of Covid when my friend Sonya batched a single-serve Elderflower Vesper for me in a jam jar (1 ounce vodka, 1 ounce gin, 1 ounce Lillet Blanc, 1/2 ounce St-Germain elderflower liqueur, lemon or orange twist) and left it on my doorstep.

For the young adult: Are they starting a new life in a new town? Are they in college? Local Coffee shop or restaurant gift cards will always hit.

For the dinner host: Bring something homemade they can have for breakfast, i.e. something that doesn’t interfere with their dinner plan: Granola, scones, biscotti.

For someone far away: Have they moved? Are they homesick? A Gold Belly gift card fund a shipment of the hometown foods they miss the most.

For anyone at anytime: A batch of blow-their-minds homemade cookies, a beautiful olive oil, a premier babka, those eggs with the reliably deep orange yolks you can only find at your local farmer’s market, the chocolates I was obsessed with earlier this year, and anything else from my Food Lover’s Gift Guide.

Have a great week,
Jenny

P.S. Giveaway!

Meanwhile, it feels like the right time to announce that I found a stack of these ca. 2011 vintage Dinner: A Love Story bumper stickers — with the original URL across the bottom and everything! I’m giving away THREE at random to readers who comment below with their best having-people-over recipe, trick, hack, strategy, whatever…Anything that makes it easier or more fun to focus on what matters: The gathering. Deadline Friday, April 3, 8PM ET. Good luck!

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