Three Things

An MVP grilled chicken, book recs galore, and a delicious way to use up all those cucumbers

Good morning eaters and readers! Well, if the packed college duffels aren’t telling me that fall is around the corner, the mailbox sure is. For cookbook enthusiasts, late August through October is the most wonderful time of the year — it’s when publishers release many of their big titles, presumably because the farm market is still popping, our nesting instinct is kicking in, and, in theory, authors can ride sales all the way through the holidays. I’ll be doing an official fall round-up about the same time I break out the Dutch oven for my first braise, but in the meantime, I thought you might like to see the above little photo teaser showing a few books I’m excited about. In listening news, I’d like to officially recommend three podcasts: Conan interviews David Sedaris (pure smart silliness, as usual); Evan Kleiman interviews KJ Kearney (Good Food as well as @blackfoodfridays are great follows); and Taste’s Matt Rodbard interviews longtime Vanity Fair editor Dana Brown. (Reminded me how truly absurd Condé Nast was in the 90s into the early 2000s when I worked there — like were those years even real?) Enough throat-clearing! Here are Three Things I’d like you to know about this week….

1. Grilled Chicken for People Who Hate Grilled Chicken

I wrote that exact headline over twelve years ago, when I first posted a recipe for one of the most popular recipes ever to run on Dinner: A Love Story: Yogurt-marinated grilled chicken. Our big discovery back then was that two things prevent grilled chicken from suffering a cardboard-dry fate: 1) yogurt in the marinade and 2) pounding the chicken to even thickness. While I stand by this last point, I’ve learned that pounding chicken breasts can be a production (unless you are using that chicken breast as a stand-in for something…else, in which case, go ahead and knock the daylights out of it) and that using naturally juicier chicken thighs is an easier, tastier way to go. I updated the recipe to reflect this as well as other improvements we’ve discovered in the ensuing years — like setting aside some of the yogurt marinade to use as a drizzling sauce. Lastly, I highly recommend serving this chicken with a sliced tomato and feta salad and some miso-buttered corn on the cob, as shown. (Note: A version of this recipe appeared in our old Bon Appetit column as well.)

2. Drink that Cucumber Bounty

I’m not going to say that a simple cucumber-mint salad or cold sesame noodles tossed with a mess of shaved cucumbers or a classic tzatziki aren’t all excellent ways to use up the cucumbers that spilleth over this time of year… BUT. Longtime readers know that my favorite way to eat cucumbers is to in fact drink them. Specifically with gin, ginger-spiked simple syrup and lime, in what the genius bartenders at Blue Hill Stone Barns once named a Cucalyptus Punch. Their recipe calls for one peeled, seeded English cucumber but this past weekend, all I had were a few small Persians. I chucked two of them through the juicer (skin on) so I didn’t have to bother with peeling and straining, and I think that is why my drink wound up looking Jolly-Rancher green. I’m never not doing it that way again.

Cucalyptus Punch
Makes 1 drink

2 ounces dry gin (here I used Boodles)
2 ounces cucumber juice (see note above; but you can also make by blending peeled, seeded cucumbers with a little water, then straining; it works out to about 1 medium size cucumber per cocktail)
1/2 ounces ginger syrup
1/2 ounces lime juice

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Shake, and serve over ice with a thin slice of cucumber as a garnish.

3. Phoebe’s Top 12 Graphic Novels

Over the weekend, we tagged along with our graphic novel and comic book nerd daughter Phoebe, as she made her way to a few zine festivals in Williamsburg. Afterwards, she escorted us to the legendary Desert Island Comics, and I had fun perusing the shelves and pretending I was not a day tripper from the suburbs. (I did not fool anyone.) Anyway, it reminded me that Phoebe has a running list of favorite graphic novel/memoir recs (good for high school age and up) so I thought now was as good a time as any to share them with you:

Wendy, by Walter Scott
Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes
Perfect Example, John Porcellino (boy, she really loves this guy)
Beverly, by Nick Drnaso
Passing for Human, by Liana Finck (Finck is the house favorite)
Skim, by Jillian Tamaki
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, by Ellen Forney
Point Your Face at This, by Demetri Martin
Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosch (of Hyperbole & A Half fame)
Step Aside Pops, Kate Beaton
Excuse Me, by Liana Finck
Supermutant Magic Academy, Jillian Tamaki

Thanks, Phoebe! (P.S. This is the kids’ book that kicked off her obsession with all things graphic when she was in first or second grade.)

P.S. Help me solve this mystery…

I got a flood of new readers over the past three days and I have two things to say about that. 1) Welcome! I made you a galette! And 2) If you’ve subscribed in the past 72 hours, will you let me know who sent you? I can’t figure it out and I want to thank whoever is so generously spreading the word. (You can comment below.) Thank you in advance.

Reminder: Paying subscribers have access to bonus content like menu plans for entertaining and weeknight dinner line-ups (I always include shopping lists), travel itineraries, live discussion threads with me and experts like Dorie Greenspan, and so much more. Come join the fun! You can do that here….

Have a great week!
Jenny