Come on Baby Light My Fire

Plus: A Mixed Berry Pie, A Rooftop Dinner Party, and A Return to Sailor.

Hey everyone,

You’re looking at my summer kitchen. That’s where I plan to be most nights, setting newspaper on fire to ignite the charcoal, and trying not to burn dinner.

Since we last spoke, I cooked not one but TWO outdoor dinners using my grill. Dinner #1 was for our friend Isaac, who watched me wrestle with a spatchcocked chicken while nibbling cheese and drinking a Craig-mixed martini.

Why was I wrestling with my chicken? Well: I made my spatchcocked chicken the usual way (see here) with coriander seeds, fennel seeds, and black pepper. I was going to do it in the oven, like normal, but instead I thought, “Hey! You have a grill. Go use it!”

There was my set-up: my brush to clean the grill, the tongs to move things around, the paper towel drenched in oil to oil the grates, the thermometer to take the temperature, and the chicken itself, ready for some heat.

The dance was one of getting the chicken cooked through on the inside without burning the outside and without tearing the skin too much as I moved it all around.

As you can see, there are some rips in the skin-meat continuum, because the last thing that I wanted to do was serve anyone raw chicken so I kept flipping it back and forth. It took a while to get the internal temperature up: the trick, it turns out, is to put the lid on the grill to turn it into an oven.

In the end, it was a pretty gorgeous dinner: served with Carla Hall’s spring barley bowl with asparagus and my own improvised salsa verde.

If the chicken had been raw or inedible, I did have a solid back-up plan: skip to dessert, in this case, a mixed berry pie.

This pie was so good and so summery. It also helped that Mr. Beet, the inexpensive grocery store in my neighborhood, was selling berries for not a lot of money.

Since you’re probably wondering, “Is there a recipe for that pie?” I did you a solid and typed it all up for you on my blog. Click the button and read all about my mixed berry pie process and technique.

But wait! I also grilled pork chops this weekend, which, like the chicken, required a lot of maneuvering on the grill.

These were trickier because there was a solid layer of fat surrounding each chop, so there were lots of flare-ups, and the meat cooked inconsistently so some parts were overcooked, some parts were raw. I was confused. And yet, it all worked out when I cooked it a little extra and served it with this “Asian” slaw with ginger peanut dressing.

Dining al fresco was the theme of our weekend. On Friday night, we went to our friend Laura’s where she and her husband Ben cooked us up a scrumptious dinner of shrimp linguine and grilled oysters and kale Caesar and served it on their roof.

The shrimp ragu, or Bolognese, is an Ottolenghi recipe and it’s out-of-this-world. The perfect hearty dish to serve to pescatarians or anyone else in your life who doesn’t eat meat.

Finally, last night we went back to Sailor with our pals Jenny and Andy who you know and love from Dinner: A Love Story.

The food at Sailor is so out-of-this-world, I have a new distraction when I’m writing during the day. When I need a break, I just go on to the Sailor website and look for reservations. They’re never there until they are and then I snag them! Actually, this has only happened twice: the last time I was there and this visit. It’s my version of playing Wordle.

So many highlights to this meal: the eggs mayo, the Arctic char dip, the hemp yogurt dip with mini vegetables. But the chicken — which we also had last time — remains a star.

And these profiteroles should be studied in culinary schools around the country for their demonstration of perfectly-executed choux pastry, a well-made caramel sauce, and properly-churned vanilla ice cream.

I’m reaching my e-mail limit, but trust me when I say: everything at Sailor is scrumptious and hard to share. I could’ve eaten that whole plate of profiteroles myself.

Let’s look at some links!

• The Hottest New Bars in NYC (Eater New York);

• Passionfruit and Ginger Tart (The Guardian);

• Susan Spungen’s Upside-Down Rhubarb Pavlova looks like the dreamiest summer dessert… and fun to make (Susanality).

That’s all for today, folks!

I’m off to the gym to work on my summer body which looks a lot like my winter body, only more exposed.

Until next time….

Your pal,

Adam