Good morning. Gabrielle Hamilton is absolutely right about the pleasures of home-fried oysters with tartar sauce (above). As she wrote for The New York Times Magazine this week, they offer “the possibility for something not just nostalgic and postcard-y but also highly delicious.†I hope you make them sometime soon, piling a half-dozen into a split baguette with shaved iceberg and thin-sliced tomatoes, with extra tartar sauce.
But if you don’t, if shucking and frying oysters is beyond your ken or your interest, I do hope you’ll make her stellar sauce all the same, to serve with pan-fried fish or scallops, shrimp and squid, as a topping for a salmon burger, even as a dip for chilled matchsticks of carrot and celery. It’s a showstopper. You won’t be sorry.
On Monday, I think you may enjoy this one-pan meal of gnocchi and mushrooms, especially if you avail yourself of store-bought gnocchi: It’s a meatless meal that evokes the pleasures of steakhouse sides beneath its creamy, horseradish-mustard sauce.
For Tuesday — and for the first game of the World Series! — how about game day nachos? Roast the pork all day while you work, if you can do that (otherwise, fire up the pressure cooker when you get home), then put everything together before the national anthem starts. And for dessert: homemade cracker jack, of course.
Honey-and-soy glazed chicken thighs for Wednesday night? Add a spray of lemon juice at the end to keep things tangy and sharp. I like the idea of that.
I’m thinking beef and broccoli for Thursday, a recipe based on one the chef Jonathan Wu learned from his mom, with some tweaks added for punch and gloss.
And then we can round out the week with this epic vegetarian mushroom Wellington, which is much easier to prepare than its beef-based cousin, and amazingly delicious.
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We will of course be standing by, just in case something goes pear-shaped while you’re cooking or using our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise. (You can also write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I’m terrible at solving problems, but I can take a punch. I read every letter sent.)
Now, it’s the opposite of shirring eggs or French-pressing coffee, but Jennifer Egan, writing in The Times, put me on to Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, “Oh William!†Let me pay that forward.
Ready for ski season? Warren Miller is. Here’s the trailer for his latest film, “Winter Starts Now.â€
If you’re in New York, you should maybe take a look at “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians†at the Asia Society.
Finally, here are five new songs to play us off, courtesy of Jon Pareles, our chief pop music critic. You should listen to all of them. I’ll be back on Monday.
