June 22 – June 28, 2026

Monday:                  Tapas (leftovers from last week – pizza, avocado toast, salmon salad, corn salad, roast potatoes, parsley sauce)

Tuesday:                  Spicy Seafood Pasta with Leeks and Lemon

Wednesday:          Ground Chicken with Suya (peanut) Spice and Lentils

Thursday:                Grilled Italian Sausage w/ Pickled Peppers over Arugula

Friday:                      Dry-Brined Salmon with Herb Salad

Saturday:                Falkner’s Fennel Pizza

Sunday:                   Pulled Pork w/ Creamed Corn and coleslaw

This Ain’t Your Mother’s Salmon

The eternal burden of the home cook is summed up in the question: “What’s for dinner.”  How many times have you wanted to brain the questioner with a frying pan and order takeout?  Don’t answer that online, please.

Beez and I have been watching “The Lost Kitchen,” a documentary chronicling the development and rise to fame of a small restaurant in Freedom, Maine.  This restaurant, created by a self-taught chef, is sold out from May through October at $295 per head plus taxes, tips and beverages.  And Erin French, the superb cook who created and runs the place, agonizes each week over the menu.  Now, in one sense, this is understandable, since she charges $295 per.  Another issue for Erin is that her menu features fresh produce, seafood and meats and is dependent on what the local purveyors have available, not yearly, but right now.  But, in another sense, since she and her team will be cooking the same dishes all week, her agonizing is not quite the same as the home cook who has to come up with seven separate menus for each week.  [I know, there are nights out, and take-out dinners and other lacunae in the relentless round of Monday through Sunday – but allow me a little dietetic license here.]

Fridays are actually a bit of a gift, if you have been brought up in a Catholic household.  You can just plan a meal around fish every Friday.  In one sense, this is quite limiting – Pittsburgh has no ocean-front property.  But in another sense, it is quite helpful – you don’t have to wrack your brain or rummage through your cookbooks to come up with a dish.  On the other hand, salmon, cod and shrimp – the always available seafood products – can feel like a rut, from time to time.  But salmon is tasty – it’s always available – it’s not expensive, if you don’t buy the ‘line-caught, King salmon from Alaska’ (and how would you know, anyway?)  And, since you may find yourself cooking salmon 20 times each year, let me offer a slightly new way to cook it that will please your family and get you through Fridays with a little less angst.  As for the rest of the week – you’re on your own.

The recipe below, through dry-brining, eliminates the fatty, white oozing that you often get when cooking salmon and gives you a firmer, more interesting piece of fish.  And it looks more appetizing as well.  Served alongside an herb salad it will please not only Catholics, practicing or lapsed, but all other types of believers and deniers.

Dry-Brined Salmon with a Simple Herb Salad

(adapted from Milk Street Magazine, July-August 2026)

Timing:                     One hour for brining – 25 minutes to cook

Ingredients: Serves 4                                   

For the salmon:

Four 6-ounce center-cut skin-on salmon fillets (each about 1 inch or a little more thick) Note: Trader Joe’s sells a packet of 4 fillets that is perfect, except that they are frozen and you’ll need to thaw them overnight in the refrigerator or, more quickly, by placing the sealed package in a bowl of running cold water.

3 Tablespoons packed brown sugar – 2 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill – Grated zest of 1 orange – Grated zest of 1 lemon plus 1 teaspoon of lemon juice

Ground White Pepper (black pepper will work – it’s not as strong)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

For the salad:

2 cups baby arugula – ½ cup parsley leaves – ½ cup fresh dill, torn – 2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil – Kosher salt and white pepper

Prep:

Brine the salmon: 

Combine the sugar, salt, dill, orange zest, lemon zest and juice and ¾ teaspoon of white pepper in a 9 x13 baking dish and mix until evenly moistened.

Add the salmon and rub the mixture onto all sides of each fillet.  Refrigerate uncovered for 45 minutes, up to 1 hour.

While the salmon is drying put the greens for the salad in a bowl.

When the salmon is finished brining, rinse the fillets and pat dry with paper towels.

Cook and Serve:

In a 12-inch, non-stick skillet over medium-high, heat the oil until shimmering.  Add the salmon, flesh side down, then reduce heat to medium and cook, undisturbed until well browned on the bottom – 5 minutes of so.

While the salmon is cooking on the flesh side, toss the greens with lemon juice and oil and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Now flip the fillets and continue cooking for about 4 minutes – if the fillets are very thick, make it 5 minutes, if they are very thin, 3 minutes.  Note: If you like your salmon fairly wet (if you’re French), cook it only 2 minutes after you flip.

Serve the salmon with the herb salad on the same plate.