People, I have neglected you. Is the magic gone? Can’t we work this out? Let me answer that in five beautiful words:

*Corn will also be served.*

Every summer, and on into fall, I buy corn from Alvarez Farm on Sunday and cook it up the same night. This year I came across two best-ever corn recipes, one on the cob and one off, both Mexican-inspired. Iris prefers plain corn on the cob, so I always boil half an ear for her and she skewers it with corn holders–or, as she calls them, Niblet Nabbers. This is a brand name for some corn holders that I probably bought at Archie McPhee.

First up, Mexican street corn. If someone set up on our street selling this, I would stand outside our house eating corn at all times.

**ELOTE (Mexican Street Corn)**
Adapted from The Best International Recipe
Serves 2 to 3

*Broiling the corn totally makes it taste like popcorn.*

6 ears corn, husked
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
1 tablespoon juice from 1 lime
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 ounce queso fresco or farmers cheese, or feta, crumbled
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 lime, cut into wedges (for serving)

1. Preheat the broiler. Brush the corn with olive oil and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Adjust the oven rack to the top position. Broil the corn until well browned and slightly charred in places, about 20 minutes, turning once.

2. Meanwhile, stir together the mayonnaise, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, chili powder, cheese, and salt. Slather the broiled corn on all sides with this mixture. Return the corn to the oven and broil 1 minute. Serve immediately with lime wedges.

Next, in this week’s New York Times, Melissa Clark said the magic words: bacon, chipotle, corn. A squeeze of lime would not hurt, but otherwise it’s perfect.

Here’s the recipe.

Tomorrow, I suggest you serve Mexican street corn with spicy fried corn on the side. Smoove out.

Years ago I reviewed a restaurant with the awesome name of Jack’s Tapas Café, Mainly Chinese. My favorite dish there was a stir-fry of lamb and napa cabbage, with lots of rice vinegar.

I could eat stir-fried napa cabbage every day, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to recreating this recipe at home until last night. I thought it was great, and it makes a little meat (about $3 worth, in this case) go a long way. (Iris ate about half the lamb, but I was happy with spicy cabbage and rice.)

Here’s the way I made it last night, and I was very happy with it; obviously you can adjust this any way you like.

**SOUR NAPA CABBAGE WITH LAMB**
Serves 2 to 3 with rice

1 lamb shoulder chop, fat and bones discarded, meat sliced thin
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice wine
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 large carrot, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 small onion, thinly sliced
half a medium head of napa cabbage, shredded
1 clove garlic, minced

*For the sauce:*
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon chile-garlic sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch

1. Stir together the sauce ingredients until the sugar dissolves, and set aside. Stir the 1 teaspoon each of soy sauce and rice wine into the lamb.

2. Heat the peanut oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high until it begins to smoke. Add the lamb and cook until well-browned but still slightly pink in spots, about 1 minute. Remove to a bowl, reserving the oil in the pan.

3. Add the carrot and onion to the pan and cook until the carrot slices are well browned on both sides, about 2 minutes. Add the cabbage and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is markedly reduced in volume and well browned in places, about 2 minutes. Add the reserved lamb and sauce and cook, stirring, until the sauce is thickened and coats the meat and vegetables, about 1 minute. Serve immediately with steamed rice.

Warning: If Iris comes up to you and asks to be taken to a salad bar, don’t be fooled. It’s a trick.

Last Monday there was an unassuming item on the dinner calendar: shelling bean salad. I had a bunch of stuff from the farmers market that needed to be eaten, including salad greens and shelling beans. So Iris shelled the beans, I made a caramelized shallot vinaigrette with sherry vinegar, and we had a salad bar. I had the water boiling for the beans and needed to get them in quick if they were going to be ready for dinner, so I was urging Iris to shell faster. I felt like a sweatshop proprietor. If they had been fava beans I would have felt really guilty.

Here’s what Laurie and I had in our salads:

* mix of tender greens
* shelling beans
* bacon
* croutons
* shallot vinaigrette

Here’s what Iris had in her salad:

* croutons
* bacon

Now Iris keeps asking me when we can have salad bar again, because she loves croutons. She made me promise not to put pepper on them next time, however.

How I make croutons: take a loaf of rustic bread (I use Grand Central Como), cut off the crust, and cut the bread into 1-inch cubes. Toss the cubes with olive oil, salt, and (if family members allow) pepper. Bake in a 400-degree oven for 10-12 minutes, until browned. Nibble on the discarded crusts while the croutons bake.

Sometimes my cooking gets into a Euro-American rut. When I’m feeling lazy, my thoughts turn to burgers, pasta, pan-roasted salmon. Too long without Asian food, however, I get cranky. So I’m going to try to remind myself to cook something Asian at least once a week.

Tonight, it was a recipe from Eric Gower’s cookbook The Breakaway Cook. I am not sold on the title or the cover photo of this book, but otherwise it’s great. The author lived in Japan and concocts simple recipes with flavorful, mostly Asian ingredients: matcha, pomegranate molasses, miso, and so on. I made a fantastic broiled mackerel dish, and I’ll give you the recipe in a minute, after I put in a plug for mackerel.

A few months ago I took a fish cooking class at [Culinary Communion](http://www.culinarycommunion.com/). It was fun. We were handed whole trout and had to skin and fillet them. We ate shrimp and grits. At the beginning of the class, we introduced ourselves by name and favorite fish. My favorite fish is mackerel. This turned out to be an unexpected and punk-rock choice. Not even the instructor was a big mackerel booster.

Epicurious offers 19 mackerel recipes and 411 salmon recipes. There are no Google hits for “mackerel fan club.”

One of my favorite defunct Seattle restaurants was Takohachi, best known for its salt-broiled mackerel and bacon fried rice. If there had been a mackerel fan club, this would have been its headquarters. Since it closed, I’ve been in mackerel withdrawal, mostly eating it raw at sushi places. They don’t sell mackerel at my local supermarket.

Yesterday I was doing some shopping at Uwajimaya and drifted into the frozen fish section. Uwajimaya sells at least two dozen species of vacuum-packed frozen fish, including some beautiful Norwegian mackerel fillets. (And whole mackerel, of course.) Two mackerel fillets, each enough to serve an adult, will set you back $6 total. Aren’t you glad there’s no mackerel fan club? I let them defrost overnight in the fridge. They were fantastically easy to cook and every bit as good as any mackerel I’ve eaten anywhere. I’ve struck gold–well, silver–in my grocer’s freezer case.

Curious, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch site to find out about the sustainability of the Norwegian mackerel fishery. They don’t mention Norwegian mackerel. I guess nobody asked.

Iris loved the mackerel. We’re starting a fan club.

**BROILED MACKEREL WITH SOY, LEMON, AND BUTTER**
Adapted from The Breakaway Cook
Serves 2

1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 mackerel fillets (6 to 8 ounces each), rinsed and dried
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt
Lemon wedges

1. Preheat the broiler. Put the soy sauce, lemon juice, butter, and syrup in a sauce pan and heat over medium heat. Cook three minutes, stirring often, until slightly thickened. Brush the fish with the soy sauce mixture on both sides and sprinkle lightly with pepper.

2. Broil the fish until brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Flip and broil until crispy on the other side (the skin side is easier to burn), about 3 minutes. Sprinkle with additional salt to taste and serve with lemon wedges and rice.

I made a quick Thai-inspired chicken recipe tonight and thought it came out really well. Iris ate a big square of crispy chicken skin.

Combine half a 14-ounce can of coconut milk with minced stems of one bunch cilantro, one stalk sliced lemongrass, a few grinds of pepper, three tablespoons fish sauce, and three cloves minced garlic. Use this to marinate four bone-in chicken thighs. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Roast for an hour at 400°F.

We didn’t have any on hand, but you should serve it with that Mae Ploy sweet chilli sauce.