I’m feeling benevolent — and like I want everyone, even the free subscribers, to get to see this week’s reading recommendations. So today’s newsletter is free for all.
… This feels like an opportunity to plug one of the Substacks I really look forward to receiving in my inbox each week:
. The most recent one included a recipe for sheet pan miso-maple chicken with radishes and turnips, which felt like the paragon of what a September dinner should entail. I made it while editing NFL stories Sunday night, which is to say it was as simple to make as it was delicious.Somehow, my grocery store was fresh out of turnips over the weekend but had sunchokes in abundance. I happen to love sunchokes, and I also had a hunch they’d be a pretty good turnip substitute. I was right. I’m not sure I’d ever actually purchased a sunchoke — though I’d eaten plenty in restaurants — and now I think I’m going to make a habit of it.
… You guys. I am swooning over the olive oil cake with crispy capers from “More Than Cake.” I never knew I needed fried capers in my desserts. Now, I’m leafing through cookbooks trying to figure out other ways to incorporate fried capers into… everything.
But back to the olive oil cake. Good grief. It’s everything a good olive oil cake should be: somehow light but also moist and packed with flavor. The citrus, sherry and olive oil soak is what makes this cake truly magical, and the capers are a fun, salty pièce de résistance.
… All it takes is for one half-dead leaf to fall off a tree in an early-September wind gust, and I’m craving German beer. My cells need it. So on Friday afternoon, I dragged Jesse to Atlas Brew Works, where I promptly ordered the Märzen Invasion Oktoberfest, a beer that (a) has an excellent name and (b) is the perfect not-too-heavy but still fall-ish sip.
… I ordered that beer with a side slice of pepperoni pizza. I can’t remember the last time I was lucky enough to get pizza by the slice — probably on a trip to New York in the spring of 2022? — but I know for sure that I was overdue for one. So you know what I did the next day? I got another pepperoni slice. The first was from Andy’s Pizza. The second was from The Little Grand. The Little Grand slice had a bit more going on with its sourdough crust, and the pepperoni on the Andy’s slice was sublime.
More restaurants should serve pizza by the slice, at least at lunchtime, but preferably all the time. This week, if you need a pick-me-up, find a slice of pizza and, preferably, eat it outside in this perfect not-quite-fall weather.
… The next book I buy will undoubtedly be Lauren Groff’s “The Vaster Wilds.” I really enjoyed her 2015 novel, “Fates and Furies,” and after reading her most recent work, 2021’s “Matrix,” I’ve been meaning to become a Lauren Groff completist. Almost every single sentence in Matrix, which is a feminist tale about a 12th-century nun, is perfect. Groff writes the way I hallucinate about writing, and my favorite thing about “Matrix” was the almost mystical prose, the sense that the story existed in the blurry territory between reality and fable.
“The Vaster Wilds” seems like it will have that same kind of kaleidoscopic quality. It’s about a girl who leaves the Jamestown colony in the 17th century during a period of starvation and wanders the vast wilderness between Virginia and Canada. I was already planning to read the book, which came out last week, but this review in Vox added some urgency to my plans. It simply sounds too good to wait much longer to dig into.
… I’m also counting the days until I can read “The Antidote,” which unfortunately won’t be released until 2025. Read this summary in LitHub and tell me you’re not intrigued.
… On a whole different note: I’m fascinated by butcher shops, especially woman-owned ones. This Eater piece on the last butcher shop in New York’s Little Italy is heartwarming and wonderful.