Good morning. It’s Climate Week here in New York, featuring a series of events and discussions regarding our food systems — how we grow and raise food, sell it, cook it and eat it — and the crucial role this all plays in our broader ecosystem. I’ve written about seafood and sustainability many times over the years, reporting on kelp, oysters, scallops, salmon and shrimp. Every article is a reminder that even the smallest decisions we make about our diet can affect both our foodways and the planet. For home cooks, this can be empowering. Not only can cooking be a source of joy and deliciousness, but our choices about how we cook can have a positive impact. Learning about our ingredients, cooking mindfully and more often, and sharing meals with people we care about can all help to make a palpable difference in the world.
A sheet-pan stunnerRight now I have a freezer full of individually wrapped wild salmon fillets, and with the cooler weather we’ve been having in New York, I’m breaking out the sheet pan for Colu Henry’s maple and miso sheet-pan salmon with green beans. It’s one of those ideal weeknight recipes with barely any knifework (some chopped cilantro, a sliced lime), and it’s ready in about 20 minutes. And if you don’t have green beans, broccoli works just as well. View this recipe: Maple and miso sheet-pan salmon with green beans Recipes for your weekHere are five more recipes that are fresh, fast and highlight sustainable seafood, including two five-star recipes for cod and my protein-packed mussels with white beans and garlic. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. And before you goSpeaking of seaweed, kelp and I make a cameo appearance together in an excellent new documentary directed by Jonathan Nastasi and Vivian Sorenson, in which I make my roast chicken with crunchy seaweed and potatoes. The film tells the story of small-scale farms and fisheries struggling to survive in a food system that’s stacked against them. It’s a beautiful movie — heartfelt and surprisingly uplifting — and it may be coming to a festival near you this fall. As Wendell Berry says in the trailer, “The future of food is not distinguishable from the future of the land, which is indistinguishable in turn from the future of human care.” As always, I’m at hellomelissa@nytimes.com and I love hearing from you. Even if I can’t reply to all your notes, I read every one. See you Thursday.
Melissa Clark has been writing about food for The New York Times since 1997 and is the author of 46 cookbooks. Her latest is “The Big Book of Dinner,” coming in November. You can reach her at hellomelissa@nytimes.com. Editors: Mia Leimkuhler and Li Goldstein. Host photo by Melanie Dunea. For help with your New York Times Cooking subscription, please email cookingcare@nytimes.com. Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for our New York Times Cooking newsletter here.
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