Burn This Cheesecake

Basque cheesecake is better with a deeply burnished exterior — the better to contrast with its creamy interior.

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. It was one of those meals that sticks in your mind for days afterward: steamed lobsters with drawn butter and a plate of baby potatoes. I won’t wax on about the lobsters. They were perfect and should have been. That’s what you’re paying for, when you buy lobster.

But, man, those potatoes. Wrinkled little golf balls of flavor, tossed in butter and fragrant with dill, with just a sprinkle of sea salt over the top for texture and a snap of minerality. You don’t even need a recipe: Get the tots into boiling water and cook them into submission, just past al dente, then drain and return them to the pot over medium heat for a minute or so to dry. Hit them with butter, toss everything around until glistening, then add a handful of chopped dill and a healthy pinch of salt. Luxury!

We had a lovely apple pie for dessert, but if I were doing it again — and I will be doing it again — I’d prefer this amazing Basque cheesecake (above) to finish, from a recipe that my colleague and bud Tanya Sichynsky adapted from Marti Buckley’s 2018 cookbook, “Basque Country: A Culinary Journey Through a Food Lover’s Paradise.” It’s a really simple cake, and less stressful to put together than a New York-style one where you’re worried about beating too much air into the batter, or water leaking into the pan from the water bath, or the top of the cake cracking so you have to come up with some kind of berry glaze to hide the imperfections.

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Basque Cheesecake

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I hope you’ll give that a try this weekend to follow whatever you’re making for dinner. If not lobster or crab, how about slab bacon tacos? I serve those with a crema that I make with scorched scallions, and sometimes pineapple salsa, but I think they’d be amazing with pickled red onions. I make mine with white vinegar and, sometimes, following the lead of the Houston chef, Chris Shepherd, a splash of Mexican Coke in place of the sugar.

Or maybe you could make this vegetarian kofta curry from Tejal Rao? Or this creamy pasta with mushrooms and leeks from Hetty Lui McKinnon? I love these chilled soba noodles in dashi with tomatoes and corn from Yotam Ottolenghi.

Then, for Sunday, Yossey Arefi’s brown butter maple muffins, toasty and rich, a tender taste of the coming fall season, perfect with a mug of milky tea and the promise of a lazy day’s reading on the couch. (Currently, Emily Wilson’s new translation of “The Iliad”.) And maybe some toor dal for dinner.

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Now, it’s nothing to do with butter beans or long-grained rice (and I’m late to it to boot), but C.J. Hauser’s novel “Family of Origin” is a book worth reading.

So is Bernard Moitessier’s memoir, “The Long Way,” about the first Golden Globe sailing race, a solo, nonstop circumnavigation of the world, in 1968.

More tardiness: I’ve been riveted by the darkness that is “Chernobyl,” on Max.

Finally, something new: Zach Bryan in collaboration with Bon Iver, “Boys of Faith.” Listen to that nice and loud, and I’ll see you on Sunday.

Sam Sifton is an assistant managing editor, responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage, and the founding editor of New York Times Cooking. More about Sam Sifton

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