Good morning. There’s been smoke curling around the neighborhood these last few days, neighbors reclaiming their grills in yards and on roof decks, scraping out kettles and replacing grates, wiping down pellet cookers and firing up kamado eggs. The scents have been fantastic: oak smoke and pork fat; the smell of vineyard trimmings toasted over coal. I make out roasted chicken on the breeze from the southwest.

It’d be nice to grill salmon this week, defrosting the last of the wild-caught fish from last season in advance of the new stock coming home soon. It’d be even better to take a recipe for broiled pork chops with peanuts and gochujang, and turn it upside down, using the grill to sear the meat and give it some smokiness, a little char.

Sweet and spicy grilled chicken breasts? Grilled eggplant salad? I’d love it if someone cranked open a can of peaches for grilled peach toast with pimento cheese this week and sent me a picture: [email protected].

But I get it. It’s early in the season still, and early in the week. Some won’t be grilling for a month or more. Others don’t eat meat on Mondays or other days. Tonight might be better for linguine with chickpeas, broccoli and ricotta (above). Or maybe mapo tofu, porkless, with perhaps a little more fermented black beans than David Tanis calls for in the recipe, just because I like their funk. Some roasted yams with yogurt, California-style? Those go well with a hearty salad: chopped kale and blue cheese, lots of dried fruit, plenty of nuts.

Later in the week, perhaps you’d like to try this great recipe we have for pad kee mao, a Thai dish of great distinction. (You may have seen it called “drunken noodles” and who knows why, but it’s a great meal to eat after the bar.)

Charred cauliflower stew would be good this week as well, from Amanda Cohen. “This one goes in my favorite vegetarian entrees file,” wrote one of us in the notes that lie below the recipe. “Even my husband the carnivore liked it.”

Speaking of whom! Have you made Kim Severson’s recipe for chicken-fried steak with cream gravy? It calls for cube steak but works as well with club, or for that matter with an old loafer — Kim’s cream gravy is the business. (If you want an even more outrageous gravy on your crisp-fried beef, try the queso version I learned from Lisa Fain, of the Homesick Texan blog.)

Many thousands more recipes are waiting for you on NYT Cooking, at least once you’ve taken out a subscription to our site and apps. (And please won’t you do that if you haven’t already? Subscriptions are what allow me to keep working at The Times, which is all I’ve ever wanted to do.)

You can find more inspiration on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds. Or you can ask members of our growing community of home cooks for advice, at least once you’ve joined the NYT Cooking community on Facebook. It’s shaping up as a nice party over there. But reach out to us directly if you run into problems with anything technical, financial or correctable! We’re at [email protected].

Now, look who’s back cooking for money: Scott Peacock, biscuit king! John Kessler has the story, in Garden & Gun.

It has very little to do with quince paste or hominy, but you should read Caity Weaver’s account of crossing the nation by train, in The Times.

Also: Alan Michael Parker’s new poem, “Birth of the Cool,” in VQR.

Finally, this Twitter post and accompanying replies introduced me to the notion of bulk ranch dressing, not to mention the joys of footage from security cameras. Enjoy! And I’ll see you on Wednesday.

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