Five-Ingredient Cookies for the Fourth

Happy Fourth of July! I’ll keep today’s newsletter short, because you have a barbecue (or the beach or a pool or a quiet spot in the shade with a book and a cold beverage) to get to.

Aren’t these chocolate-peanut butter swirl cookies pretty? I first clocked them on our Instagram and was delighted (relieved) to learn they’re really easy to make: just five ingredients and a bit of smushing and rolling to make the marbled dough. Bring them along to that barbecue or beach hangout, or use them as the base for killer ice cream sandwiches.

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Chocolate-Peanut Butter Swirl Cookies

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And happy 100th birthday, Caesar salad! As Pati Jinich writes for The New York Times, the beloved salad is the pride of Tijuana, Mexico, but no one can agree on who made it. This Caesar salad — currently on the menu at Caesar’s in Tijuana — isn’t the original recipe, but the chef Javier Plascencia and his family think it’s the best one yet. More Caesars to sample: Eric Kim’s radicchio iteration, Melissa Clark’s cherry tomato Caesar salad and this vegan version from Becky Hughes that I deeply love.

For the grill: Mark Bittman’s five-star salmon burgers, which get a nice, tangy kick from mustard and capers. Rick Martínez’s Tajín grilled chicken is always a crowd-pleaser, as who doesn’t love that salty-sour spice mix? (It’s my favorite way to make lackluster melons pop.)

I can’t stop eating noodle salads, and Kay Chun’s vegetable noodle salad with sesame vinaigrette is next on the list. It calls for at least two pounds of crisp summer vegetables (read: go nuts at your favorite farmers’ market stand), and it’s delicious when served warm or at room temperature. I’m also in dips-for-dinner mode, and I figure if I drag some of those summer veggies as well as tortilla chips through Lidey Heuck’s Rotel dip, that counts as a complete meal. (We have plenty more scoopable suppers here in this collection of our best dip recipes.)