Go for the gold: May 2020

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Sunday, May 31, 2020

What to Cook This Week

Sam Sifton

Good morning. It seems ridiculous today, the nation roiled with anger, beset by fear and uncertainty, to tell you how nice it would be to make waffles, to eat in the fog still drifting past the window as the breakfast hour turns to brunch. It seems crazy to be recommending recipes.

What comfort can any of that bring to a country, deeply divided, that together must continue to face a pandemic, an economic breakdown and protests across the nation all at once? Cooking, that joyful act, seems near powerless in the face of our grief and worry, our fury and fix-minded determination, our deep estrangement from one another, our exhausted selves.

And yet it is not. It is one thing you can do that can make someone else’s life a little better, if only for a few minutes. It is a way to offer the world a gift.

Remember a couple of months ago, when we were all tittering about those people stress-buying chickens to raise under quarantine? I kind of wish I’d joined them, wish I had all the eggs I wanted, for breakfast and lunch, to float into ramen or to use to make sandos. I’d eat a couple every day. I’d give them to neighbors, unasked for, just for something to do.

I can’t, though. I have no chickens. So I’ll put on my mask and buy some nice eggs today, some good vegetables from the farm, score some oysters, a few pounds of local meat. I’m lucky to be working, lucky to get paid for the labor, lucky to be able to afford my groceries still. I’ll unload my bags, clean everything and I’ll cook for those around me, and for a few others as well, people I know are only holding on by a thread.

Tonight, for instance, it’d be great to make a giant batch of this one-pot turmeric-coconut rice with greens, and some cold-brew and horchata afterward, so I can deliver some dirty horchatas to neighbors in the morning, before work, along with the leftover rice.

Monday, I’m thinking, will be good for crisp tofu katsu with lemon-tahini sauce (above), excellent with rice and thin-sliced cabbage. I’ll cook that just for family. Crispness doesn’t travel.

But on Tuesday, because I’ll be home, slow-cooker pork puttanesca ragù, a double batch. I’ll let it burble away all afternoon.

Wednesday I won’t even use a recipe, but freestyle my way into a kale salad of heft and means instead. I’ll use what’s left on sandwiches on Thursday and take one to a friend I haven’t seen in months, four blocks away: turkey and the softened kale, some mayonnaise, tiles of Cheddar, decent bread.

Shrimp linguine with herbs, corn and arugula for Thursday? I think so, yes. I’ll be squirrely by then, and the smiles from the children, who love greens and pasta combined, will be a balm.

And then, to round out the week, nachos because nachos are an excellent way to round out the week. No one doesn’t love nachos.

Many thousands more recipes await your approval on NYT Cooking. A lot more of them than usual are free to use even if you aren’t yet a subscriber to our site and apps. I hope you will think about subscribing anyway. Your subscription supports our work. It allows it to continue.

Will you come visit us on Facebook and Instagram? I hope so. We’re on YouTube. You can watch Melissa Clark cook from her pantry there, and it’s almost as if the world is all right. We’re on Twitter as well. And should you run into trouble with anything along the way, you can write us for help: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it’s nothing to do with lamb ribs or the hydration of flour, but Gabrielle Paiella on Steve Buscemi, in GQ, is a worthy distraction, a way to eat time.

As is Bill Buford making béarnaise sauce with his sons on video for The New Yorker.

Have you seen the trailer for Pete Davidson’s “The King of Staten Island”? I love New York City so much.

Finally, a geography lesson. On Friday in this space I put Tampa in southwest Florida, which it’s not. It’s more central-west. I’m sorry for that. See you tomorrow.