Go for the gold: What to Cook This Week

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Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Wilson.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

What to Cook This Week

Sam Sifton

Good morning. It is the birthday of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who died 20 years ago at the age of 83. You should celebrate it by reading “The Bean Eaters,” from 1963, a poem that ends in a stanza of stark beauty:

And remembering...

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Sit with that for a while, and maybe you could pay tribute to the couple in the poem with a dinner of beans yourself. We’ve got a load of recipes for those, and some smart bird’s-eye-view instruction on the subject of cooking beans in general. So, perhaps Aaron Hutcherson’s creamy white bean and fennel casserole? Or Tejal Rao’s beans and garlic toast in broth (above)? Or Julia Moskin’s best black bean soup?

These weeks run long, so don’t just plan for what to cook tonight. Think about what’s ahead, and how you might plan for it — planning is both trickier during the pandemic (groceries are hard) and a little easier, too (a lot of us are still hunkered down at home all day, at work or out of it, with plenty of time to cook).

So on Monday, say, you could make Alexa Weibel’s vegetarian mushroom shawarma pitas.

And on Tuesday, Yewande Komolafe’s sheet-pan gochujang chicken with roasted vegetables.

Wednesday, if you plan it right and make the dough today, allow it to cold-proof in the fridge and develop a little tang: the green and white pizza, from Roberta’s in Brooklyn.

On Thursday, what do you make of the idea of this Southwestern-style oven-braised chicken from the chef Edna Lewis, who shared it with The Times in 1989? It’s bonkers with a mess of thighs in place of a whole bird, bone-in or boneless.

And on Friday, to round out the week, chef’s choice. I’d like to go with a pile of steamed clams with jalapeño butter. (Let that butter go brown in the heat, and it adds an awesome nuttiness.) But you may prefer meatballs in the style of Rao’s in New York, or Sue Li’s black pepper beef and cabbage stir-fry, or Tejal’s toor dal.

Thousands and thousands of recipes are waiting for you 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. But I’ll ask you anyway: Would you think about subscribing? Your subscription allows our work to continue.

And should anything go wrong along the way? We are standing by to help. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We will get back to you.

Now, it has nothing to do with fresh strawberries or cauliflower Parm, but if you missed it, A.O. Scott’s “The Essential Spike Lee” is an excellent and helpful read.

Likewise, take a look at Michael Kimmelman on the conceptual artist Christo, who died last weekend at 84. And at Lolis Eric Elie on the life and death of the Louisville barbecue master David McAtee, who was killed on Monday.

Finally: Here’s Ibram X. Kendi with a 2017 essay in The Times, on the 24 most influential books on race and the black experience published in the United States. I’ll be back on Monday.