Go for the gold: What to Cook Right Now

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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

What to Cook Right Now

Sam Sifton

Good morning. I’ve been cooking two or three squares a day for 133 days now, surely the longest run of my cooking life, and if it’s sometimes a chore, I still thrill to the possibilities of an improvisatory session — a no-recipe recipe made with what’s on hand. I love those “recipes,” which are really just outlines, notes that others can make into dishes that become entirely their own.

So, for instance, my pal Ted Kim’s gochujang spaghetti? He sent me the rough instructions: Thick spaghetti cooked al dente + sesame oil + a touch of sugar + generous dollops of gochujang + romaine lettuce cut into pieces + sesame seeds + pepper + chopped scallion to garnish. Serve with kimchi if you have it.

It occurred to me, you could make that dish hot, or make it hot, then fridge it and serve it cold. You could sauté some ground pork for the gochujang and make a kind of meat sauce with it, with a splash of soy sauce, or oyster sauce. You could thin out that sauce with stock or water. You could ribbon some zucchini in there in place of the lettuce. You could swap out the lettuce for chopped kale. All of these would be gochujang spaghetti. Go make the one you want. It’s delicious every time.

I get it, if that guidance is too vague. In these trying times, some prefer the order of stepped instruction, the glory of a recipe that holds your hand from beginning to end.

For them, then, for you: Yasmin Fahr’s new recipe for sheet-pan baked feta with broccolini, tomatoes and lemon (above). Or the chef Sean Sherman’s slightly older one, for salmon with crushed blackberries and seaweed.

You could make Tejal Rao’s recipe for keema, a sauté of spiced ground beef that you might accompany with her gajjara kosambari, a simple carrot salad.

Here’s Sarah DiGregorio’s recipe for pressure cooker red beans and rice, a good way to cook quickly and without heating the kitchen too much while you do. And Sue Li’s new recipe for chicken and celery salad with wasabi-tahini dressing, a worthy dinner and an incredible sandwich filling at lunch.

Take a look, too, at David Tanis’s sautéed scallops with crushed peppercorns, at Mark Bittman’s pasta with Gorgonzola and arugula, at Melissa Clark’s chilled corn soup with basil.

And recall that for many, Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that honors Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command, begins Thursday night. We have two new recipes for that, both written by Nargisse Benkabbou: for mrouzia, a Moroccan tagine of lamb shanks; and for rose and almond ghriba, crackly-soft cookies of amazing delight. Perhaps you can make one or both of those, as well. (Here are even more recipes for the holiday.)

There are many thousands more recipes to consider cooking waiting for you on NYT Cooking. Simply subscribe today to access them all, if you haven’t already. I’m bold to ask because subscriptions support our work. They allow it to continue.

And we will be standing by like lifeguards at the reopened community pool should anything go wrong with your cooking or our technology. Just write the team at cookingcare@nytimes.com and someone will get back to you, I promise. (You can always escalate matters by reaching out to me at foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent, and try to help where I can.)

Now, it’s a far cry from chocolate chip cookies and discussion of the very best sort of olive oil, but I think you ought to read Daniel Riley on the Sultans, maybe the nation’s best wedding band, in GQ. Weddings! Remember them? It’s exciting and fun, a reminder of the world that was.

I’m late to it, and it’s dark, dark, dark, but “Line of Duty,” the BBC police procedural you can stream all over the place, is just terrific.

Also old, also transporting: “The Soho Press Book of ’80s Short Fiction.” The library may not have it, but used copies abound online.

Finally, it’s Geddy Lee’s birthday. He’s 67. Here he is with Rush, playing “Time and Motion” live in 1996. I’ll be back on Friday.