Go for the gold: What to Cook This Week

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Beatriz Da Costa for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susie Theodorou.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

What to Cook This Week

Sam Sifton

Good morning. I remember Sundays before all this happened, the chores-and-errands giddiness of them, all the menu planning for the week to come, the slow slide into an afternoon of cooking things in advance or cooking just to cook. It was pleasurable labor, so different from the grind of the workweek, and if my inbox was any indication, it was a joy I shared with many of you.

Not so much, now. Some are out of work and grieving for a life diminished. Others are working through the weekends, the distinction between on the job and off erased. Still more are exhausted by the relentless onslaught of news and opinion, loneliness and family, duty and anxiety, the coronavirus itself. It’s hard, what we’re experiencing. What good is it for me to recommend you bake a lazy sonker today, and eat it on the couch after dinner?

Still, I do so. Still, I cook. We need to cook, after all, to nourish ourselves and those around us. We need to cook to feel better, to make others feel better, to get along. I may begin the process in weariness, but as often as not I end it in surprise and triumph, happy at least to have made something delicious, to have shared it with those with whom I shelter.

So, today, give it a try even if you’re weary and irritable. If you have access to the outside and a grill, maybe you could muster a summer barbecue? Or, if not, an oven-roasted chicken shawarma? (No to the oven on this summer day? Try cold chickpea-tahini soup.)

On Monday, maybe an arugula salad with peaches, goat cheese and basil? Or these creamy white beans with herb oil?

Tuesday is Bastille Day and you might make something out of Melissa Clark’s terrific collection of recipes, “The New Essentials of French Cooking.” (Weeknight omelet for the win.)

Wednesday might be nice for a homemade version of the lox bowl (above) served at Shalom Japan, Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel’s restaurant in Brooklyn. (I once cooked with them in their apartment and spent a pleasant few hours talking orchids and pancakes while we worked. It makes me sad to think how long it may be before we can do that kind of thing again.)

On Thursday, perhaps Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese? If that’s too much for a weeknight in summer, there’s always her plain tomato sauce, which is the best tomato sauce there is. (I use it sometimes on pan pizza.)

Then, at the end of the week: Maybe burgers for everyone — take your pick — and some sweet potato oven fries, before a dessert of mango royale? Or Angela Dimayuga’s coconut milk chicken adobo, with rice and her bibingka to follow? Cook’s choice!

There are thousands and thousands and thousands of other recipes to cook this week awaiting you on NYT Cooking, though you’ll need a subscription to access all of them. (If you don’t have one yet, I hope you will think about subscribing today. Your subscription supports our work.)

And we are standing by to help if anything goes wrong along the way, either with your cooking or our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise. (If not, yell at me: foodeditor@nytimes.com.)

Now, it’s nothing to do with persimmons or crabs, but you should read Amanda Hess on the Chicks, who you may remember as the Dixie Chicks, in The Times.

Also in The Times, do make some time for “The Decameron Project,” 29 short stories written in response to the pandemic.

Finally, to play us off, here’s Khaled, “Aicha,” live in 2007. Pure beauty. I’ll be back on Monday.