Go for the gold: What to Cook This Week

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Michael Kraus for The New York Times

Sunday, July 26, 2020

What to Cook This Week

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Today I’d like to make these fried chicken biscuits (above) that Tejal Rao cooked up a few years ago and brought into the newsroom like a gift, fiery-sweet-salty little picnic sandwiches that brought laughter onto the floor. They’d be great to eat in a park this evening, on a porch or stoop or roof, at the beach or in the forest where the falling sun dapples the pine needles. They’d be great to eat in a tiny apartment with a fan doing overtime. They’d be great to eat anywhere, if chicken you eat. (You don’t? Try this chicken-fried tofu sandwich instead.)

On Monday, I’m thinking, there’s Yewande Komolafe’s yam and plantain curry with crispy shallots, a vegetarian dish on a day when many eschew meat. (“Definitely a keeper!” wrote Annabelle, one of our readers, in a note below the recipe.)

Tuesday, make like Kay Chun and give these curry chicken breasts with chickpeas and spinach a try. Of course you can make them with thighs instead. I probably will!

Pivot to meat replacements on Wednesday. Use the one you find at the store in J. Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for vegan Turkish kebabs with sumac, onions and garlic-dill mayonnaise. I think those would go nicely with these zucchini pancakes Elaine Louie brought us a number of years ago.

On Thursday, raid the pantry or the market for canned clams, and use them for David Tanis’s recipe for spicy clam pasta with bacon, peas and basil. David Tanis allowing you to cook with canned clams is very unlike David Tanis. So it’s super exciting.

And then on Friday, take a look at Yotam Ottolenghi’s grilled tomatoes and onions with feta, harissa and pine nuts. It’s kind of a salad, kind of a sauce, kind of a dip. Eat it with flatbread, yogurt, maybe some soft-boiled eggs. Welcome to the weekend. You’ve earned it.

There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week awaiting you on NYT Cooking. Subscribe today to access all of them, and to use all the features on our site and apps. (Subscriptions allow us to keep doing this work that we love.)

And we’ll be standing by like lifeguards or docents, if anything goes wrong along the way, either with your cooking or our technology. Just write the team at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it’s nothing to do with duck legs or garam masala, but I loved this Jesse Washington essay in The Undefeated, on how difficult it is for a true pickup basketball fiend not to play during the pandemic, not to get on the court. (“Avoid competition? Never.”) Read that.

The Guardian has an excerpt from the photographer Arnaud Montagard’s new book, “Road Not Taken,” which documents an empty America. It’s beautiful and chilling.

Finally, no links or recommendations, but a request. Would you give some thought today to those who aren’t weathering this pandemic well, or easily? To those out of work, to those working essential jobs or jobs made no easier by social distancing regulations, by masks, by those not wearing masks? To those struggling to pay the bills, to buy groceries, to provide for themselves or others? To those alone, who’ve been alone and who will be alone for a long time to come?

Think about everyone who doesn’t walk in your shoes and ask yourself what you might do to make someone else’s life a little better, on a Sunday in late July. You’ll come up with something. I know you will. I’ll be back tomorrow.