Go for the gold: What to Cook This Week

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Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich

Sunday, August 16, 2020

What to Cook This Week

Tejal Rao

Good morning! It’s Tejal here, writing to you from Los Angeles, filling in for Sam.

I moved into a new place a couple of weeks ago and a friend dropped off the perfect housewarming present — a bag of peaches from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. They’re juuuust about ripe now, and every time I walk by, I’m thrown by the dizzying specificity of their smell. Summer!

This is it for me, I mean, one of those quiet, but reliably brilliant food moments each year that confirms that I’m alive. On Monday, I’m planning to celebrate with a peaches and cream pie (above), that one from Lidey Heuck with a simple press-in graham cracker crust and a topping of juicy, raw fruit. The pie technically makes eight servings, but I don’t think it’ll be an issue to have leftovers for breakfast on Tuesday, will it?

For dinner, I’ve got my eye on Judy Kim’s cold noodles, dressed simply in chile oil and soy sauce, and I’ll throw in other herbs I’m growing along with the cilantro, like scallions and mint. J. Kenji López-Alt’s got a great recipe for homemade chile oil, which you should make the night before and let marinate. I also love Fly by Jing’s Sichuan chile crisp, if you want to buy some online, and the one sold by the jar at Needle, if you happen to be in L.A.

Kay Chun’s lettuce cups filled with grilled chicken and mushrooms look perfect for Wednesday. The marinade is a lot like the one used for bulgogi — full of ginger and garlic, with a touch of sweetness. And the other components — lettuce, kimchi, gochujang — aren’t really cooked so much as … assembled. Bonus: If you’re working from home the next day, you can use all the leftovers to make some quick fried rice.

Thursday, I’m making Yewande Komolafe’s beautiful chilled cucumber salad, with yogurt, lemon and herbs. It’s a salad, but it’s the kind of salad that can turn into a whole meal for me with a bottle of wine and a loaf of good bread.

Since March, Friday has become clean-out-the-fridge day, and I have a few dependable methods. One, picked up from the pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz, is to take all of the odds and ends that might work together and build them into a delicious savory tart. Boiled potatoes, ends of cheese, some cooked squash, half a head of lettuce? Tart potential!

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In other news, Brooke Jarvis reports on the cherry industry, and the highly skilled agricultural workers who pick every single piece of fruit — they’re in demand, and they’re in danger.

And I really enjoyed this piece about the indie newsletter boom in the food world, which included some of my own favorite subscriptions right now.

What are you watching? I gave up on the Netflix reality show “Indian Matching,” which Mallika Rao wrote about so beautifully, and I started watching “Love on the Spectrum.”

See you tomorrow!