Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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Heami Lee for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.

Friday, August 7, 2020

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. The nation’s embrace of sourdough bread isn’t lessening as the months of pandemic living creep on, at least to judge from my inbox and social media feeds. The loaves are still everywhere, stout and crackle-crusted, with airy crumb reveals. People post success stories about their breads, lament their failures, trade tips for resuscitating slack starters with rye flour. They live their sourdough lives.

But as Tejal Rao points out in The Times this week, they often don’t embrace sourdough as a global way of baking — only a rigidly European one. Mostly left out of the conversation are the fermented breads of the rest of the world, among them injeras and dosas, roti, naan and cemitas. Tejal spoke to Bryan Ford about that. Ford’s a Honduran-American baker from New Orleans, whose “New World Sourdough” came out in June. From him, she secured his recipe for pan de coco (above), dense little rolls perfect for dipping in coffee. Made with sourdough starter instead of yeast, he discovered, the rolls become exquisitely complicated in flavor and texture.

And now, if you’ve got some starter going, you can make them yourself. Please do!

I’d like to make Samin Nosrat’s chapli burgers this weekend, as much for the tamarind ketchup and herbed yogurt she adorns them with as for the beautifully spiced meat. (Extra raw red onions for me, please.)

I’d like to grill chicken as well, and serve it with Yewande Komolafe’s spicy cucumbers with yogurt, lemon and herbs. (This time of year I consume yogurt with almost everything I can, as Ponyo loves ham.) Grilled peaches for dessert (also great with yogurt!).

You might also take a look at this recipe for seared zucchini with crispy Parmesan and black pepper, and at this one for a tomato cobbler with ricotta biscuits. Staying on the baking theme, you might try this corn, bacon and Cheddar pie with pickled jalapeños. Or, if it’s a project you seek, this layered vegetable torte.

Thousands and thousands more recipes to consider cooking this weekend await you on NYT Cooking. It’s true that a subscription is required to access all of them, and to utilize all of the features on our site and apps. But we think it’s a fair bargain. Subscriptions allow our work to continue. Please consider, if you haven’t already, subscribing today.

And we’ll be standing watch, should anything go sideways for you along the way, either in your kitchen or in our code. Just drop us a line: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (No? You can always escalate matters by writing me directly: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent, and try to help where I can.)

Now, it’s barely to do with food except for the occasional tin of caviar or tureen of borscht (and the title of the series is … not good), but the British-Russian crime drama “McMafia” is thrilling all the same.

Rae Armantrout has a new poem in The New York Review of Books, “Buy In.”

I’m liking Stephanie Soileau’s debut book of short stories set in Southwest Louisiana, “Last One Out Shut Off the Lights.”

Finally, weekend advice and your periodic reminder to be like Kacey Musgraves. Here’s “Follow Your Arrow.” See you on Sunday.