Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Friday, November 27, 2020

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. So how’d that go? Weird, right? Not unpleasant, I hope, plenty delicious and fun. But strange indeed to have years of tradition upended by the need to stay safe amid a pandemic, for sure. And boy howdy the leftovers. I wanted to cook a smaller bird. But I ended up with a 17-pounder and, well, I’ve got a lot of cooked turkey meat just now. It’s time, this weekend, to do something about that. You may be in a similar position.

One thing I’d like to do for sure is make a couple of tourtières, heavy on the turkey, to freeze for use later in the winter. You’ll see from the notes on the recipe that there are plenty of French Canadians who make a simpler version, with ground beef and pork. But I learned to make the dish at the feet of Hugue Dufour, the ambitious and large-hearted chef and an owner of M. Wells Steakhouse in New York, and know that it’s an amazing pie when you load it with roast turkey and pork, beef marrow, mushrooms, puréed potato, whatever you like. So I’m going to do that.

But not only that. Sohla El-Waylly has some good leftovers ideas herself: a leftovers sandwich (above), for instance, as well as a stuffing panzanella and a stuffing dumpling soup. I might make that last one and eat it standing at the stove.

You could make and freeze a Thanksgiving leftovers enchilada pie. You could make and freeze turkey tamales, bring them out at Christmastime. And you should absolutely make a bunch of turkey stock for the freezer, for it will improve your soups and braises for weeks to come.

I like Thanksgiving leftovers in the moment, as well. Turkey silog for breakfast, say, with turkey pitas for lunch and bang bang turkey for dinner, anointed with chile crisp.

But let’s say you were smart about your planning and execution, don’t have too many leftovers, and you’re eager to move on from the strange American feast. We’ve got you covered as well. I like this salmon fried rice, and these shrimp and mango tacos. I dig this creamy polenta with mushrooms. Also, these chapli burgers. And maybe a big pot of Rhode Island clam chowder would suit as well.

We have thousands and thousands more recipes to consider cooking this weekend waiting for you on NYT Cooking. Go see what you find. Then save the recipes you want to cook and rate the ones you’ve made. Leave notes on them, too, for your own benefit or for that of your fellow subscribers.

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Now, it’s nothing to do with repurposing sautéed brussels sprouts or reheating gravy, but I loved The New York Times Book Review’s list of the top 10 books of the year. Collect them all.

Here’s Miley Cyrus covering The Cranberries’ “Zombie” in October in Los Angeles, and you’re welcome.

Hilton Als on Joan Didion and her “granite of the specific” in The New York Review of Books? Yes, please.

Finally, there’s a new poem by Charles Simic in The New Yorker, “November.” Let that take you into the weekend, and toward December next week. See you on Sunday.