Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne

Friday, December 18, 2020

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Everything’s lists for me, these days. Lists of gifts to buy, yes, and lists of tasks to complete around the house, lists of ingredients I need for the tiny Christmas feast I’m planning, but also work lists: our most popular recipes of the year, along with our most popular desserts; our most popular vegetarian recipes and on down the line.

One of the lists I like best records the 50 recipes our readers loved most: the recipes they — you! — saved the most this year, to return to again and again. I see so many delights there, recipes perfect for weekend cooking. Among them, pasta e ceci (above), the Italian pasta and chickpea stew; caramelized shallot pasta; cheesy pan pizza.

Also, of course, Samin Nosrat’s big lasagna, which I’d like to knock down over the course of the next couple of days, starting tonight, so I can serve it on Sunday late afternoon, while the Jets play the Rams.

What else to cook this weekend? It’s the last night of Hanukkah, so maybe this roast chicken tonight? Definitely these crazy-amazing malt chocolate and marshmallow sandwiches. And these soft sugar cookies with raspberry frosting. And maybe these eggnog snickerdoodles, while you’re at it?

How about a hot brown for lunch tomorrow? Or a fried eggplant sandwich? Or a bowl of tomato soup? (That last requires a grilled cheese, for accompaniment and dipping.) I’ll skip lunch on Sunday on account of the coming lasagna. But for breakfast that day, I’m thinking: corn muffins, split and griddled with butter.

Thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend are waiting for your appraisal on NYT Cooking. Save the recipes you want to cook and rate the ones you’ve made. Leave notes on them, too, if you want to remember something you did to make a recipe better, or if you want to tell your fellow subscribers about it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I say “fellow subscribers” because you need to be a subscriber to enjoy all that NYT Cooking has to offer. Subscriptions are the fuel in our stoves. Please, if you haven’t already, I hope you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today. Thank you.

We are, in turn, standing by to help if anything goes sideways while you’re cooking or using our site and apps. Just write us: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it’s a long and lonely drive from egg rolls and coffee cake, but I do like Bruce McCall’s “My Life in Cars,” in The New Yorker, about his time spent writing advertising copy.

You’ve gotta read Wesley Morris on Radha Blank and Hannah Gadsby, in The New York Times Magazine.

Also in The Times, make room for the indispensable “Playlist,” which introduced me to Mark Ronson’s remix of Troye Sivan’s “Easy,” featuring Kacey Musgraves.

Don’t forget that Erin Jeanne McDowell will be on @nytcooking IG Live at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, to assemble and decorate her gingerbread houses. You can play along. Here’s the recipe for the gingerbread. Here’s the printable template for making the pieces. And here’s the primer video on YouTube.

Finally, here’s “Resilient Pieholes” in the Bellingham Review – that’s Quincy Scott Jones, Chaya Babu, Stacie Evans and Ana-Maurine Lara on cooking during a pandemic. Read up and I’ll see you on Sunday.