Go for the gold: Head Into the Kitchen

View in Browser

Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.

Johnny Miller for The New York Times

Monday, January 11, 2021

Head Into the Kitchen

Sam Sifton

Good morning. How goes it? These are challenging times, of course, made more so by the newness of the year that brings with it hope and optimism but also hard work: your new fitness challenge; your focus on self-care; your home office to-do list; your job search; your corporate goals for 2021. Some have stopped drinking for the month, one day after another, forever — it’s difficult. Some have vowed to eat more healthily, whatever that means: less meat, no meat, more vegetables, no dairy, no carbs. That, too, is complicated.

I hope NYT Cooking can help. We’re not in the business of prescription. We don’t hawk diets. We believe in balance and deliciousness. And we think that by seeking those in all of our cooking, and by cooking all the time, we can help you better understand the world around you, and your place in it. We think cooking is a road that leads to better, and we drive it every day.

It’s simple. Go the kitchen, as much as you can, and throw down. How about midnight pasta with roasted garlic, olive oil and chile (above) for dinner tonight? Or a vegan Caesar salad with crisp chickpeas? How about this Thai-inspired chicken meatball soup? Do you like white beans? We have 41 creamy-dreamy recipes for them, and I’m certain there’s one there you’ll love.

I dig this red bean stew with fried onions and cilantro. Also this spicy slow-roasted salmon with cucumbers and feta. Do not doubt this vegan fettuccine Alfredo. And always consider kimchi fried rice, for it improves moods, atmospheres and weeks alike.

There are thousands more recipes like that waiting for you on NYT Cooking, along with copious amounts of instruction appropriate to those who have pledged this year to learn to cook better. We can show you: how to make soup; how to roast chicken; how to cook beans; how to make salad. Resolve that in 2021, if you haven’t already, you will learn to make pizza.

Go take a look and see what you find. Then save the recipes you like. Rate the ones you’ve made. And you can leave notes on the recipes, if you want to, either for yourself or for fellow subscribers, if anything came up during the cooking that you’d like to remember or share.

You do need to be a subscriber to do that, it’s true. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you are able to do so, I hope you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today. (If you have subscribed already: Thank you.)

We’ll be here to lend a hand, should anything go wrong along the way, either in your cooking or our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you.

Now, it’s generally nothing to do with tea sandwiches or pot roast, but have you signed up for The T List newsletter yet? It’s a weekly roundup of cool things the editors at T Magazine have noticed or are covering, and it’s delightful.

This is London Grammar, “Lose Your Head.”

Someone put me onto “The Essential Ellison” recently, and it’s a delight: 50 years of Harlan Ellison’s short stories, essays and more. Ask for it at your local library!

Finally, I imagine some number of you have been watching “The Crown” and reveling in the landscapes and buildings of the royalty we Americans puzzle at even now, centuries after breaking from it. Check out this accounting, in The New York Review of Books, of Joseph Banks, the imperial gardener who in the 18th century made Britain’s royal garden at Kew the most outstanding in the world. I’ll be back on Wednesday.