Go for the gold: The Birria Lifestyle

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Birria Lifestyle

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Tejal Rao went deep on the nation’s mania for birria this week, with a beautiful and thoughtful report about the dish’s history and current status as Instagram star. Three recipes accompany the article. The main one’s for the stew itself, birria de res, and there are two more that make use of it: quesabirria tacos (above) and birria ramen. I urge you to cook them — and to try Pati Jinich’s recipe for birria tacos as well. The birria lifestyle is a delicious one.

So is the one in which you do what David Tanis tells you, making a complete meal out of his recommendations. This week that means a wild mushroom tart, seared sea scallops with a spicy carrot coulis and, for dessert, dark chocolate mousse with candied ginger. Fancy!

Heading in another direction entirely, it’s too late to use for your Super Bowl feasting, but a no-recipe recipe for Buffalo chicken wings may come in handy for your viewing of the Australian Open or the World Alpine Ski Championships this week. As my pal Brent points out, too many people froufrou their wing recipes, make them more than they ought to be.

Instead, toss a bunch of chicken wings in neutral oil, salt them aggressively, and roast them in a 425-degree oven (on a rack set over a baking sheet if you have one, please!) until they’re crisp and browned and cooked through. That could take 30 minutes or more. While they’re roasting, melt a big hunk of butter and stir into it some hot sauce. Buffalo rules call for Frank’s, but I like it with Texas Pete as well. Put that mixture into a big bowl and tip the wings into it. Toss and toss and toss and serve, with cut carrots and celery and — sue me — a bowl of ranch dressing. That’s it.

I hope you will make this new recipe for seared fish with creamed kale and leeks sometime soon, and this one for farro and lentils with jammy onions, too. And have you caught up yet with this cheesy baked pasta with sausage and ricotta? “Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, minute for minute,” one subscriber noted below the recipe, “this is the most delicious recipe on NYT. Make it exactly as directed.”

Thousands and thousands more recipes to consider cooking tonight or in coming days are on NYT Cooking. Go take a look. You can save the recipes you want to cook and the ones you’ve made. And you can, of course, leave notes on them, as that subscriber above did a few months back.

Yes, you need to be a subscriber. Subscriptions are the lifeblood of our enterprise. I hope, if you haven’t already, that you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today. Thanks.

We will, of course, be standing by to help, should anything should go awry in your cooking or our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it’s nothing to do with kugel or jam, and it gets super detailed about chords, but Nile Rodgers telling the story of how he arranged “Let’s Dance” for David Bowie is absolutely fascinating. Here’s how the song turned out, from the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983.

I could not agree more with this assessment of Random Street View, by Sophie Haigney in The New Yorker.

Started in on “The Sinner,” on Netflix. Will you join me?

Finally, I just ordered “Fake Accounts,” Lauren Oyler’s debut novel. Parul Sehgal put me onto it so beautifully that I had to take the plunge. I’ll be back on Friday.