Go for the gold: April 2021

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Michael Kraus for The New York Times

Friday, April 30, 2021

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. The Kentucky Derby is scheduled to run on Saturday, 6:57 p.m. Eastern time at Churchill Downs in Louisville. (I’m no handicapper, but you know my money’s on Soup and Sandwich!)

Naturally, you’ll want to drink a mint julep as you watch, if you’re watching, but I’m more interested in the meal that could follow: Hot Browns, maybe, or some pimento cheese and deviled eggs. You could fill endive spears with Benedictine, follow with fried chicken — or, if you happen to be outside, with fried chicken biscuits (above). And fudgy bourbon balls for dessert? I think so, yes.

That’s Saturday night, for some. Others may prefer this terrific recipe for chicken katsu, with a simple tonkatsu sauce that you can use for loads of other recipes. (It’s great on karaage, Japanese fried chicken. It’s great on plain rice!) Or you could make adasi, a Persian dish of simmered lentils that’s often eaten for breakfast in Iran, but that combines beautifully with a hard-boiled egg at lunch or dinner. And there’s always spring tofu soup. That’s a fabulous weekend meal.

Whatever you make, I think it’d be great if you could get these slow-cooker steel-cut oats going before you pad off to watch a screen before bed. It’s a great way to wake up to perfectly cooked oatmeal, fuel for a day in the kitchen in advance of the week to come.

You could make a lasagna for the freezer. You could assemble stuffed peppers to put in the fridge and cook on Monday night. You could bake brown butter cornbread, make chili to go with it, use the leftovers as the topping for some baked eggs with kale, bacon and cornbread crumbs. And if you’re working from home next week, or if you’ll be at home next week, this roast beef recipe makes for amazing lunchtime sandwiches. You could make that as well and, if you’re not going with chili for dinner, finish up the day with a shredded tofu and shiitake stir-fry. It’s an excellent meal.

Many thousands more ideas for what to cook this week await you on New York Times Cooking, at least once you’ve acquired a subscription to the site and app. We think that’s worth your time and money, obviously, but we don’t just offer you recipes in return. There’s also storage and organization, the ability to rate recipes and to leave notes on them to the benefit of yourself and others, and a great deal of instruction for those who want to learn better kitchen tradecraft. How to make pasta, for instance, or how to make soup.

You can also find us, as the internet sharpies say, “off platform.” We dance around on YouTube and link to our news articles and restaurant reviews on Twitter. We post beautiful photography — ours and yours — on Instagram. And yes, we’re on Facebook, too. Please join us.

We are available, as well, should anything go awry while you’re cooking or using our site and apps. Write us at cookingcare@nytimes.com and someone will get back to you. (You can also write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every message sent.)

Now, it’s a long, long way from fennel and thyme, but you should read Allison P. Davis on the courtship, marriage and divorce of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, on Vulture. Gossip! I’d missed it.

See what you think of “The Investigation,” a police procedural on HBO that arose out of the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall in 2017, which you may remember as “the submarine case.”

Alice Randall guest-edited the latest issue of the Oxford American, a food issue. Start with her editor’s letter.

Finally, here are the Bottle Rockets, “Thousand Dollar Car.” There’s truth to it.

Enjoy all that and I’ll see you on Sunday. (Soup and Sandwich, folks! Don’t forget to place your bets!)