Go for the gold: What to Cook Right Now

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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne

Monday, May 24, 2021

What to Cook Right Now

Sam Sifton

Good morning. A million years ago I drove through Fall River, Mass., and down Route 88 toward Horseneck Beach in Westport on one of those warm, low-humidity, bluebird days that can make you fall in love with New England. I was bound for the home of Chris Schlesinger, one of my kitchen heroes, who was going to teach me his secrets of live-fire cooking.

That he did! I think of Chris every spring when I first fire up a grill, not on a weekend for burgers and brats, but on a weeknight for a steak slathered in chipotle rub and bathed in cilantro-lime butter, served next to bananas blistered in the heat of the fire. A dinner like that, on a Monday night, sends a message to the week that you’re really not messing around. Will you give it a try?

But if that’s not for you right now, I get it: Mondays don’t mess around either. You could make these delicious creamy white beans with herb oil instead, or this lovely tahini-Parmesan pasta salad with blistered tomatoes (above). (Tahini and Parm, it turns out, make a lovely couple.)

For later in the week, Melissa Clark has a nice trio of new recipes to try: creamy bucatini with spring onions and mint; skillet chicken and farro with caramelized leeks; and roasted carrots with shallots, mozzarella and spicy bread crumbs.

I’d like to cook these sweet-and-spicy grilled vegetables with burrata as well. I’d like to make gyudon. I’d like to bake sour cream and fruit scones. And I definitely want to have pasta primavera with asparagus and peas. That’s one of my favorite tastes of the season.

There are thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go browse among them and see what gets you hungry.

Save the recipes you want to cook. Rate the ones you’ve made and, if you like, leave notes on them for yourself or others. You can even learn how to make ice cream! Of course, you will need a subscription to do all that. Subscriptions support our work. I hope, if you haven’t already, that you’ll subscribe today.

And should you run into a problem in your cooking or with our technology, we stand ready, as always, to lend a hand. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it’s nothing to do with peanut butter or sauce gribiche, but the Stacks Reader put me on to a fine bit of true crime by Nicholas Pileggi, published in The New York Times Magazine in 1970. Enjoy it.

Here’s a lovely new cover of the Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” from Art d’Ecco.

A reader put me on to Barbara Stanwyck in the 1945 movie “Christmas in Connecticut.” Food writer high jinks! You’ll find it for streaming all over the Web for about $3.

Finally, William Finnegan didn’t think much of Sebastian Junger’s new book, “Freedom.” Still, I’m cracking it open this week. I know there’ll be some good sentences in there. I’ll be back on Wednesday.