Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.

Friday, May 28, 2021

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Maybe you’ll spend the Memorial Day weekend preparing to picnic, or getting ready to cook outside, or setting yourself up for a potluck. Perhaps you’ll make sandwiches and take them on a long walk in the woods or along a beach, up an avenue, across town on a quiet side street, toward a park. I hope so. It’s good to cook for others. It’s good to eat outside.

But I hope that’s not all you’ll do. Me, I’d like to investigate this slow-cooker recipe for shrimp in purgatory (above), and I hope you’ll try it, too. The spicy red pepper and tomato sauce develops its deep flavors over hours, and you add the seafood at the end. (You can make the dish on the stovetop, if you prefer.)

And I also want to deploy some store-bought green chutney in this quick, saucy green masala chicken. How about you?

Grilled salmon salad with lime, chiles and herbs could be good for Saturday night. Some blueberry muffins for breakfast on Sunday would absolutely be thrilling. With the holiday on Monday, you might take a second big swing on Sunday evening and make lobster mac and cheese.

And for Memorial Day itself? You know we have many, many recipes for that. Me, I’d like to steam clams and make some bluefish ceviche, for which you don’t really need a recipe. You don’t even need bluefish! Just marinate the freshest diced fish you can find in lime juice, olive oil, minced jalapeño, chopped mango and sliced red onion for around 30 minutes, then serve with tortilla chips.

I’d like to follow the seafood with barbecued chicken, grilled asparagus with caper salsa, a macaroni salad with lemon and herbs. That’s a terrific meal.

And then watermelon granita for dessert? Or a poundcake with macerated strawberries and whipped cream? The first if I don’t have time for the second. But I’d like to make the time. Strawberry season’s a reason to celebrate.

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Now, it’s nothing to do with hot ovens or fancy ingredients, but Sally Quinn took to The Washington Post Magazine to declare the end of Washington’s society scene, done in by the twin blows of the Trump administration and the pandemic. The photographs are amazing.

Here’s Leo DeLuca in Smithsonian Magazine with “A Brief History of the Cheez-It,” a snack born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1921, and first marketed as “baked rarebit.”

I liked Dan Chiasson on the Bolinas poets, in The New Yorker.

Finally, Jon Pareles got me listening to Carsie Blanton, “Party at the End of the World.” Do that yourself and I’ll see you on Sunday.