Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

View in Browser

Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food stylist: Sue Li. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.

Friday, June 25, 2021

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. After more than a year of social distancing, Gabrielle Hamilton wanted to reclaim the notion of “six feet,” give it a new context, make people laugh with delight while she fed them lunch. So she wrote a recipe for a six-foot hero (above) that calls to mind the Italian hoagies of her youth, albeit one that doesn’t contain capicola, soppressata or deli ham.

You could certainly add those, if you like, and if you can’t find the six feet of bread, make the sandwich on the longest torpedo roll you can find instead. That would be a delightful thing to do on the weekend.

Do heed Gabrielle’s advice, though: “Build first, season last. Hinge the bread like a book that lies open on its spine, rather than cutting all the way through. Have your ingredients ready, and put your condiments — mayo, oil and vinegar — into squeeze bottles as they do at delis. That way, you don’t smear and upset the beautiful work you’ve just done neatly shingling out your fillings. Wear latex gloves, which help with grip.” Then wrap the sandwich carefully and take it to the beach, to a forest, to a park or rooftop. Gabrielle again: “What other thing is as reliably cheerful as a sandwich the size of an automobile?”

What else to cook this weekend? A different sandwich, maybe? Naz Deravian has a cool new recipe for tuna salad sandwiches, enlivened with dill and parsley, sour dill pickles and crunchy salted chips. Or you could make the extraordinary fried eggplant sandwiches served at Frankies Spuntino in Brooklyn. Likewise, Melissa Clark’s stellar pan bagnats.

I think it’d be great to make Kay Chun’s vegetable-packed tabouleh salad for dinner, stacked with fresh vegetables, chickpeas and mozzarella. And while on the subject of mozzarella, I’m also interested in making the cheesy pan pizza that Tejal Rao learned to make from the folks at King Arthur Baking Company, and always in the cheese buldak that I learned from Maangchi, the great YouTube cooking star. You can’t go wrong with mozzarella. (You can even fry it into sandwiches.)

Do you have access to a grill? J. Kenji López-Alt has three terrific new recipes for grilled oysters: with buttery soy-sake glaze; with harissa-Parmesan butter; and with lemony-garlic herb butter. Make burgers afterward. (I’m currently in love with Kay’s Korean cheeseburgers with sesame-cucumber pickles.)

And definitely leave room for dessert. I like mango royale for this weekend, but a strawberry spoon cake wouldn’t be in error at all.

Many thousands more recipes are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go take a look around and see what you find. Save the recipes you like. Rate the ones you’ve made. And you can leave notes on the recipes, too, if you’d like to remember something you’ve changed or share your findings with your fellow subscribers.

Yes, you do need to be a subscriber to enjoy the full benefits of New York Times Cooking. Subscriptions are necessary. They make it possible for us to keep doing this work that we love. If you are able to do so, if you haven’t done so already, I hope that you will subscribe to New York Times Cooking today. Thank you.

And please reach out if anything goes awry along the way, either with your cooking or our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (No? You can yell at me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it’s a long day’s walk from anything to do with kumquats or stuffed grape leaves, but I started in on Shawna Kay Rodenberg’s “Kin: A Memoir” and maybe you ought to, too. It’s pretty searing.

I was virtually walking through the biennial at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles recently and came across these extraordinary paintings by Brandon D. Landers. Look at the dimensions. I have to start traveling again so I can see those things in person.

Have you watched “Yellowstone” yet, on Paramount?

Finally, here’s some new music to play us off: Drug Store Romeos, “Secret Plan.” Listen to that and I’ll see you on Sunday!