Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Sue Li. Prop stylist: Nicole Louie.

Friday, July 16, 2021

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. You should make it even better by reading Eric Kim’s beautiful column in The New York Times Magazine this week, about his childhood love of Chicken McNuggets and sweet-and-sour sauce. He translated that ardor into a delicious dip and fried tofu (above) that I’d like to think each and every one of us will make this weekend, and again and again down the weeks.

It’d also be great this weekend to make Yotam Ottolenghi’s new recipe for turmeric fried eggs with tamarind and pickled shallots.

And for Eid al-Adha next week, Reem Kassis gave us two new recipes to try: for sajiyeh, steak with onions, bell pepper and chiles; and for ka’ak el Eid, date-stuffed semolina cookies. You could give those a dry run this weekend as well, maybe? As I’ve written in this space before, the time to test a new recipe for a celebration is never on the day itself, but during the weekend before.

What else to cook this weekend? If you can get to a grill, I think it’d be aces to make these gingery grilled chicken thighs with charred peaches, or these smoky pork burgers with fennel and red cabbage slaw. Grilled summer vegetables with tahini dressing? Grilled salmon salad with lime, chiles and herbs? Them, too.

No grill, or no desire to use one? That’s cool. It’s hot. It’s schav season! Or I could happily make a meal of this cucumber and tomato salad with cilantro and mint, with a little bread and cheese. I could do the same with this cold noodle salad with spicy peanut sauce.

There are many thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (The site requires a subscription, same as a streaming service or one of those outfits that sends you a different tactical flashlight every month. Subscriptions allow us to continue doing this work that we love. If you don’t have one yet, I hope you will think about subscribing today.)

You can find even more inspiration on our social media channels: on Instagram, on Twitter and on The New York Times Cooking YouTube channel. (I’m @samsifton, if you’d like to connect.)

And if anything goes wrong in your kitchen or on our site and apps, feel free to ask for help. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you.

Now, it’s nothing to do with clam bellies or the scent of saffron, but as someone who grew up looking for Ninas in Al Hirschfeld’s covers for The Times’s “Arts & Leisure” section, I was primed for “Hirschfeld: The Biography,” by Ellen Stern. Bruce McCall’s terrific review for The Times seals the deal: Let’s read that next!

It’s been a while since I checked in on McSweeney’s. Enter the darkness: “What Your Favorite ’90s Rock Band Says About the Type of Bored Suburban Dad You Are Today.”

The Bitter Southerner interviewed Adrian Miller, the author of “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue,” and you ought to read both.

Finally, Jon Pareles put me on to Courtney Barnett’s latest, “Rae Street,” a preview single off her forthcoming album, worth listening to this weekend while you cook. I’ll see you on Sunday.