Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

July 23, 2021

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

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. "I don't question that the greatest meal salad of all time, the chef salad, was created by a chef," Gabrielle Hamilton wrote for The New York Times Magazine this week. "The combination of textures and flavors is consummately professional. Sometimes people mistake the salad bowl for a lawless place of disorganized and mismatched ingredients, chopped up and thrown in — dried cranberries on top of pumpkin seeds on top of soggy corn — which offends even me, who stakes no strong claim to her chef bona fides. A salad nonetheless requires a bit of cheffing, a little experienced attention paid to balance, texture and restraint. Not everything tastes better with bacon bits scattered on top."

Accompanying the article is her recipe for a sous-chef salad (above), a take on a classic French salade composée, with ingredients both cooked and raw. It's like a steroidal niçoise, and I think it ought to be your dinner on Saturday night.

At least if you eat tuna, that is. Those looking for a vegetarian meal might turn instead to this cold tofu salad with tomatoes, peaches, basil and mint, inspired by Italian caprese and Japanese hiyayakko, and my new favorite way to consume uncooked, chilled silken tofu. Or try this Indonesian tempe penyet, pan-fried smashed tempeh soaked with a garlickly tomato, shallot and chile sambal. Oh, my!

Other things to cook this weekend: a Roman breakfast cake for Sunday when you arise, to consume with cold-brewed ice coffee and milk; pan con tomate for lunch; a coconut-miso salmon curry for dinner.

I could see my way to grilling a chicken, then serving it with blistered green beans and tomatoes, with honey, harissa and mint. I might assemble a carrot tart with ricotta and feta. I'd absolutely like to make (and consume!) lemon gelato.

And if I can get it together at the store tonight, find some turkey breasts and get them into brine? This recipe for roast turkey that Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi gave me makes for the best sandwich meat on the planet. You'll thank me next week for that one, I'm sure.

Go explore New York Times Cooking to find other delicious things to cook this weekend. There are thousands and thousands of recipes, along with plenty of instruction for how to use them (learn how to make pancakes; how to make ice cream; how to make ingredient substitutions). It is true that you need a subscription to access them. I talk about that a lot. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven't yet done so, I hope you will subscribe today.

(Further inspiration may be found on our YouTube channel, where Vaughn Vreeland recently baked himself a wedding cake. We are on Instagram and Twitter as well. Give us a follow.)

And please reach out for assistance should anything appear wonky in your cooking or our code. We're at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (You can also write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I can take a punch, and I read every letter sent.)

Now, you'd have to travel a long way over rough terrain to make it anything to do with food, but I think you may enjoy Wyatt Mason on the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, in Harper's Magazine.

Here's Jason Guriel on browsing and the pleasures of life outside the algorithm, in The Walrus.

For Outside, Tim Neville wrote a lovely appreciation of the Delmarva Peninsula, which among other things is filled with great place names: Wetipquin, Tony Tank, Pocomoke, Bivalve.

Finally, here's Doja Cat and the Weeknd, "You Right." That and a chef salad? Have a great weekend. I'll see you on Sunday.

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