Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

August 13, 2021

Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. Eric Kim is in The New York Times Magazine this week with a lovely paean to affogato, that delightful modern Italian dessert of gelato drowned by a shot of espresso. "The magic of an affogato is that even a bad one can be very good," he writes, "but a very good one can change your life."

Of course he provides a recipe (above) to do just that, along with a no-recipe version you could make at a gas station convenience store or fast-food restaurant out on the great American road: soft serve vanilla ice cream and whatever coffee they've got.

Either one will deliver a jolt of pleasure and, if I add a shot of amaro to the mix in order to achieve the up-down feel of coffee and booze that the novelist Lawrence Block's great detective Matthew Scudder enjoyed for years at Jimmy Armstrong's Saloon on 57th Street and 10th Avenue, so might you. Try that this weekend after a dinner of grilled chicken parm or spaghetti in spicy tomato sauce.

Other things to make this weekend: the open taco known as carne asada Lorenza; a bowl of spicy cucumbers with yogurt, lemon and herbs; a grilled corn, asparagus and spring onion salad; a summer pudding with blackberries and peaches.

I'd like to grill fish with salsa verde, and make spicy pork with fennel, cumin and red onion, and scallops glazed in miso. (Can I do all three?)

While I'm at it, I'd like to have a peaches and cream pie on the night I don't have affogato, and the granola from Eleven Madison Park for breakfast the next day, and some tomato sandwiches for lunch. Could I fit in a meal of seafood chowder, too? I'll try!

There are many thousands more recipes to consider making this weekend on New York Times Cooking. (To return to a theme I touch on quite a bit: You need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions make our work possible. They allow our work to continue. Please, if you haven't already, I hope you will subscribe today. Thanks.)

Follow us on social media. (No charge!) We're on Instagram and YouTube, and post news and criticism to Twitter. I'm out there myself: @samsifton.

And remember: We are standing by to help if anything goes wrong while you're cooking or using our site and apps. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com and someone will get back you.

Now, it's nothing to do with capons or arborio rice, but please read Verlyn Klinkenborg's review of Rebecca Giggs's "Fathoms: The World in the Whale," in The New York Review of Books.

It's Philippe Petit's birthday. He's 72. Here's a good clip from "Man on Wire" to prompt you to learn more about him, our most notable high-wire walker.

Perhaps you'd like some true-crime reporting from the Deseret News. Here's Ciara O'Rourke's "The Fugitive and the Chameleon."

Finally, let's go out on a disco vibe, with the Weeknd's latest for the weekend, "Take My Breath." I'll be back on Sunday.

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