Go for the gold: A Menu for Midweek

September 15, 2021

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

A Menu for Midweek

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. Yom Kippur begins this evening at sunset. The holiday lasts until sunset on Thursday: a full day of atonement, of fasting and reflection, the most holy day of the Jewish year. Sweet and spicy roast chicken (above) could work for an early dinner tonight if you're observing (sunset's just after 7 p.m. in New York City) — or kreplach, or tsimmes.

And for the break-fast afterward? We've got loads and loads of recipes to ease your way, if you're not taking the evening brunch route of bagels and schmears, plenty of whitefish, lox, sliced red onion, loads of capers.

If you aren't fasting, I like the idea of this big composed salad for dinner tonight, a tricked-out niçoise. Or if that's too much to handle in the middle of the week, how about this marvelous new recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi: a pesto pasta with white beans and halloumi.

Alternatively, we're still in peak harvest season along the East Coast and, if that's where you reside, you don't need a recipe to dine well tonight: steamed sweet corn with butter to start, with sautéed scallops to follow, cooked in just a dollop of neutral oil with a sprinkle of salt at the end. And maybe a plate of sliced heirloom tomatoes doused in a few tablespoons of nutty brown butter, too, with bread to mop up the juices?

Other recipes to bring into your rotation this week: torta ahogado with frijoles, a vegan drowned sandwich stuffed with puréed pinto beans and pickled red onion, dressed with chile salsa; dooymaaj salad, a spin on an Iranian snack of bread, herbs, nuts and cheese; fried eggplant with chickpeas and mint chutney.

And, in advance of the Mid-Autumn Festival next week (the holiday starts on the 21st, the day before fall begins), you might work on your mooncake baking with two new recipes adapted by Clarissa Wei, one for honeyed pistachio mooncakes from Kristina Cho and the other for savory Suzhou mooncakes from Betty Liu.

There are many thousands more recipes to enjoy waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (It's true that you need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions are what allow us to continue doing this work that we love. Please subscribe today, if you haven't already.) You can also see what we're up to in the kitchen by taking a look at our Instagram and YouTube channel, and can discover our news and criticism on Twitter.

Should you run into trouble along the way, either with your cooking or our technology, you can always ask for help. We're at: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (If not, bark at me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it's a far cry from sentences about foie gras and albondigas, but I still found it kind of neat: Brooke Chilvers on the hunting art and Hermès scarves of Xavier de Poret, in Gray's Sporting Journal.

Eric Asimov has been writing the "Wine School" column for The Times for more than seven years — nearly 90 articles devoted to the pleasures of wine and how to think about it. For this week's dispatch, he reflected on what we've learned along the way. (While you're at it in the wine cellar, do read Eric's appraisal of the career of Becky Wasserman, a sage of Burgundy, who died in August at 84.)

Yes, of course you should watch the trailer for "Hawkeye," from Marvel Studios, which will start streaming on Disney+ in late November. ("Die Hard," but make it Marvel, is how my editor put it.)

Finally, all kinds of new music to play us off, courtesy of Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and the rest of The Times's ace "Playlist" squad. Enjoy all that, and I'll be back on Friday.

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