Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

September 24, 2021

David Malosh for The New York Times

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. I know our relationship relies most heavily on digital communication, with me dropping into your inbox a few times a week to offer up recipes and articles. But today I'd like to urge you to buy our newspaper on Sunday, and to enjoy the analog pleasures of a print special section: "Fast Flavor," with two dozen unfussy recipes from recipe developers and reporters across our shop. That'll pay off in a big way.

Will I cook from the section this weekend? I will tonight, absolutely: salt and pepper shrimp rolls (above), perhaps; or crisp gnocchi with burst tomatoes and mozzarella; or pineapple-marinated chicken breasts.

On Saturday, I'd love to start out with pancakes, cooking them in loads of butter so they're rich and crisp at once, then go for a long walk so I'm jazzed for lunch (a sandwich of Cheddar, cucumbers and marmalade — for real). Then after a nap, dinner prep: Taiwanese meefun, probably, or a platter of velvet fish with mushrooms.

Will there be time to make our updated recipe for no-knead bread as well? I'd love to have a loaf on hand at the end of the weekend, to accompany an old-school Sunday supper: chicken in milk, maybe, or the first beef stew of the season. (Alternatively, you could use it as a base for this creamed-mushroom bruschetta with caramelized onions, which is unreal.)

But first, Sunday brunch: eggs Benedict, say, with one of those French coffees served in a bowl, with lots of half and half? Or poached eggs with mint and yogurt, with a kombucha to wash them down? (Yes, you can and ought to make your own kombucha.) Have some granola, anyway. These days, I like this strawberry granola best.

You'll find thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. You do need a subscription to access them, it's true. (Subscriptions are the fuel for our stoves. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe today.) And you'll find even more inspiration on our Instagram and YouTube channel. (I'm out there as well. Find me on Twitter: @samsifton. On Instagram, too: same handle.)

Write for help if you find yourself jammed up with a recipe or your account: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. And write me, too, if you like: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.

Now, it's a long drive from anything to do with bacon or tea cakes, but you really ought to read this accounting, by Kate Wong in Scientific American, of the world of extreme birding competitions.

There's a new Wrens album after 18 years. Sort of. Hugo Lindgren has the report for The Times.

I really don't want to read Karl Ove Knausgaard's new novel, "The Morning Star." (I just don't have it in me: too apocalyptic!) Thanks to my colleague Dwight Garner, who reviewed it, I don't think I have to!

Finally, there's a new show of Lisa Yuskavage paintings at David Zwirner in New York, which Roberta Smith quite liked. See what you make of them yourself, if you can. But leave time for cooking, please. And I'll see you on Sunday.

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