Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

October 22, 2021

Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. I've fried chicken in shallow pans and deep-sided, cast-iron chicken fryers, in a nasty bar-kitchen fryolator, in a super-clean one in a sparkling kitchen, in an as-seen-on-TV counter appliance, in a wok placed over a propane hob in the yard. I like the deep cast-iron skillet best, both for its even heat-keeping abilities and for the way it minimizes splatter in the kitchen.

And this weekend I'm going to deploy mine for Yotam Ottolenghi's sly new recipe for double lemon chicken (above), a takeout memory made into something special. I think you might end up making that a couple of times a month for the rest of the year.

I hope so, anyway. But if lemon chicken is not your bag, use the same big skillet to make berry jam fried chicken, or karaage, or adobo fried chicken. If chicken itself is not your bag, here's a recipe for the exceptional fried tofu sandwich served at Superiority Burger in New York City. So good.

That's just one home-cooked meal, though, in a weekend that could be filled with them. So how about this khoresh kadoo, as well, a warming butternut squash stew inspired by the flavors of northern Iran, with chickpeas and prunes? Or these chicken tacos, which take advantage of canned green chiles to deliver a fresh, lively sauce with onions, bell peppers and a lot of spice?

It'd be nice to make fluffy pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and pumpkin blondies with chocolate and pecans, just because.

For lunch, a fried eggplant sandwich would be excellent (I've been omitting the roast beef lately). But then so would a big Cobb salad, not to mention a simple ginger-cauliflower soup.

And I like the look of these mushrooms and dumplings for a Sunday night meal, before I join the rest of the nation's journalists in watching the Roy family tussle on "Succession" on HBO (but I might be convinced to follow an obscure Roy angle instead, and make Roy Choi's galbijjim, passed down to him from his mom). I hope you'll join us.

Thousands and thousands of other recipes you could make this weekend are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking, at least once you've taken out a subscription and I am hoping you have. Subscriptions are what allow us to keep doing this work that we love. If you haven't yet, I hope you will subscribe to New York Times Cooking today.

Follow us on Instagram while you're at it, and on YouTube. And do sing out if you run into trouble with anything along the way, while you're cooking or using our site and apps. We're at: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (You can also write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I can't respond to everyone. But I read every letter sent.)

Now, it's a long day's drive from anything to do with black trumpet mushrooms or potted hare, but here's a 14-part podcast exploring the secret, messy, sexy, arty, druggy 1980s collegiate lives of the soon-to-be famous novelists Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem and Bret Easton Ellis: "Once Upon a Time at Bennington College." Gen X Bloomsbury, essentially.

I loved Ligaya Mishan on teahouses in Shanghai, in T Magazine.

Also, you're probably going to want to spend some time with Texas Monthly's 2021 list of the state's 50 top BBQ joints.

Finally, I see that Gang of Four has announced they're going out on tour in 2022. "Cheeseburger" to go! Listen to that nice and loud, cook something delicious and I'll see you on Sunday.

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