Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

January 7, 2022

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. There is very little that's more enjoyable than reading Dorie Greenspan on the subject of baking, this week on the pleasures of a poppy seed cake (above). She's so engaging and attentive and wise.

"The batter is mixed by hand, and it's a pleasure to make," she wrote for The New York Times Magazine. "As each ingredient is stirred in, it takes on a different look, until with the addition of the melted butter, its surface has a velvety sheen. When the seeds are folded through the batter, they dip below the surface, emerge and then finally speckle the batter."

I think all of us should make that recipe this weekend, and not just for dessert but as a cake to have around the house, to eat with a cup of afternoon tea or morning coffee or a late-night glass of milk. Dorie recommends thick slices. Who am I to argue?

What else to cook these next few days? If you're digging out from the overnight winter storm, we've got loads of ideas for hearty meals: more than 100 stormy recipes. Myself, I might make this pressure-cooker beef pho for Saturday lunch, and oven-roasted chicken shawarma for dinner, with five-minute hummus, baba ghanouj and a big bowl of pomegranate seeds. Big day!

Then I'll start Sunday with a breakfast of steel-cut oats (maybe with pumpkin seeds and strawberries?), followed by kimchi grilled cheese for lunch and, let's see, lentils with chorizo, greens and yellow rice for dinner? Maybe. But I've been dreaming about this Peruvian roasted chicken with spicy cilantro sauce. The leftovers will make for fantastic sandwiches next week.

Alternatively, take a look at this creamy cauliflower soup with rosemary olive oil. Or at this lovely, comforting goulash. And there's always a Swedish almond cake (more Dorie!).

Thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking and, yes, you need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work. I thank you for yours. (If you haven't gotten around to doing so, would you please consider subscribing today?)

You can find us on social media, too, where we maintain accounts on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. And you can reach out to us directly for assistance if anything proves confusing. 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-distance drive from anything to do with game hens and persimmons, but I still think you'll like Molly Young's terrific newsletter for The Times, "Read Like the Wind" (sign up for it here). In it, she put me onto Gary Indiana's "Resentment," and I can't believe I missed it when the novel was first published in 2015.

You'll need to register to read it, but Ian Frazier on Native Americans in comedy, in The New York Review of Books, is worth the extra keystrokes.

Climbing Magazine put Michael Wejchert's 2017 accounting of a 1966 Alpine rescue in front of its paywall, and the reading is electric.

Finally, here's Sam Fender, "Seventeen Going Under" and I just want to drive around town listening to that on repeat. Former angry teens may want to join me. Regardless, I'll see you on Sunday. Enjoy your time in the kitchen.

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