Go for the gold: What to Cook Right Now

February 23, 2022

Yunhee Kim for The New York Times. Food Stylits: Victoria Granof.

What to Cook Right Now

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. In The Times this week, Kayla Stewart took readers on a reporter's tour of the Ebony test kitchen, which closed in 2010 and was almost destroyed by developers in Chicago before being saved, restored and now presented, in all its '70s glory, as part of "African/American: Making the Nation's Table," an exhibition that opens on Feb. 23 at the Africa Center at Aliko Dangote Hall in Harlem.

To go along with her article, Kayla delivered three ace recipes from the magazine's archives: for stewed chicken and dumplings (above), honey-glazed carrots and rose petal pudding. (All three were originally developed by Freda DeKnight, who became Ebony's food editor in 1946 and worked there practically until her death in 1963.) And so that's dinner tonight, where I stay, even if I probably won't get to the pudding until the weekend.

For breakfast tomorrow, I'd like to commend this recipe for small-batch blueberry muffins. Make them after you've finished dinner tonight and, in the morning, choose your own adventure: toasted, griddled or room-temp. (I'm torn, myself!)

Then, for lunch, a classic tuna salad sandwich. And back to dinner again, either pasta with fresh herbs, lemon and peas or a vegan Bolognese with mushrooms and walnuts.

And so the week will unspool before us: pork chops in lemon-caper sauce one evening and shrimp burgers on another. Scrambled eggs for breakfast, overnight oats, waffles, repeat. A Cheddar, cucumber and marmalade sandwich for another lunch? Or a big tub of five-minute hummus? I'd absolutely like to make ground beef chili with chocolate and peanut butter for dinner soon, and tofu larb as well.

Thousands and thousands more recipes to make this week a delicious one are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (You can find even more inspiration on our social media channels — primarily on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.) It is absolutely true that you need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. I offer thanks to you for yours. And if you haven't yet done so, I hope you will subscribe today. I offer thanks for that as well.

Please write if something goes awry while you're cooking or using our site and app: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. (If not, you can write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I can't do much more than amplify your voice with our teams. But I read every letter sent.)

Now, it's nothing to do with vodka sauce or crepe batter, but if "Yellowstone" is "Succession" for the parts of the country that aren't populated by media elites, what's the Montana version of "Inventing Anna"? Because that is a show I'd like to watch.

It was perhaps inevitable that people would go from collecting amusing notes that appear under the recipes on our site to writing satirical ones. Todd Levin's done just that on Medium.

Clare Malone at The New Yorker interviewed my boss, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times. You ought to read that.

Finally, here's some new music to play while you're cooking, courtesy of Jon Pareles and the Playlist team: Asa's latest, "Ocean." Enjoy that, and I'll be back on Wednesday.