Go for the gold: More Holiday Prep!

April 13, 2022

Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist :Monica Pierini.

More Holiday Prep!

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. We're in another holiday chute this week, with Passover coming on Friday night, Easter on Sunday and Ramadan ongoing. My inbox is flooding with requests for recipes.

And we have them: for matzo brei and matzo ball soup; for apple and walnut haroseth, for whatever you need to round out your Seder table. We've got roast lamb and roasted carrots for Easter (unless you'd prefer ham and scalloped potatoes); carrot cake, an Italian Easter ricotta torta and exceptional hot cross buns (above), too.

Require a good new side dish for iftar? Try this cucumber and yogurt salad with dill, sour cherries and rose petals. And kunan gyada, spiced peanut and rice porridge is a wonderful way to fill up for suhoor.

Celebrate spring regardless this weekend, perhaps with David Tanis's new recipe for a seasonal dinner: a shaved asparagus and radish salad to start, followed by roast chicken with green garlic, herbs and potatoes, and a rhubarb crumble with pistachios for dessert.

As for this evening, how about pasta with garlicky spinach and buttered pistachios? Lentils cacciatore? Skillet chicken with mushrooms and caramelized onions? The time required to make caramelized onions might chafe on a weeknight. In which case, avail yourself of black pepper shrimp and a bowl of basmati rice. Or you know, bust open a package of instant ramen, then make it into perfect instant ramen. (For me that requires an egg, scallions, toasted sesame seeds, a spoonful of chile crisp and a slice of American cheese.)

There are thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. I'll cut to the chase: You need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven't taken one out yet, would you consider subscribing today? Thank you.

Please visit us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, while you're at it. And do drop us a line should anything go poorly while you're using our technology. We're at cookingcare@nytimes.com, and someone will get back to you. (You can also write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it's a long way from people asking me whether ramps are in at the market yet, but the essential Times podcast "Still Processing" is back with a new season, starting Thursday, April 14. (Wesley Morris will host solo for much of this spring while Jenna Wortham is on book leave.) Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Someone turned me on to the stylish crime novels of Ross Thomas, and I'm glad to have made their acquaintance. Scott Bradfield wrote a good primer on Thomas for The Los Angeles Times a couple years ago. That's a good place to start.

Also in the criminal vein, I've been watching the Detroit thriller "Low Winter Sun" on Amazon Prime. It's not brilliant, but I'd watch Lennie James and David Costabile in anything, and so might you.

Finally, Lindsay Zoladz put me on to this new single from Joyce Manor, off the band's forthcoming album "40 oz. to Fresno," out in June. It's called "Gotta Let It Go," and Lindsay puts it best: "unusually efficient — as if Taking Back Sunday had attended the Guided by Voices school of songwriting." Listen to that while you're cooking, and I'll be back on Friday.