Go for the gold: What to Cook Right Now

April 25, 2022

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

What to Cook Right Now

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. Kevin Noble Maillard has a terrific story in The Times this week about the evolution of grape dumplings (above), a favorite dessert of various Native tribes in the southeast for centuries. Originally made with cornmeal and possum grapes, the dumplings have over generations come also to be made with wheat flour and Concord grape juice. "The older ones used corn," Kevin's mother, the late Shermaine Noble Maillard, a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, used to tell him. So his recipe does, too.

Will you give that a try this week? Maybe after a dinner of smothered chicken, braised greens and rice? That's my plan, anyway.

I'd also like to come up with a new breakfast strategy. I was cutting chunks of cold navel orange into plain yogurt throughout citrus season, then scrambling eggs to eat on buttered floured tortillas, then daubing apricot preserves onto store-bought croissants. All that eventually grew tiring, as can happen when you eat the same thing every morning for any length of time.

So now I'm thinking banana granola with cinnamon, nutmeg and walnuts? Or avocado toast? I might return to the joys of egg-in-a-hole, which some people call a Guy Kibbee, for the actor who cooked one in the 1935 film, "Mary Jane's Pa." Maybe ham omelet sandwiches? You let me know: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I'd love to hear about your breakfast plans.

As for my dinner ones, I do want to try this new recipe for smashed avocado-chicken burgers, which uses the avocado to keep the meat juicy and ginger, garlic, cilantro and scallions to heighten its flavor.

Also: this slow-cooker chickpea, red pepper and tomato stew; this one-pot meal of gnocchi with braised chard, peas and leeks; and this marvelous baked cod with crunchy miso-butter bread crumbs, an old-line New England favorite made even better for the addition of the miso. (In which vein, try adding a tablespoon or two of white miso to your Rhode Island clam chowder some time!)

I'd love to slice into this carne adobada, chile-marinated steak. Or to set up my slow cooker for chicken tinga tacos. And if I can't get to crispy salmon with mixed seeds until the weekend, there's always pasta with creamy herb sauce to tide me over.

There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook right now waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (Check us out on social media, too. We're on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.) As I point out repeatedly, you do need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions make our work possible. We think we provide fair value in return. If you haven't taken one out already, would you consider subscribing today? Thanks so much. You can drop us a line if that proves difficult: cookingcare@nytimes.com.

Now, it's about as far from cooking as Buenos Aires is from downtown Newark, but Alexandra Jacobs's review of Grant Ginder's "Let's Not Do That Again" sure makes me want to grab a daybed by the pool at the Fontainebleau and read the novel.

There's sadly not much to see of it online, but if you're in New York City, you might take the time to see the Genesis Breyer P-Orridge show at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, "Breyer P-Orridge: We Are But One." (Genesis died in 2020.)

Walruses are back in Norway, after hunters nearly rendered them extinct. Jennie Rothenberg Gritz wrote about the big creatures for Smithsonian Magazine, with lovely photographs by Florian Ledoux.

Finally, good vibes from 1da Banton, "No Wahala." Good music to cook to. I'll be back on Wednesday.