Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

June 17, 2022

Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. With Juneteenth and Father's Day on Sunday, it'll be a busy weekend for those who celebrate. Naturally we have loads of recipes for each.

One Sunday feast: Memphis dry-rub ribs (above) that you can make in the oven (or make with mushrooms if you don't eat meat), with a classic carrot salad on the side, and a basket of Edna Lewis's biscuits. Make some strawberry-hibiscus limeade to stay hydrated. And then lay out this strawberry slab pie for dessert.

Alternatively, maybe fried catfish with hot sauce? That could be good with cheater's pickles, Charleston red rice and a tall glass of the black tea and whiskey cooler they call a Three Strike at Florida A&M, ahead of slices of sweet cherry upside-down cake.

In another lane: This father desires blueberry muffins for breakfast and meatball subs for lunch, followed by a long nap on the couch under my dog-eared hardcover edition of Selwyn Raab's "Five Families." Carnitas for dinner, please: braised all afternoon, then blasted crisp in the broiler, to serve with warm tortillas, chopped onion and cilantro, avocado salsa and limes.

Those in the Northeast may prefer fluke au gratin; in the Southeast, grouper fillets with ginger and coconut curry. I could make an argument anywhere for rasta pasta with jerk chicken. Likewise for Spam musubi and tuna poke.

Or just take the old man out to lunch and let him watch the Yankees play the Blue Jays at the bar before you give him a gift. (Just don't buy anything with Velcro. As he'll surely tell you, that's a rip-off.)

There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking — and further inspiration on our TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts. You do, yes, need a subscription to access the recipes. Subscriptions are what make this whole operation possible. So, please, if you haven't already, subscribe today. Thanks so much. (Write cookingcare@nytimes.com for help with that, and with technical bugs as well. Or drop me a line at foodeditor@nytimec.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it's nothing to do with proofing a dough or simmering a Bolognese, but a million years ago I wanted to write an article for New York Press about a vast collection of heroin packets that the folk historian Clayton Patterson had gathered in binders at his studio on the Lower East Side, documenting the breadth of the neighborhood's drug trade. But Paul Sheehan scooped me in The New Yorker, with a vivid accounting of his collection of crack vials, and my story died on the vine.

My old boss John Strausbaugh is now out with a collaboration with Clayton, "Offbeats: Lower East Side Portraits," that chronicles life on the Loisada over the past 40 years through the stories of neighborhood characters — "visionaries, artists, misfits and criminals." You should check it out.

Take some time with the winners of the 2022 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition, in The Atlantic. It's best viewed on your desktop, fullscreen.

In case you missed it (I did!), there's a new Slough House novel out from Mick Herron, "Bad Actors." I'm in.

Finally, here's a poem from Ada Limon to take us into the weekend, "Banished Wonders." Enjoy that, and I will see you on Sunday.

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