jtrent238 test blog: What to Cook This Weekend

September 23, 2022

Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. The backyard birds have largely packed up and moved south along their flyways, leaving just a few cardinals and blue jays to pick at the seeds in the feeder. There's just the faintest snap to the morning air. False albacore are running hard at Montauk in New York, and the striped bass will follow them soon. Still, I'm holding onto summer just as long as I can.

What that means for me this weekend: a beer-can chicken served alongside a pile of steamed corn and a platter (maybe the last platter this year!) of perfect beefsteak tomatoes. I'll slice them thick as burger patties and sprinkle them with the fancy flaky salt that I reserve for just that purpose. Maybe some coleslaw with miso dressing, too. And a plum torte for dessert?

These Connecticut-style shrimp rolls (above) could sway me, though. I like how the dish evokes lobster rolls but isn't quite as expensive to prepare: buttery, garlicky shrimp tucked into crisp-toasted buns. I love these salt-and-pepper shrimp rolls, too, inspired by jiao yan xia, the classic Chinese dish of fried shrimp finished with white pepper and salt. More complicated because you're frying. But so incredibly flavorful that it's worth the effort.

Or maybe it's time to commit to the new season, even if it's still hot and sticky in the midday hours. I could be convinced to make a broccoli and Cheddar soup for dinner, or a skillet of chicken French. Maybe a beef stew with prunes as if it were snowing in November, or a tater tot hot dish. (If I go hot dish, I'm going to finish the meal with kuchen.)

Either way it'd be nice to have a croque-monsieur breakfast casserole on Sunday morning, or at least some extra creamy scrambled eggs. That's fuel for a day of cooking: matzo ball soup, brisket and challah for those celebrating the start of Rosh Hashana at sundown (and for those who enjoy the delicious); a mountain of fully-loaded game day nachos for those anticipating the 49ers-Broncos game kicking off at 8:20 p.m. in the East.

There are many thousands more recipes to cook this weekend awaiting you on New York Times Cooking — and additional inspiration on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube (where, for instance, you can watch Eric Kim cook a crispy Ritz cracker chicken and green salad.) A point of order: You need a subscription to access our recipes. Subscriptions support our work! Please, if you haven't already, would you consider subscribing today? Thank you.

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Now, you'd have to do a lot of engineering to make it anything at all to do with food, but I just read Stephen King's 2021 novel "Billy Summers" in a rush of turned pages. It's popular fiction at the top of its game — a little old-fashioned and Dickensian and welcome for that.

There's no better crime writer in newspapering than Michael Wilson of The Times. Here's proof.

Have you checked out "Narco-Saints" on Netflix? A Korean entrepreneur gets caught up in the drug trade in Suriname, and the story is ridiculous enough that of course it's based on events that actually happened. (The government of Suriname is not happy about it.)

Finally, here's Florist to play us off with "43," spare and haunting to start. You'll see where that goes. I'll see you on Sunday.

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