Food Blog: What to Cook This Week

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times Food Stylist: Judy Kim.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

What to Cook This Week

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Fifty years ago today the front page of The Times brought news from Cairo and Vietnam, and from President Nixon’s compound on Key Biscayne, Fla. There were reports from Chicago and London, from Dublin and from Fifth Avenue in New York, where on Saturday 10,000 members of the nation’s military had marched in the 22nd Armed Forces Day Parade.

Inside the massive Sunday newspaper — more than 500 pages! — Craig Claiborne brought forth a recipe for Texas-style roasted baby goat, cooked for two hours at 450 degrees in a covered pan with no fat or liquid, then uncovered, sprinkled with dried oregano, cooked for an additional 20 minutes, then cooked and basted for another 30 with five cups of “Texas salsa”: onions, garlic and green pepper sautéed with cumin seeds and two pounds of peeled tomatoes. The dish serves 12, he wrote, noting that baby goat was usually available at Mara’s West Indies Market, 718 Nostrand Avenue, in Brooklyn. (It’s a condo building now.)

Alternatively, and still to eat with your hands, take a look at Melissa Clark’s fine new recipe for chile-roasted chicken with honey, lemon and feta (above). The sticky, schmaltzy, sweet-and-sour drippings on the bottom of the pan are one of the best things about it, so be prepared to sop them up with bread. Or you can spoon them over rice or potatoes.

On Monday, how about another new recipe, this one from Yewande Komolafe, for glazed tofu with chile and star anise. It’s a take on the technique behind Sichuan hui guo rou, or twice-cooked pork. The blocks of tofu are seared first, then torn into bite-size pieces and returned to the pan, where the craggy edges absorb the sauce. Additions from your pantry, such as a spoonful of doubanjiang, or fermented broad bean paste, fermented black beans or chile oil can impart even deeper flavors.

Tuesday: Mark Bittman’s shrimp burgers. I’d hit the buns with mayonnaise at the end, mixed with Texas Pete hot sauce and plenty of lime juice. And to go with them, oven-fried patatas bravas.

For Wednesday’s meal, I like this spring-vegetable japchae from Kay Chun, made with the Korean sweet-potato noodles known as glass noodles.

On Thursday, consider Millie Peartree’s real-deal brown stew chicken built on a base of store-bought browning sauce, a caramel-hued burnt sugar concoction seasoned with vegetable concentrates. Caribbean umami! It’s terrific.

And then on Friday, maybe you can take a look at this spring feast from David Tanis: an arugula salad with chopped egg and prosciutto to start, followed by a main course of mustard salmon with spring vegetable stew and strawberries in red wine for dessert, with pistachio biscotti.

Thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. You need a subscription to access them all, but I’m hoping you’ll find that of value: These are good recipes we’ve assembled! Subscriptions in any case support our work and allow it to continue. Please, if you haven’t already, subscribe today.

We are as always standing by to help, should something go wrong with your cooking or our technology. Just write cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

And if you’ve got some extra time today and want to spend it scrolling, check us out on Instagram, and on Facebook as well. On Twitter, you’ll find links to our news articles. And you should absolutely visit us on YouTube, where you can watch Melissa make gooey, bittersweet brownie shortbread.

Now, it’s a far cry from a discussion of the benefits of induction cooking, but Desus Nice interviewed Vince Staples for GQ and it’s just great.

I loved Ligaya Mishan’s deeply reported and very beautiful article about the supermarket H Mart, in The Times.

As people continue to get vaccinated, are we headed into a “Roaring 2020s”? Historians tell Smithsonian Magazine that the answer is … complicated.

Finally, some music to play us off and into the kitchen: Beppe Gambetta and Dan Crary, “Thunderation.” I’ll be back on Monday.