Food Blog: What to Cook This Weekend

Friday, July 22, 2022

What to Cook This Weekend

July 22, 2022

Andrew Purcell for The New York Times

What to Cook This Weekend

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. I learned two great rules about grilling chicken from the chef Clare de Boer, who cooks with the sort of easy confidence I wish for all of us this weekend, and always.

The first deals with the start of the process: When you first put the meat on the fire, don't fiddle with it. Let it sizzle on the grate and develop a crust, so the skin doesn't tear when you turn it. The second attends to the end: Rest the meat with conviction, for around a quarter of the time it has spent on the grill, to ensure its full juiciness.

Employ those rules when you make Clare's grilled chicken skewers with tarragon and yogurt (above), and you'll receive your reward: a fantastically complex dinner of smoke-and-butter-kissed chicken; cooling, herbaceous sauce; and charred scallions that pair beautifully with toasted pita.

Remember those rules, too, if you make Tajín grilled chicken (as I have done approximately a half-dozen times in the last couple of months), or huli huli chicken, or yakitori. And shifting to a different sort of poultry, absolutely use them when you make these grilled turkey burgers, made extra juicy with some barbecue sauce and onion in the patties and a smear of a mayonnaise mixture on the outside.

What else to cook this weekend? I'd like to set out these summer vegetables in spiced yogurt sauce for dinner, then follow it up with a chocolate cherry cake for dessert. I'd like to make stir-fried beef and sugar snap peas, or one of these no-cook pasta sauces. Also, tuna crunch sandwiches and a tureen of gazpacho. I'd like buttermilk pancakes to eat with nectarine and peach jam. And BLT pasta, too. And then, for another dessert, one of these no-bake recipes, so smart when it's hot.

There are many thousands more recipes to consider cooking awaiting you on New York Times Cooking. You do in fact need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work. If you haven't taken one out already, I hope that you will consider subscribing today. Thanks. (If you run into problems doing that, write us for assistance: cookingcare@nytimes.com. You can also write to me. I'm of no help when it comes to your account or our technology. But I do read every letter sent: foodeditor@nytimes.com.)

Now, it's nothing whatsoever to do with summer savory or powdered sugar, but Christian Lorentzen has a piece in Harper's Magazine checking in on the work of Christopher Hitchens a decade after his death.

Here are two movie trailers for you: one dark and thrilling, the other calm and funny. Start with "She Said," out in November, a fictional retelling of The Times's Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor's investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. And then check out "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On," out now, about, well, Marcel the Shell.

Inside baseball for sure, but super interesting: Joseph Bien-Kahn in Sports Illustrated on what happened to the sportswriter Gary Smith after he retired.

Finally, Pitchfork linked the earliest known demo recording of Lou Reed's "Heroin," from May, 1965. Woody Guthrie vibes, but about hard drugs. It must have been shocking, to hear that for the first time. I'll see you on Sunday.

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