Food Blog: What to Cook Right Now

Monday, August 1, 2022

What to Cook Right Now

August 1, 2022

Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.

What to Cook Right Now

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. Rabbit rabbit. Ligaya Mishan took to the pages of The New York Times Magazine this weekend to praise the inventive, improvisatory cooking of her husband. The couple are cooks as they are musicians — they both trained as pianists. But where Ligaya plays notes? Her husband composes them.

And now we can play them, too: a recipe for his vaguely Southeast Asian fish with citrus and chiles (above). It's a sauce that, Ligaya wrote, "is denser than a vinaigrette but still loose and the orange-red of a young sunset, with dark flecks of Timur pepper. It's summer-light yet earthy, lending a generous, almost floral warmth. I don't entirely understand what I'm eating, but I want more."

Me, too. Summer-light yet earthy is exactly my mood right now.

In that vein, I could see myself buying a lobster or two this week, to make Maine coast lobster rolls. It won't be nearly as expensive as buying a prepared lobster roll along the Maine coast this year.

More young-sunset cooking: This new recipe for skillet chicken with orange and turmeric. Orange and turmeric are common ingredients in Moroccan cooking that combine beautifully. They make for some powerfully good chicken breasts. That, too, could be your dinner tonight.

A few more things I'd like to cook real soon: bulgogi eggplant; one-pot Spanish-style shrimp and chorizo pasta; the blueberry cobbler from Chez Panisse; carne adobada.

But you know what? You may find something better suited for you by browsing New York Times Cooking. (Or by checking out our TikTok, Instagram and YouTube channels.) It's true that you need a subscription to access the recipes. Subscriptions are the fuel for our stoves. I hope if you haven't already, that you will consider subscribing today. Thank you.

Write us at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have problems signing up, or with the technology. Someone will get back to you. Write to me if you'd like to register a complaint or simply say hello: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.

Now, it's many miles from anything to do with silken tofu or Concord grapes, but Tom Robbins is in The New Yorker with a profile of Christopher Colombo, son of a mob boss, and it's a remarkable read. (With aces photographs from Sinna Nasseri.)

A new favorite cookbook, from Prince Edward Island in Canada: "My PEI Cabbage Cookbook," by Ann Thurlow.

There are many reasons to love Dwight Garner's book reviews for The Times, but one of them is that after reading his accounting of Robert Lowell's "Memoirs," I feel I don't have to read the book!

Finally, here's a new one from the British band Sorry, "Let the Lights On." Listen to that nice and loud. See you soon.

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