What to Cook This Weekend - The New York Times

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What to Cook This Weekend - The New York Times

What to Cook This Weekend - The New York Times

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 07:30 AM PST

Good morning. We're deep in winter on the East Coast of the United States, starting and finishing our days in darkness, frost on the windowpanes, salty grit at the doorstep. It'd be nice to have a roaring fire this weekend, at some giant pile of a house like something out a John Irving novel, sit on a couch in front of it for a while, then head into the huge kitchen to make dinner: a fresh ham; baked beans; mashed parsnips; a honking big double apple pie.

Good on you if that's possible. For most of us, it's not. It's just another weekend in the same place we've been for months and months, working or looking for work, schooling or struggling with schooling, living or just approximating living, day after day. Saturday, Sunday? For some of us, they may as well be Tuesday or Thursday.

Fight that feeling, please. If you're off the next two days from whatever it is you do during the week, see if you can't bring some cheery big-house energy into your place of residence, however small and cramped and familiar it has come to feel.

Bake a mushroom lasagna (above), with a tart Italian salad and a peach cobbler for dessert. (Use canned peaches. We are living through a pandemic. It's fine.) Make braised lamb with celery root purée. Assemble a blackout cake. Set up some gravlax for next weekend. Make yourself useful to yourself and to those who eat your food.

Embrace projects: fresh pasta dough for tagliatelle with prosciutto and butter, say, or saffron honey marshmallows, some Spicy Big Tray Chicken. Use the weekend to give yourself a proper break from the strain or monotony of the week that was, to lose yourself in a recipe, to offer yourself the chance to experience a delicious joy.

Or, you know, watch television instead. The 25th Winter X Games competition gets underway today in Aspen, Colo., and if this year is going to look very different from the preceding ones on account of the coronavirus, I'm still hoping it leads to a lot of amplitude on the screen and excitement on the couch. We have loads and loads of excellent recipes for chicken wings, anyway!

Thousands and thousands more recipes to fill the weekend await you on NYT Cooking. Stroll our digital aisles and see what you discover. You can and ought to save the recipes you like. Please rate the recipes you've cooked. And do leave notes on them if you've come up with a recipe hack or ingredient substitution that you'd like to remember or share with others.

You need to be a subscriber to do that, of course. Subscriptions support the work of the dozens of people who make the site and app possible. If you haven't already, I hope that you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today. Thank you.

And please reach out to us for help if you run into trouble with anything along the way. We're at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it's nothing to do with corn pone or belly lox, but I spent 15 minutes the other day watching a red-tailed hawk hunt a low salt marsh for rabbits, so Tiana Clark's new poem in The Atlantic, "I Stare at a Cormorant," really resonated. Birds are there, and then they're not. They're not going to save us.

Of course you should read Keziah Weir on Billie Eilish in Vanity Fair, but what really set me back was the fact that it's the cover story for the March issue of the magazine. March! We've been dealing with this virus for a very long time. (So long, in fact, that you may wish to start planning your summer garden and avail yourself of Modern Farmer's new guide to buying seeds.)

Here's James Booker, "Junco Partner," live in 1978.

Finally, it's coming up on 20 years since Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Definitely time to reread it if you've read it, and past time to read it if you haven't. To the weekend! I'll see you on Sunday.

Great Escapes: What Kubeh Chef and ‘Chopped’ Winner Melanie Shurka Is Cooking at Home - Barron's

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 08:49 AM PST

During spring 2020, Melanie Shurka and her team accepted donations and prepared and delivered over 1,000 meals to nearby hospitals.

Teddy Wolff

Melanie Shurka's love of kubeh laid the foundation for her beloved Greenwich Village eatery named after the Middle Eastern delicacy. The self-taught chef first tasted the dumplings as a teen when her Iraqi boyfriend's mother prepared a ground beef and beet broth version. Later, in her 20s, she lived in Israel and came to know kubeh once again when she rediscovered the dish on restaurant menus. 

"I fell in love with kubeh because of the compactness of flavor in a small bite, especially the variation served in a soup," Shurka says. "The soup has one flavor, the kubeh has another, and once the kubeh is open inside the soup, together they take on another flavor."

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, New York, Shurka, 39, graduated from NYU and obtained her law degree from New York Law School, so a foray into the culinary world wasn't exactly the expected. But her colorful heritage—her mother is Ashkenazi Jewish and from Long Island, and her father was born in Israel to Iranian parents—planted the seed. 

"I grew up with a Persian background, and eating Israeli-Persian food," Shurka says. In her youth, she didn't distinguish any difference between Israeli and Persian culture because both were the very fabric of her upbringing. "I didn't know there was a difference between Farsi and Hebrew," she adds. 

But it was her lifelong affinity for Israel—both the country and cuisine—that influenced her to build a business around kubeh and other classic Middle Eastern favorites such as chicken shawarma, muhammara, and lamb baharat. "I wanted to bring those flavors to New York."

Post law school, Shurka spent time in home kitchens cooking with Kurdish and Syrian women in Israel. "It was really magical," she muses. "I ate kubeh three times a day and came home with all that I learned." 

Shurka took the best components of various recipes she tried in those kitchens, ultimately creating her own interpretations of the savory dumplings, including Kurdish slow-cooked beef and Iraqi mushroom, both available in a selection of delicious broths at her restaurant.

In August 2020, Shurka competed on the Food Network hit reality show Chopped. As a Middle Eastern cook, she wasn't sure if her pantry of spices would be available (she loves whipping up dishes seasoned with sumac, cumin, and cardamom). Despite the required ingredients, she stuck with the techniques and flavors she knows well, introducing Middle Eastern nuances into each of the three courses, ultimately winning Chopped and donating the $10,000 prize to Syrian refugees. 

During spring 2020, when New York was first battling the wrath of Covid-19, Shurka and her team accepted donations and prepared and delivered over 1,000 meals to nearby hospitals. Doing so enabled her to feed frontline workers, hire more help, and keep her business afloat during the most challenging period. More recently, she and her husband David (also her business partner) invested in an outdoor setup at Kubeh—banquettes with roofs, gutters, and high-powered heaters since outdoor dining in New York City is now permanent. She says business has been picking up recently, despite the chilly weather.

Since running a restaurant leaves little free time, Shurka infrequently cooked at home before the pandemic. That's changed in recent months. She's been spending more hours in her kitchen, preparing wholesome meals focusing on lots of vegetables and smaller portions of meat and seafood while avoiding dairy, gluten, grains, and sugar. Below is a selection of fresh, healthy dishes that the Kubeh chef is making from her home kitchen in Brooklyn.

Kubeh.

Courtesy Melanie Shurka

Persian Shakshuka. "In a large pan with a glass cover, sauté onion until translucent, adding garlic, spinach, and mushrooms, mixing constantly. Once spinach has wilted, add chopped dill, parsley, salt, pepper, and mix until tender. Add more salt and pepper as needed to taste. Move all veggies to the edges in a circle (clearing the pan's center) and sprinkle feta on top.

"Add a touch of grapeseed oil to the center of the pan and drop two to four eggs in the middle, keeping yolks intact. Sprinkle salt and pepper on eggs and cover the pan, letting the eggs cook on low until the white is set and yolks are still runny. I make a dish like this every day for lunch using whatever vegetables and herbs I have on hand." 

Zucchini Pasta Bolognese. "Using a spiralizer, spiralize fresh zucchini without skin into a fettuccine shape. Sauté zucchini with garlic and fresh basil in a touch of oil until pasta is translucent, adding sea salt for flavor. 

"Serve the zucchini pasta with beef Bolognese (a sauce of ground meat, pureed tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, bay leaves, nutmeg, and white wine) on top."  

Cauliflower Rice with Sumac Shrimp and Sautéed Chickpeas. "Marinate shrimp with sumac, paprika, olive oil, lemon juice, and minced garlic. Cut a cauliflower head into four and process in a food processor until diced. 

"In a small pot, sauté onion and garlic with grapeseed oil. Once the onion is translucent, add a rinsed can of chickpeas, parsley, and spices, then a touch of lemon juice and water and simmer on medium for about 10-15 minutes. 

"In a separate pan, sauté onion and garlic in oil. Once the onion is translucent, add the cauliflower, mix it well, then add salt and pepper. Cover pan and let the cauliflower rice steam for about 10 minutes. 

"Pan-sear shrimp in a Teflon pan until cooked through, then serve with cauliflower rice with chickpea stew. Garnish with fresh parsley, olive oil, and pine nuts."

Shirazi Salad & Dill Tahini. "Mix halved grape tomatoes, chopped radish, Persian cucumber, and fresh parsley. Then add lemon and salt to taste with a touch of olive oil. 

"For dill tahini, hand mix tahini paste with water and lemon juice until the flavor is nutty like sesame. Add that mixture, fresh dill leaves, garlic, salt, pepper, and a touch of water to a blender. Blend until smooth and thin enough to drizzle over the Shirazi salad."

Turmeric Turkey Patties. "Mix ground turkey, chopped onion, minced garlic, fresh mint, parsley, sea salt, black pepper, ground turmeric, and cumin with egg. Form the mixture into balls and pan sear in oil until cooked through. 

"I like to make a meatball size and eat them in a pita, over rice or salad. These are so delicious and healthy. My Persian grandmother always had a variation of these in the fridge, ready to be warmed up."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

9 Kitchen Tools That Improved My Cooking Skills During Quarantine - Real Simple

Posted: 28 Jan 2021 02:45 PM PST

The only edible item on this list, chili crunch was a dangerous addition to my kitchen last year. Dangerous in that I'll put the minorly sweet and majorly spicy condiment on just about anything (eggs, pizza, tofu teriyaki) and also in that a little goes a long way—too much chili oil, and your meal may become inedible.


from What to Cook https://ift.tt/3j1Depy
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