What to Cook This Weekend

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Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times (Photography and Styling)

Friday, May 15, 2020

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Gabrielle Hamilton’s back in The Times this week with a lovely essay about community meals that may send you down a summertime memory hole: to small-town fish fries and chicken dinners, spaghetti nights at the firehouse, men grilling venison, jerk pork, brats. “Was it the era or the region” where she grew up, she asks, “that had those suppers commence with a Dixie cup of tomato juice, set down on your plate?” She thought of it as a bracing appetizer, a kind of Communion before dinner.

Later, of course, Gabrielle would go on to open Prune, her restaurant on East First Street, and run it for 20 years, until the pandemic came and caused her to shut it down. Prune was — is still! — known for many things but among them brunch, where the Bloody Mary menu runs to 11 different drinks. (A Bloody Mariner for me, please, with clam juice, olives and homemade lemon vodka.) The base of all those Bloody Marys (above) is the recipe that accompanies her essay, and it recalls her childhood Communions well: just a little shot to get you started, she declares, with so much lemon juice that the flavors remain clear and bright.

Bloody Marys for everyone this weekend, please. (They are excellent without alcohol, if alcohol is not your thing.) They really are a marvelous way to start a meal. Which might be barbecued chicken? Or cod cakes, maybe? Or spicy shrimp with lemon butter?

You could make chicken caprese this weekend. Or pappardelle with beef ragù. You could make chile crisp shrimp and green beans, lemony orzo with asparagus and garlic bread crumbs. It’s always a good moment to make peanut butter pie.

But here’s what I want to do. I want to make fried chicken. I want to eat it with pickles and hot sauce and biscuits and gravy made from the fat in the chicken pan. I’d like to have grilled asparagus as well. And I’d like to have an Atlantic Beach pie for dessert. We’ll see!

There are thousands more ideas for what to cook this weekend awaiting you on NYT Cooking, and a lot more than usual are free to use even if you aren’t yet a subscriber to our site and apps. (Will you think about subscribing, though, all the same? Subscriptions support our work.)

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Now, it’s a long way from tater tots and pork rillettes, but Dave Grohl in The Atlantic writing about the thrill of live rock shows is, actually, thrilling. Read that.

So is Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition,” awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Thinking of going deep on Alex J. Cavanaugh’s “CassaStar.” Space opera seems like a good escape strategy right now.

R.I.P. Jerry Stiller, who cracked up his fellow castmates so much they fell on the floor. And, speaking of famous people, this is maybe the greatest Twitter thread in recent months, about mundane celebrity sightings.

Finally, as we head into the weekend, strive to cook like Jamie Oliver out in the yard, making pizza. He’s panting with excitement, a golden retriever in a man suit. It’s fantastic. He’s what weekends are all about.