Good morning. What a joy it is to sleep through these autumn nights, the windows cracked to chill the room, the curtains drawn against the sun that comes later each morning. I wake refreshed, eager to bring warmth into the lives of those around me. But first: Coffee, breakfast, chores. (Pity the northern suburbanites and those on rural roads, for the leaves are falling now, fast and piling deep.)
Jian bing, maybe, or weekday pancakes? You could do it! Fried eggs or a bagel smeared with cream cheese? Yes. I like serving no-recipe parfaits, myself, in the middle of the week: plain yogurt, sliced strawberries, bananas, more yogurt and a sprinkle of nuts or seeds across the top, if I don’t have granola on hand. (Or you can’t go wrong with Cheerios.)
It is Halloween tonight, of course, so dinner tonight may be complicated, the doorbell ringing and kids outside dressed as hamsters, Elsas, Holden Caulfields, ghosts looking for candy. So you might keep it simple, make takeout-style sesame noodles and slurp those down as you hand out the Charleston Chews.
You might. You could aim higher instead, and make Alison Roman’s excellent new recipe for braised chicken thighs with tomatillo and radish (above). Or Melissa Clark’s new stir-fry recipe, for green beans and spicy pork rice noodles. I’d like to cook those both, the blinds drawn and the front light extinguished so as to say nobody’s home.
Here’s David Tanis, too, with a new recipe: charred cauliflower with capers and olives. That’s nice served warm with rice for dinner, or at room temperature as a kind of antipasto. I might use it as a side dish, with chicken saltimbocca.
But whatever you cook, whatever tricks or treats you get up to this evening, do think about knocking out this recipe for pan pizza dough before bed. A half-hour’s work tonight will pay off in pan pizza on Friday evening, buttery and light above the crisp bottom crust.
There are thousands of other recipes to cook this evening and in coming days waiting for you on NYT Cooking. (You’ll need a subscription to access them.) Go look around the site and see what piques your interest, then save those recipes to your recipe box so that you can cook them later, and rate them with stars, and leave notes on them for yourself or others, alerting the community to recipe hacks and ingredient substitutions.
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Now, in the spirit of the holiday, won’t you please meet Rachel Ralphs, who got her head stuck in a pumpkin? Do not miss the video embedded in the article.
