Good morning. I had some pasta shells in the larder, a bunch of spicy Italian sausage in the fridge, some butter and a fistful of sage. I got water going on the stovetop for the pasta, and that was dinner right there, no-recipe-recipe-style: the sausages seared tight and then cut into coins, then fried again in a lot of foaming butter that turned brown in the heat, before I stirred in the sage, before I tipped the cooked shells into the pan and stirred everything around under a shower of grated Parmesan. You should give that a try. It’s a fine reminder: You don’t always need a recipe!
Though sometimes you do. Tejal Rao’s recipe for aligot (above), for instance, is a far more helpful guide to the creation of that awesome mixture of potatoes and cheese than a simple exhortation to mix potatoes and cheese. Likewise, Melissa Clark’s recipe for pie crust. (Not to mention her recipe for a brandied pumpkin and chestnut pie.) So, too, this one for an incredible cabbage salad served at Mission Chinese Food in New York. For techniques and layers of flavor, sometimes a recipe can’t be beat.
So maybe you could knead up my recipe for pan pizza dough this week. Make that tonight, and you could cook some pan pizzas on Friday night, to greet the weekend.
Wednesday nights are good for chicken thighs — I like Alison Roman’s recipe for garlicky chicken thighs with scallions and lime. Also, Mark Bittman’s recipe for deviled chicken thighs. And Julia Moskin’s recipe for flattened chicken thighs with roasted lemon slices. One of those could make for a terrific meal tonight, I think.
Unless, of course, it’s fish you’re looking for: a dinner of fish tacos, for instance, or of pan-roasted fish fillets with fried capers. Shrimp risotto? Spaghetti with clams?
Me, I’ll be looking around for something to tell me how to finish making this vat of kombucha my brother started in my kitchen two weeks ago before leaving for work in Asia. It’s ready for straining and bottling and for me to make another batch with the pellicle its “mother” left behind. This is a production line I’m building. (I’m a long-haired hippy kitten. I’m on a secret mission.) It’s nervous-making. So I’ll do that, and then make a grilled cheese.
You can find thousands of recipes to cook tonight and in coming days, months and years on NYT Cooking. Just take out a subscription to access them, same as you might sign up for Amazon Prime to watch two seasons of “Unforgotten” in a single day under the covers, nursing a fever.
We will be standing by to help if anything goes awry in the process, or while you are cooking. Simply write us: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We’ll get back to you. We live to serve. (You can find us on Facebook and on Instagram, too.)
Now, it’s nothing to do with cooking at home kitchens, but our Julia Moskin and Kim Severson delivered a big update on the chef April Bloomfield this week, who after months of silence has spoken to The Times about the role she played — and did not play — in dealing with the behavior of her erstwhile business partner Ken Friedman, who was last December accused by more than two dozen people of a longstanding pattern of sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
