Good morning. Melissa Clark came in this week with a beautiful new recipe for crisp-skinned Parmesan-rosemary roast chicken (above). My guess? It’s all anyone in your set will be talking about in coming days. I think you’ll want to make it tonight, or on some evening very soon. Go to!
Alan Richman, meanwhile, gave us a profile of the great chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and it’s a joy to read for the writing and the subject matter combined. The article sent me deep into NYT Cooking to learn what Vongerichten recipes we have on hand — J.G.V.s, some of us call those recipes, elegant and easy all at once. Many of them were developed with our old colleague Mark Bittman, with whom Vongerichten collaborated on a number of cookbooks.
Here’s an amazing ginger vinaigrette, for instance, that could well become your house dressing this year, and lead you to eat more salads along the way. (Wasn’t that the plan, back on New Year’s Eve?) And here’s Vongerichten’s amazing and signature molten chocolate cake, with which he wooed his second wife.
We have a J.G.V. recipe for squash on toast — sweet and satisfying, just don’t stint on the quality of the toast. And another for fried sushi cakes that could make for a fun evening in the kitchen and at the table.
But if you’re looking for maximum fun with minimal effort, which is what you ought to be looking for in a Wednesday night meal, look no further than this steak with ginger-butter sauce, which I consider one of the great weeknight meals: butter, minced ginger, a little soy, a lot of flipping of the meat, essentially a no-recipe recipe of incredible ease. With white rice and some quickly sautéed Chinese chives drizzled with oyster sauce? You’ll be on top of the world, ma.
You may prefer a brand-new recipe, of course. Some do! Melissa’s chicken will answer. So will Alison Roman, with a big pot of creamy, toasted farro with crisp mushrooms.
Or try Ali Slagle’s reverse-engineered mojo chicken with pineapple. I bet that one hits. Or Lidey Heuck’s red curry lentils with sweet potatoes and spinach. Likewise. A vegan Caesar with crisp chickpeas? What could go wrong?
There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week waiting for you on NYT Cooking. Yes, you need a subscription to access them. That’s so we can keep finding delicious new ways for you to feed yourself and the ones you love. Thanks for your part in supporting our mission.
Of course we swan around on Facebook as well. And we post to Instagram, too. We are on Twitter, naturally, all journalists are. And like a few, we’re on YouTube — maybe tonight’s the one where you make dirty chai earthquake cookies for the place where you go on Thursday mornings.
We are standing by if something goes pear-shaped with your cooking or your account. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you.
Now, why don’t you read our Pete Wells on the joys of Sushi Nakazawa in Manhattan — and on the perils of its success.
Also, Tejal Rao on Hotville, a Nashville hot chicken restaurant that Kim Prince opened on the edge of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall in Los Angeles. Hotville, Tejal writes, draws “a straight line east to Nashville, back into the 1930s when Thornton Prince III — Ms. Prince’s great-great-uncle, a farmer with a side hustle, and the architect of hot chicken as we know it — sold the dish out of his house.”
It has nothing to do with burnt ends or fresh cumin, but the third season of “Occupied” on Netflix is full-on comic book in style, a climate-crisis thriller that may leave you daydreaming of a move to Oslo.
Here’s Jon Pareles on Neal Peart, the brilliant drummer and lyricist of the Canadian band Rush, who died last week at 67. You’ll want to watch this smart video compilation of Peart at work: “10 Times Neal Peart Was the Best Drummer on Earth.”
Finally, a movie I wish had been a hit, a sleeper favorite, a watch-once-a-year. Won’t you join me for “Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World”? I’ll be back on Friday.
