Good morning. I wrote a column about Chinese food for The New York Times Magazine this week, and accompanied it with a recipe for velvet fish with mushrooms (above) that I think you ought to make just as soon as you can. It’s delicious and addictive and offers the benefit of rewarding repeat preparation with superior execution and flavor. You could swap in some firm tofu if you wanted to stretch the amount of fish or make it entirely with tofu if that’s your view of the world. It’s a forgiving recipe in this regard. The sauce would taste good on a bowl of diced memory foam.
Dorie Greenspan wrote for the magazine this week as well: a Parisian meditation on her recipe for rye-cranberry chocolate-chunk cookies, which she adapted from one developed by Moko Hirayama at Mokonuts, the tiny restaurant Hirayama runs with her husband, Omar Koreitem, in the 11th Arrondissement. Those are some serious cookies. Fit them into your cooking plans this week, and you’ll be happy as a sandboy.
Rosh Hashana begins tonight at sundown. I hope you’ll make your meal from one or more of our collection of recipes for the High Holy Days. Or, if you like, you can take explicit instruction: Make Melissa Clark’s sweet and spicy roast chicken, serve it with “exciting” noodle kugel, straight out of Larchmont, N.Y. (Alternatively, make something out of the pantry while Joan Nathan’s recipe for sweet and sour brisket cooks in the oven. That meal gets better during a post-braising sit in the refrigerator, and will be perfect reheated on Monday.)
More Rosh Hashana on Monday after services, but if you’re not celebrating, you might consider my recipe for beef and broccoli as a way to greet the week with a smile.
Tuesday’s going to be somber, reflective, even after 17 years. I like the idea of sautéed salmon with leeks and tomatoes for dinner, and holding everyone tight.
For Wednesday, then, middle-school tacos, cafeteria-style but better, and the competence porn of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” on Amazon.
Thursday night: coconut red curry with tofu, into which you can put any vegetable in the crisper or pantry, so great.
And then we’ll round out the week with a blowout: chili and margaritas in front of “The Trade,” on Showtime, followed by as much sleep as we can manage before an animal wakes us, looking for food, for a walk, for $10 for lunch because don’t you remember I’m going to the beach with these kids from over there?
There are thousands and thousands more recipes to consider cooking this week on NYT Cooking (Vietnamese-style chicken with fragrant rice noodles? Warm tofu and fresh soybeans in a celery-seed gastrique?) This is your daily reminder that you’ll need to keep up a subscription in order to see and save them. (Have one already? Buy a gift subscription. Keep us alive!)
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Now, a very long way from Concord grapes and clean-shot ptarmigan, I’m thankful to Parul Sehgal for turning me on to “Codex 1962,” by the Icelandic novelist Sjon.
Turns out I’m not the only journalist spotting beautiful RVs along the Maine Turnpike this year. Here’s Máté Petrány in Popular Mechanics, on the Vixen 21.
How many celebrities can you identify in the video for Childish Gambino’s “Feels Like Summer”?
Finally, here’s Jonathan Miles on Gary Shteyngart. You’ll want to read that on the way to “Lake Success.” See you Monday.