What to Cook: Roasted potato salad, white bean primavera, Korean cheeseburgers and more

Flexible, shoulder-season recipes await.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story May 15, 2022 Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. What to Cook This Week By Sam Sifton Good morning. It's shoulder season where I stay — chill mornings giving way to warm afternoons, a string of decent weather followed by cold and rain — and I find I'm cooking to bridge the divide. That has its pleasures. For instance, take a look at this roasted potato salad with jalapeño-avocado dressing (above). It's picnic food that works just as well indoors, with a creamy dressing that marries the soft-crisp potatoes to soft white beans and crisp green ones. Summery, but with a sweater on. I'd like that with a platter of chicken thighs roasted in a hot oven or cooked over a grill, a kind of mash-up of barbecued chicken and crispy baked chicken. With bananas Foster for dessert! As for the rest of the week … Monday Ginger two ways: soba noodles with ginger broth and a crunchy ginger topping. It's a simple, soothing recipe and a wonderful way to bring deliciousness to the table with minimum effort. Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. Soba Noodles With Ginger Broth and Crunchy Ginger By Yotam Ottolenghi 45 minutes Makes 4 servings Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Tuesday Grilled merguez and onions with mint-lemon couscous is another shoulder-season winner. You can make it in the broiler or a very hot oven if you don't have, or don't want to use, a grill. (Make it with a different kind of spicy sausage if you can't find merguez. Regardless, it promises summer.) David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Grilled Merguez and Onions With Mint-Lemon Couscous By Melissa Clark 45 minutes Makes 4 servings Wednesday This creamy bucatini with spring onions and mint is like May on a plate. The secret ingredient? Pistachios! So good. Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne Creamy Bucatini With Spring Onions and Mint By Melissa Clark 45 minutes Makes 4 to 6 servings Thursday Pasta primavera was a highlight of the menu at Le Cirque in the late 1970s, and it became all the rage in America a few years later: a jumble of spring vegetables stirred into pasta as if French cuisine were in a fight with Italian. (It's pretty incredible if you cook it the Le Cirque way, though.) But tonight, I'm thinking, you could try white bean primavera, which does away with the pasta and uses legumes as the backbone of the dish. Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Victoria Granof. White Bean Primavera By Sarah Digregorio 25 minutes Makes 4 to 6 servings Friday And then you can head into the weekend with a spread of Korean cheeseburgers with sesame-cucumber pickles. The recipe calls for broiling the beef patties. But you could certainly grill them instead. Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Korean Cheeseburgers With Sesame-Cucumber Pickles By Kay Chun 25 minutes Makes 4 servings More ideas for what to cook this week appear on our TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts, and of course on New York Times Cooking. Since some of you have asked: You do in fact need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven't taken one out already, I hope you will consider subscribing today. Thanks. Drop us a line if you have trouble with that: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I'm of no help when it comes to technical trouble, and I can't respond to everyone. But I do read every letter sent. Now, it's a far cry from pantry staples and fresh herbs, but I'm fascinated by Sam Knight's "The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold." (W. M. Akers reviewed it for The Times.) It's the painter Jasper Johns's birthday. He's 92. Spend some time with his "Three Flags," from 1958. For GQ, Madeleine Aggeler profiled Brian Johnson, the "influencer" known as the Liver King. You'll want to read that even if you have never heard of the Liver King. Finally, Rusty Foster alerted me to this amazing video of a young Keanu Reeves, then a cub reporter for CBC, covering a teddy bear convention in 1984. Really! I'll be back on Monday. Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Cooking from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to NYT CookingGet the NYT Cooking app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018