News : What to Cook Right Now

Monday, June 27, 2022

What to Cook Right Now

June 27, 2022

Ryan Liebe for The New York Times

What to Cook Right Now

By Emily Weinstein

Hello there. By now you've heard from Melissa Clark, Priya Krishna and Genevieve Ko instead of Sam Sifton, who's been traveling. (It takes a village to cover for Sam.) And now, you've got me. I'm the Food and Cooking editor of The New York Times, and I'm tickled to be your host on this summer Monday morning.

Because the writing I do is usually focused on fast and furious recipes for dinner — here's the plug for my weekly newsletter, Five Weeknight Dishes — I'm especially thrilled to write about food that does not entirely meet that description.

Take, for instance, these delectable pulled pork sandwiches: This is a recipe that you probably shouldn't make after work, unless you work half-days at a butcher shop and then proceed straight home to put the meat in the oven for several hours. Or there's this silky corn risotto. Make it tonight only if you can take calls with the camera off so no one sees you stirring. If your afternoon requires running errands or wrangling small children, I might skip the baked Alaska. But that's me.

However, I can't help but tell you about a few under-45-minute gems. Naz Deravian's beautiful new recipe for lemon spaghetti with roasted artichokes (above) calls for canned or frozen artichokes. Yewande Komolafe's coconut fish and tomato bake is one of my weeknight favorites, and Hetty McKinnon's silken tofu with spicy soy dressing is a simple stunner that takes only five minutes to make. Ali Slagle's summer shrimp scampi with tomatoes and corn is as good as it sounds.

I'm also drawn to this recipe for marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and olives from David Tanis, which can be on the table in about 20 minutes. Tomato bruschetta is a snackier version of the same idea. (We have a lot more tomato recipes collected over here.)

And unlike Sam, I have a sweet tooth. (Though he once told me that for dessert at a dinner party he placed a Klondike bar on each guest's plate. Brilliant!) I would love to direct your attention to Yossy Arefi's new lemon raspberry cornmeal cake, and these Key lime pie bars from Samantha Seneviratne, either of which would be ideal for the long weekend ahead. I'm meh on oatmeal raisin cookies, but love oatmeal chocolate chippers. Lemon bundt cake would be superb on a sunny afternoon. And really, there are few summer recipes more sublime than a blueberry pie.

Many thousands more recipes to cook this week are waiting on New York Times Cooking. You'll need a subscription to access them; please consider supporting our work by subscribing today. My colleagues are standing by at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you need help signing up.

Sam returns on Wednesday. Until then, join me in bingeing the true-crime drama "The Staircase" on HBO Max, and then Googling "How much of 'The Staircase' really happened?" I'm also very into Gary Shteyngart's latest novel, "Our Country Friends." And, because I'm a Tina Brown completist with a minor royals fascination, I read "The Palace Papers" on a recent beach trip, the perfect venue for her delicious prose.

Thanks for having me today. Talk to you soon, I hope.

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