This “fake sauce” is truly good

Hearty pasta al sugo finto features a vegetarian ragù that's flavorful and frugal.

View in browser|nytimes.com October 13, 2024 Anna Francese Gass's pasta al sugo finto. Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. This "fake sauce" is truly good By Sam Sifton Good morning. There's a term in Italian cooking, cucina povera. It translates literally as "kitchen of the poor," but in practice means the kitchen of the frugal, the cooking of the thrifty and unwasteful. I think of it, myself, as the cuisine of the empty nester, of the dope who once again forgot to pick up sausages during the weekly shop, who doesn't have a pound of ground beef in the freezer, who arrives at Sunday afternoon with only a decent pantry and a bunch of oldish vegetables in the crisper. For him, for her, for them, for me: pasta al sugo finto (above), a hearty Tuscan "fake sauce" of onions, carrots and celery fortified by mushrooms with tomato paste-thickened tomato purée. Topped with herbed bread crumbs and a dusting of grated Parmesan, it's a wonderful autumn feed of the sort you might take in at the kitchen counter while talking on speakerphone with a child in college far away. Featured Recipe Pasta al Sugo Finto (Vegetable Ragu) View Recipe → With your Sunday supper taken care of, you can turn to the rest of the week. … Monday It is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and I'm nothing if not polite. I'll toast our neighbors to the north with a recipe Elizabeth David wrote and I adapted for a tiny Thanksgiving in the States: turkey cutlets marsala, awesome with mushroom risotto. William Brinson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Raina Kattelson. Plate from Canvas. Fork from Michele Varian. Turkey Cutlets Marsala By Sam Sifton 15 minutes Makes 2 servings Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Mushroom Risotto With Peas By Martha Rose Shulman About 50 minutes Makes 6 servings Tuesday Sarah Copeland's recipe for tofu makhani is a vegetarian riff on Indian butter chicken, seasoned with warm and powerful spices and finished with heavy cream. Some substitute coconut cream for the cream. But you cannot omit the butter. It's the whole point of the dish. Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Tofu Makhani (Indian Butter Tofu) By Sarah Copeland 40 minutes Makes 4 to 6 servings Wednesday Roasting salmon slowly, at a low temperature, until it's just cooked through, delivers the silkiest version of the fish imaginable. Genevieve Ko's recipe for maple-baked salmon does just that, beneath a glaze of syrup, mustard seeds and minced cilantro stems suspended in just a little bit of mayonnaise. "I followed the simple recipe as written," one subscriber commented, "and I would not change a thing." Christopher Simpson for The New York Times Maple-Baked Salmon By Genevieve Ko 25 minutes Makes 4 servings Thursday In September, it's easy to believe that tomatoes will be perfect forever. Lidey Heuck's new recipe for a caramelized tomato and shallot soup shows what you can do with the less-perfect ones we're seeing in the market now, caramelizing the fruit with tomato paste to deliver a rich, earthy and deeply satisfying flavor. Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Spencer Richards. Caramelized Tomato and Shallot Soup By Lidey Heuck 1 1/4 hours Makes 4 to 6 servings Friday And then you can welcome the weekend with Kay Chun's new recipe for pork chile verde, a classic version of the Mexican stew of tangy tomatillos, green chiles and garlic surrounding tender braised pork. Take care to find sweet onions, like Vidalias, to balance out the tart tomatillos. Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Pork Chile Verde By Kay Chun 2 1/2 hours Makes 4 servings  There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go see what you find, then save the recipes you want to cook. You can write to us at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you've got questions about your account. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me at foodeditor@nytimes.com if you'd like to say hello, complain about something or pay a compliment to my hardworking colleagues. I can't respond to every letter. There's a lot of mail. But I read every one I receive. Now, it's a considerable distance from anything to do with affairs of the kitchen, but I'm moved to ask you to read Willy Staley's piece in The New York Times Magazine about the last 10 years of Netflix, and what it's done to us. Darker still, Lizzie Presser has a shattering story in ProPublica about a deadly intersection between teens and fentanyl in Green Bay, Wis. On the lighter side of the ledger, here's Hanif Abdurraqib in The New Yorker on The Killers returning to Las Vegas. Hot fuss! Finally, it is the musician Paul Simon's birthday. He's 83. Here he is at almost 38, singing "Ace in the Hole" live at the Agora Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, in September 1979. Play that while you're cooking and I'll be back next week. Sign up for the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter Fresh dinner ideas for busy people who want something great to eat, with NYT Cooking recipes sent to you weekly. Get it in your inbox Sign up for The Veggie newsletter Tanya Sichynsky shares the most delicious vegetarian recipes for weeknight cooking, packed lunches and dinner parties. Get it in your inbox 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 Cooking, unsubscribe. 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