One of the best perks of being the newsletter editor for New York Times Cooking is the digging I do through our vast recipe archive. I find fan favorites that are new to me (nice to meet you, Pierre Franey’s turkey chili), see familiar friends (always a pleasure, kale sauce pasta) and address my own cooking needs (bircher muesli, you’ve made me a breakfast person).
And I have a lot of “where have you been all my life” moments, most recently with this cauliflower, cashew, pea and coconut curry, a recipe by Meera Sodha adapted by Jennifer Steinhauer. It’s exactly what I want to eat right now: tender, in-season cauliflower and plump, buttery cashews spiced up with garam masala, coriander, cumin and chile. Frozen peas — the undisputed freezer M.V.P. — add pops of sweetness and color. Out of the archive and into my recipe box this curry goes.
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Cauliflower, Cashew, Pea and Coconut Curry
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While you’re searching your spice drawer, check on your paprika for Melissa Clark’s sheet-pan paprika chicken with tomatoes and Parmesan. “The fresher the spices, the more intensely flavorful the dish,” Melissa notes, but the roasted cherry tomatoes and red peppers act as sweetly acidic insurance should your paprika be less than perky.
Circling back to freezer staples, I’m always keeping an eye out for recipes for the white fish fillets crammed into my freezer next to the peas and rice cakes. I’m intrigued by this fish Milanese from Kay Chun, especially for its lemony, capery brown-butter pan sauce. Many reader comments mention using panko in place of the bread crumbs for extra crunch, which is an excellent idea. (The only thing more fun than scrolling through NYT Cooking recipes is scrolling through NYT Cooking recipe comments.)
False spring is false springing where I live, and, as glorious as this sunshine is, I don’t trust it. I’m keeping the winter boots and the soup pot out, using the latter for Yasmin Fahr’s mega-umami miso-mushroom barley soup and Melissa’s sweet potato-tofu stew, a filling vegetarian recipe with the flavors of Japanese nimono.
I’ll wrap things up with this six-ingredient yogurt cake from Claudia Roden and one of its particularly delightful reader comments: “Thank you so so so so so so so so much for this wonderful recipe. I’m a 98-year-old woman, and this just makes my great-grandchildren go crazy. THEY LOVE IT. Thanks again, Betsy Sue.”
