Good morning. How are you doing? This week marks four years since many of us went into lockdown after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic. Amid the fear and illness there would turn out to be, for some, scant pleasures: fragrant, crusty sourdough boules, long walks on quiet streets, seeking beauty amid the darkness. But for many there was simply dread, dread unending, and only pantry meals to mark the passage of time.
It would be understandable, this time of the year, if memories of those ugly early days swarmed back. Take time this weekend to take stock of what you gained.
For some, the rewards paid out in the kitchen, where new skills were mastered over the months and years and new flavors brought to bear. These past four years, some of us really and truly learned to cook. That knowledge brought newfound confidence at the cutting board and at the stove.
Take this fantastic recipe for oven-braised Guinness beef stew with horseradish cream (above). Five years ago you might have made it on Sunday for St. Patrick’s Day, following the instructions to the letter. Now, perhaps, you know that it will be all the better if you make it on Saturday and serve it on Sunday, so the flavors have time to deepen in the fridge, with plenty of celery root and no rutabaga, with carrots and parsnips, with lemon juice to make it pop. (There are many more options for a St. Patrick’s Day meal in this collection of recipes.)
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Oven-Braised Guinness Beef Stew With Horseradish Cream
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And maybe a chocolate Guinness cake for dessert? Or at least a cream cheese pound cake?
Of course, I could go in other directions entirely this weekend, toward a big vat of red beans and rice, for instance, or to a platter of Nashville-style hot tofu sliders. It’s early yet for asparagus, but good-looking spears are starting to show up at a few markets near where I stay, so maybe I’ll put together some fettuccine with asparagus for dinner on Sunday night.
Not that you need a recipe to cook well. You might cook off my prompt instead, what we call in this shop a no-recipe recipe. You’re up to doing that now. Chicken tenders, say, for a table full of children who’ve spent the day outside, and for the adults who cheer them? I like the little cutlets on top of or next to a kitchen-sink kale salad.
Ingredients: boneless, skinless chicken thighs, neutral oil, eggs, seasonings, panko or regular bread crumbs. Heat your oven to 425 degrees. Cut the thighs into tenders, or at any rate pieces that are smaller than thighs but bigger than bite-size. Put those into a bowl, season aggressively with salt, pepper and whatever else you’d like (garlic powder, say, or paprika), and then add oil to make them glisten and a whole bunch of beaten eggs to make them glisten even more. No eggs? Use some mustard. Or mayonnaise! We’re freestyling here.
Dump the bread crumbs into another bowl and then, working a few pieces at a time, toss the pieces of chicken around to coat thoroughly. Arrange the tenders on an oil-slicked baking sheet, and then slide them into the oven for around 20 minutes, turning them over halfway through. You want ranch with that?
There are thousands and thousands of actual recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. (Lamb biryani, for instance, to break a Ramadan fast?) You do, yes, need a subscription to read them. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven’t done so already, would you please consider subscribing today? Thanks.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with lettuce or groats, but I sure hope you didn’t miss Lindsay Zoladz’s profile of the artist and musician Kim Gordon in The New York Times. (Read Blackbird Spyplane’s interview with Gordon when you’re done.)
New poetry from Catherine Barnett in The New York Review of Books: “Morning of Departure.”
New fiction from Joseph O’Neill in The New Yorker: “The Time Being.”
Finally, here’s Gordon again, with “Shelf Warmer,” off “The Collective,” the new album that occasioned Lindsay, Spyplane and others to reach out to her to talk. Listen loud and I’ll see you on Sunday.
