Good morning. There’s no better breakfast than the one you make on the Sunday morning of a three-day weekend, at least if you’re not working. There’s nothing elegiac about the meal — it’s neither the first one you’ve cooked after a long week, nor the last one you’re making before getting back on the hamster wheel.
It’s just breakfast on a day sandwiched between days off: bliss. And if you don’t make it too late in the morning, it leaves a whole day to enjoy whatever it is you enjoy when you get the chance: say, a long walk through Griffith Park in Los Angeles, or a session at the skate park in Grant Park in Chicago. (Me, I’m going fishing.)
What to make? I like the idea of Çilbir (above), poached eggs with yogurt and Aleppo pepper, which our Alexa Weibel adapted from a recipe by Özlem Warren, the Turkish cooking teacher. The interplay of the poached eggs with the creamy, garlic-spiked yogurt is a delight, and I’ll mop everything up with a warm flatbread or pita.
As for the rest of the week …
Monday
If you have the day off for Memorial Day, Rick A. Martinez’s Tajín grilled chicken could make for a lovely centerpiece for a cookout. If you’re on the clock: First of all, thank you; second, make yourself Ian Fisher’s perfect spaghetti carbonara after you punch out.
Tuesday
I don’t know why it took me so long to discover the pleasures of store-bought cooked beets for weeknight cooking. Now that I have, though, Yewande Komolafe’s recipe for beet salad with coriander-yogurt dressing has joined the regular rotation.
Wednesday
The Romans are famous for four pasta dishes: amatriciana, cacio e pepe, carbonara and gricia. Anna Francese Gass’s recipe for rigatoni alla zozzona combines the ingredients for all of them in a dish that translates loosely as “big mess.” It makes for a wonderful meal.
Thursday
Hetty McKinnon’s recipe for stir-fried cucumber with tofu is a vegan take on the more traditional Chinese stir-fry of cucumber and pork, with plenty of acid to even out the heat. (The recipe calls for Sichuan chile flakes, for which you can just smash some Sichuan peppercorns beneath a clean pan or with the side of your butcher’s knife.)
Friday
On the cusp of the weekend and desirous of entering into a food coma for the Rays-Red Sox game on Friday night? My adapted-for-adults recipe for the Screaming Eagle cheese-steak sub served in the Boston College cafeteria suits — and how. It’s a nasty-fantastic amalgam of cheese and meat and grease and bread, and one of my favorite sandwiches.
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Now, it’s a far cry from anything to do with making bagels or assembling a celebration cake, but I think you should read Precious Okoyomon’s poem in The New York Times Magazine, “The World Is Breaking in Flowers the Breath of Things.”
I’d forgotten about Joe Francis and his “Girls Gone Wild” spring-break porn empire. Scaachi Koul tracked the guy down in Mexico for HuffPost. What a different time the 2000s were. Yikes.
Here’s Chris Armstrong in The London Review of Books, on the costs of high-seas fishing.
Finally, the writer Martin Amis died last week at 73. Dwight Garner wrote his obituary for The New York Times, and A.O. Scott appraised his career. Read both of those and then go pick up “Money: A Suicide Note” to read when you’re not cooking. I’ll be back on Friday.
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