Good morning. We hit Del Fiore in Rocky Point for late-morning sandwiches, Italian subs from the northeastern reaches of Brookhaven on Long Island, then pushed west along the Washington Spy Trail toward Port Jefferson, Setauket, Nissequogue, thinking about cooking all the way.
This is the way of the weekends now, when daylight’s fleeting, when afternoons pass in what seems like moments. Dinner comes up fast. I want to be prepared.
The debate in my head as I drove: mapo ragù (above) or butter chicken. I learned how to make the first by following the chefs David Chang and Tien Ho, who served it at Momofuku Ssäm Bar on Second Avenue in Manhattan a million years ago. It’s a meat-sauce mashup of Chinese, Korean and Italian cuisine, sweet-salty and fiery all at once, with tangles of braised kale and plenty of chewy rice cakes to absorb the flavors and fat — an ideal wintertime feast.
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Mapo Ragù
But that butter chicken’s no slouch on a Saturday night in December. It’s worth considering, too. The recipe is one that Amandeep Sharma, a line cook at the Melbourne restaurant Attica, served as a staff meal: a curry of tomatoes, butter and chicken thighs scented with onions, ginger, garam masala, cumin, turmeric and cinnamon — Delhi on a plate. I eat it alongside a bowl of basmati rice and think about summer there in Ripponlea, with chattering lorikeets flapping around in the garden outside the restaurant, the whole magical vibe of urban Australia.
One of those this weekend then, absolutely; maybe both. But not just those. Great citrus is coming into the markets from Florida and California, and I want to use some of it for David Tanis’s recipe for a Sicilian-style citrus salad, tart and assertive.
It’d be great to take time to put up some marmalade, too, for spreading on buttered toast or mixing into steel-cut oatmeal.
I could see a Sunday morning met with sourdough waffles, rashers of bacon, a plate of creamy scrambled eggs. (No sourdough? No problem: Melissa Clark’s regular waffles are sublime.) Take a nice walk in the cold, then return to the warmth of the kitchen for a luncheon chowder or kimchi grilled cheese, ahead of a viewing of “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” that’ll lead to a nap.
And then the ragù for dinner? Or the butter chicken? You’ll make the right choice, I know.
There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go see what you find. (You can give that chance to a loved one with a gift subscription, this year’s best stocking stuffer.)
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Now, it’s nothing to do with spearmint or pistachios, but my voyage through Brookhaven put me in a historical mood, and now I’m watching a series about American spies on Long Island informing on the British occupiers during the Revolutionary War: “Turn,” from 2014, streaming all over the place.
More spies, more Christmas: “Black Doves” on Netflix, starring Keira Knightley.
There are a lot of bears in Lake Tahoe these days, Paige Williams reports for The New Yorker, and this time of year, they’re hungry. Here’s Williams: “‘Think about the wrappers in your car, the candy in your pocket, in your backpack, in your tent, the stuff behind your garage door — they can smell all of that, even if it’s unopened cans, unopened wine bottles, beer bottles,’ a California State Parks employee said in September, at Tahoe’s inaugural Bear Fest, a public event about how not to be stupid in bear country.”
Finally, here’s Quavo with Luke Bryan and Teddy Swims, “Georgia Ways.” Listen to that while you’re cooking and I’ll see you on Sunday.
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