Good morning. I’ve been cooking out of the Italian American larder of late, with lots of sweet and hot pickled cherry peppers. There’s this ace recipe for pork chops in cherry pepper sauce (above) I picked up from the chef Mario Carbone, which I enjoy with a bowl of pasta. I love the peppers in Utica greens, too, and as a topping for a great fried eggplant sandwich. They’re terrific, as well, in this recipe for the chicken scarpariello, shoemaker’s chicken, that The New York Times Cooking team adapted from the one used at Rao’s in New York.
But today, I’m using them in a no-recipe recipe for a sausage Parm sandwich, to cook in the oven and devour in front of a screen. (Maybe watch “The Peripheral” on Amazon Prime?) A no-recipe recipe? It’s a prompt to cook rather than strict instructions for how to do so, a chance for you to stretch your skills, to make a dish your very own.
So: Italian sausages, puréed tomatoes, cherry peppers both sweet and hot, mozzarella, garlic, butter, hero rolls, basil. Roast the sausages in a small baking pan set in a hot oven with just a little bit of oil, so that they pick up a bunch of color and begin to crisp. Tear open and seed the cherry peppers and mix them with just enough tomato sauce to cloak the sausage, then add that sauce to the pan with the meat. Let it bubble and thicken for a while, then top with the cheese and allow it to melt and meld. Meanwhile, make some garlic butter, slather it into the heroes, toast them in the oven and fill with the Parm. Top with torn basil leaves and serve with red pepper flakes.
That is a fine Sunday supper. As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
Vallery Lomas has a lovely recipe for grits and greens that’s perfect for a weeknight, even if you don’t follow her lead and make it with quick grits. If you use stone-ground, you can still get the meal on the table in the time it takes to listen to Kai Ryssdal on “Marketplace.”
Tuesday
It’s taco night with Yewande Komolafe, who makes shrimp tacos with a seasoning of cumin, cayenne, onion powder, garlic and black pepper, seared in a hot pan and tucked into warm corn tortillas with crema, pico de gallo, quick pickled cabbage and cilantro.
Wednesday
I think you ought to give Christian Reynoso’s latest recipe a try: a winter squash and rice soup with pancetta that’s a cold-weather version of a similar springtime soup served at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with one of my favorite recipes from Ali Slagle: spicy sesame noodles with chicken and peanuts. Nota bene: There are some interesting hacks of the recipe in the notes section. (Straight talk: I use ground pork in place of the ground chicken Ali calls for.)
There are thousands and thousands more recipes to consider cooking this week on New York Times Cooking. You do, yes, need a subscription to read them. Subscriptions are the fuel in our stoves. So I hope, if you haven’t already, that you will subscribe today. (Thanks if you already have.)
In other administrative matters, we’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you run into trouble with our technology. And I’m at foodeditor@nytimes.com, if you want to say hello or offer a complaint. I cannot respond to every letter. But I read every one.
Now, it’s a story that lies some considerable distance away from anything to do with mung beans or clotted cream, but you should read Xan Rice’s profile, in The Guardian, of Gary Hunt, “the Lionel Messi of cliff diving.”
Consider the lighthouse. Rosemary Hill certainly has, for The London Review of Books, and her essay is worth reading.
Some good news from Maine as the former Bar Harbor Golf Course goes into stewardship, preserving a mile of undeveloped shoreline near the gateway to Mount Desert Island.
Finally, Feist’s back. Here’s her “Hiding Out In the Open,” from the forthcoming “Multitudes.” Listen to that while you’re cooking. And I’ll return at the end of the week.
