Good morning. We’re a week out from Lunar New Year and I don’t know if noodles really will make for an auspicious year for me, but I’m not taking chances. Today is for rehearsal: Julia Moskin’s adaptation of a recipe for longevity noodles with chicken, ginger and mushrooms (above) that she learned from the cookbook author Grace Young. I want to work out my stir-fry technique so that everything doesn’t clump up in the wok. So, oil-slicked noodles, dry ingredients, everything carefully done. I want only happiness on the table next weekend, plenty of red envelopes and cheer, and the best way to ensure that is to practice today.
Featured Recipe
Longevity Noodles With Chicken, Ginger and Mushrooms
Other possibilities from our collection of recipes devoted to the celebration of Lunar New Year: dumplings, lumpia, rice cake soup. Maybe Peking duck? Make any of those today and you’ll cook next weekend in confidence, which is the very best way to cook.
As for the rest of the week. …
Monday
There’s little more comforting than Eric Kim’s recipe for a quick tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, nursery food for anyone clobbered by the start of the week. It’s a dead simple preparation, and a deeply satisfying meal. You can make the sandwich with whatever bread you’ve got on hand, but I like a soft bread — something in the direction of brioche, milk bread or even supermarket white.
Tuesday
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for mushroom stroganoff is as rich, velvety and packed with flavor as its beefy ancestor. You could serve it over buttered egg noodles if you like, but I’m taking a page from the Manhattan chef Ned Baldwin and calling for a Yorkshire pudding base instead. You’ll see!
Wednesday
I salt my sliced eggplant for Kay Chun’s recipe for eggplant adobo because I like it to crisp up hard in the pan before I combine it with the adobo sauce. I also sometimes add a little bit of cornstarch slurry to give the sauce body. Serve over rice, garnished with loads of basil.
Thursday
It was 10 years ago that the chef Andrew Zimmern took to social media to applaud his then-wife Rishia Zimmern’s excellent one-pot recipe for chicken with shallots. Tens of thousands of people have made it since, and with good reason: It’s bonkers delicious.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with Pete Wells’s adaptation of the recipe for patty melts that Rita Sodi and Jody Williams serve at their Commerce Inn in Manhattan. The secret ingredient: Dijon mayonnaise, which makes the sandwich juicier (the mayonnaise) while simultaneously cutting through its fat (the mustard). If you don’t want the beef, try my recipe for portobello patty melts instead. Oh, man.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with quail or sugar snap peas, but Sofia Vergara is very good in “Griselda,” on Netflix. (Sarah Bahr wrote about Vergara for The Times.)
Here’s a new poem from Ann Lauterbach in The New York Review of Books, “War Zone,” dedicated to Paul Auster.
For Anglers Journal, William Sisson traveled to Hancock, N.Y., to visit with Ray Turner, who for decades has operated an eel weir on the East Branch of the Delaware River, just outside his smokehouse. That all might be over now.
Finally, Lindsay Zoladz, in the indispensable “Playlist” column in The Times, put me on to the country music singer Megan Moroney’s new track, “No Caller ID.” “No coincidence, you always know.” Listen to that while you’re cooking and I’ll be back next week.
