Good morning. How’s your sourdough starter? Maybe you spun one up during the pandemic, used it obsessively for a while and then sporadically and then not at all. It sits forlorn and slightly scary in a tub in the back of the fridge.
That’s fine! You can bring it back. Yeast wants to live. Get it into the warmth of your kitchen, feed it some flour and water, and watch as it blooms back into funky, bubbly excellence, ready for bread, for pizza dough, for English muffins.
Don’t wait for that, though! Spoon off a cup of the stuff today and combine it with a cup of buttermilk, a cup of flour and a healthy sprinkle of brown sugar. Let that sponge sit overnight and you’ve got the perfect base for a breakfast of sourdough pancakes or waffles (above), the perfect start to a midwinter workweek.
Featured Recipe
Sourdough Pancake or Waffle Batter
As for dinner tonight, I’m thinking you should make Roy Choi’s braised short-rib stew. Galbijjim, Choi told me once, is the dish Korean kids believe their mothers make best. My version is his version of his mom’s version. Make it your own, and serve it to the family, with rice and kimchi.
With Sunday sorted we can turn to the rest of the week. …
Monday
Melissa Clark’s recipe for buttery lemon pasta with almonds and arugula is a great mood enhancer this time of year, sunshine on a plate. Some readers don’t cook the arugula, but place it raw in the bottom of the pasta bowl before topping with the cooked, sauced linguine and tossing to combine. Good note!
Tuesday
I like how closely Vivian Chan-Tam’s recipe for moo goo gai pan hews to the flavors of the Chinese American classic, down to the use of skinless chicken breasts for the protein. But I love that she adds sugar snap peas to the mix for texture, and suggests using shiitake mushrooms in place of the traditional buttons (so I don’t think she’d crow if I used thighs in place of the breasts).
Wednesday
There’s something amazingly vibrant about Lisa Donovan’s recipe for pozole verde, essentially a salsa verde made in soup form, with hominy for heft. Vegetarians will make it with corn broth or a stock made with charred, roasted vegetables. I might, too, but it’s plenty delicious with chicken stock if that’s your preference. Serve with thinly sliced red onions and jalapeños, fresh cilantro, diced avocado, sour cream and plenty of cut limes.
Thursday
If you can lay your hands on some sushi-grade tuna or salmon, perhaps its highest use is in Naz Deravian’s recipe for a poke bowl, replete with sushi rice, cut vegetables, spicy mayonnaise and a scattering of furikake or sesame seeds. If you don’t like fish, though, substitute cubed firm tofu or roasted beets.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend with Molly O’Neill’s fantastic rib-sticker of a recipe for old-fashioned beef stew, which has been delighting readers of The Times since 1994. “Stew is a homey, intimate exchange,” she wrote back then, “a paean to the way living things improve when their boundaries relax, when they incorporate some of the character and flavor of others.” Get on that!
If you’re looking for more or different, click on over to New York Times Cooking and make your own list. You’ll need a subscription to do so, naturally. Subscriptions make this whole operation possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you please consider subscribing today? Thank you.
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Now, it’s a far cry from anything to do with andouille or allspice, but Eddie Redmayne is very good in “The Day of the Jackal,” on Peacock.
Emily Eakin has a smart essay in The New York Times Book Review about how the plagiarism plot is having a moment. “Stories, by their very nature, want to be free,” she wrote, “free to circulate through us and among us, undergoing revision and transformation in an endlessly generative and unstoppable process.”
A travel suggestion: If you find yourself in southwest Florida at any point in the next few months, put it upon yourself to get to City Seafood in Everglades City for stone crab claws that you can eat on the restaurant’s dock above the Barron River. You’re welcome.
Finally, it’s Raekwon’s birthday. He’s 55. Here’s his “Heaven and Hell,” from 1994. I’ll be back next week.
