Good morning. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah, as it comes to a close. I hope we’re a nation in pajamas this morning, padding around and eating biscuits or cake. (I know we’re not entirely: Thank you to all those working shifts today.) What shall we cook this week?
I know today, for myself, is for prime rib roast (above) and Yorkshire pudding, with a sauté of peas and sliced cabbage and a tureen of rich gravy. I lost last Christmas to a family sick with Covid and ate General Tso’s chicken with pork fried rice alone in isolation, a meal that can be stunning in its excellence but was not that day for me. I want a proper family feast this year with enough leftovers to make prime rib hash for tomorrow’s breakfast, the Keens Steakhouse original with a fried egg on top.
So that’s today. As for the rest of the week …
Monday
How about Korsha Wilson’s adaptation of the chef Rahanna Bisseret Martinez’s recipe for creamy grits with mushrooms and chard? I love the jalapeño sauce that coats the mushrooms, but if that’s a bridge too far on a weeknight, you could just sauté them in butter.
Tuesday
My recipe for sautéed scallops is dead simple. But since I make the bivalves mostly as a canvas for hollandaise sauce, feel free to swap them out for steamed salmon or sautéed shrimp.
Wednesday
J. Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for San Francisco-style Vietnamese American garlic noodles was New York Times Cooking’s most popular recipe in 2022, and no wonder: It’s easy to make and fantastically delicious. One subscriber pointed out that in his family, they use Maggi in place of the fish sauce. Recipes evolve. They are living things!
Thursday
I really like Kay Chun’s new recipe for a one-pot braised pork ragù, which is a cool way to reduce a pork shoulder into a comforting meal. The meat is cooked in a tomato sauce with a lot of carrots, which melt into sweetness. I’d serve that with spaghetti tossed with butter, myself.
Friday
And then you can round out the week with Gabrielle Hamilton’s lovely sous-chef salad. You benefit mightily from following Gabrielle’s firm and fair advice: “Try to nestle and fluff the ingredients to allow them all to be seen, rather than piling layer atop layer and thus obscuring the beauty of everything below. This makes the salad very attractive and, most important, ensures that everyone gets some of everything in each bite.” That’ll get you ready for New Year’s Eve.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with squabs or periwinkles, but if you haven’t yet read this collaboration in The New York Times between our critic Jason Farago and our visual investigations team, you really ought to today. It offers the most definitive picture yet of the scale of cultural destruction that Russia’s war has brought to Ukraine.
Also in The Times, Dwight Garner took up the business of food writing in the work of the novelist Cormac McCarthy, and it’s delicious — as Dwight wrote, “an old master making mischief.”
Here’s Sasha Frere-Jones in Harper’s Magazine, on audiophilia and its discontents. That’d be a good article to listen to!
Finally, it’s not just Jesus who gets celebrated on Dec. 25. The singer and bandleader Cab Calloway was born on this day in 1907. (He died in 1994, and the news made the front page of The Times.) Here he is with his orchestra in 1937, playing “Every Day’s a Holiday.” Enjoy yours, and I’ll see you next week.
