What to Cook This Week

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/dining/what-to-cook-this-week.html

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Good morning. A new voice joins our chorus this morning on Cooking as the writer, chef and restaurateur Gabrielle Hamilton makes her debut in The Times Magazine as a regular “Eat” columnist. Read her first outing, then join the snack tray revolution. You can start by making her excellent recipe for celery toasts.

That’s lunch today, then, or dinner tonight. If it’s dinner, you might build out the meal with some cured meats and pickled jalapeños, perhaps some carefully cubed Jarlsberg if you’re starting the meal with a martini in honor of Gabrielle (I am). Serve a lot of sliced honeycrisps for dessert. Easy living.

On Monday night, maybe consider making David Tanis’s recipe for buttery moong dal with garlic and cumin, a fine meatless introduction to the week, and serving it alongside some steamed basmati rice and an ice-cold beer.

You can go rustic on Tuesday night. I love Melissa Clark’s recipe for pasta with parsnips and bacon. It is beautifully sweet and salty at once, and absolutely loves a dusting of Parmesan over the top and a few healthy cranks of fresh black pepper.

For Wednesday night, maybe just take it easy, turn out Mark Bittman’s recipe for the simplest roast chicken? To go with it, put some peeled carrots in a cast-iron skillet with a bunch of butter and let them cook over low heat, rolling them around occasionally, until they are pan-roasted soft. Then hit them with a little maple syrup, a lot of black pepper and a sprinkle of kosher salt. That with the chicken and a baguette and butter? That’s an easy night at home right there.

For Thursday, what about making spicy Sichuan noodles? That recipe’s so great. No? How about a Greek salad with goat cheese? Or some Baltimore-style crab cakes? Whatever you cook, make sure you leave enough time to do the prep work and brining that will allow you to make this awesome recipe for smothered pork chops on Friday night, and to serve them with cornbread and collards.

You can find many other recipes to cook this week on Cooking. (Have you checked out this terrific one for lentil and sweet potato stew with chipotles? Spicy!) Just save the ones you like to your recipe box. Rate them when you’re done cooking, and if you’ve discovered a hack or a substitution for anything, leave a note on the recipe for yourself or for the community at large. We rise up together in the kitchen as elsewhere.

And if you run into trouble along the way? Please reach out for help. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com.

Now, have you ever wondered what Nigella Lawson’s most popular recipes are here on Cooking? We have the answer, obvs. Check out Florence Fabricant’s mini-review of the new Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Magazine in The Times, which contains a smart new trick for blind-baking pie crusts. And, because life isn’t just recipes and cooking techniques, read Jacob Weisberg on Facebook and advertising in The New York Review of Books. See you tomorrow.