What to Cook This Week

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/dining/what-to-cook-this-week-newsletter.html

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Good morning. It is the Sunday of the Passion for some: Palm Sunday, commemoration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem aboard a donkey, a steed of peace. It was four days before his arrest, five before his crucifixion. They say he ate figs on the journey. You could do the same.

I like pizza with caramelized onions, fig jam, bacon and blue cheese, myself. You might prefer Melissa Clark’s lamb and fig kebabs with honey and rosemary. (Dried figs soaked in wine are a nice replacement for the fresh ones Melissa calls for.) Or, hey: You could just eat dried figs straight out of the bag, plan for next week’s Easter and Passover feasting if you’re celebrating one or the other (or both or neither), watch March Madness on television, make three-cup chicken (above) for dinner, call this week done. There are no rules to this game.

But if you have some extra time, you might make a birthday cake. We have a new video recipe for the sweet, and you can use it for practice against the future, or in celebration of those who have this natal day: Bela Bartok, for one; the historian A.J.P. Taylor; Aretha Franklin; the chef Daniel Boulud. (Here’s DB’s recipe for chicken tagine.)

Monday night, how about stir-fried peppers with eggplant and tofu? Even that grunt C.J. Chivers is embracing soybean protein once in a while. This dish is a good place to start.

Then breakfast for dinner on Tuesday night: Cook eggs somehow, serve them over greens or on top of fried rice. (These soy-pickled eggs are insane for dinner.) That won’t take long, so read Dorie Greenspan’s great “Eat” column afterward, in The Times, and then cook her new recipe for whole-lemon tart when you’re done. Take that to work in the morning, and record a win.

I like this Melissa Clark recipe for a Wednesday evening quick-meal, before a dog walk and a collapse into bed: sesame chicken with cashews and dates.

Pierre Franey’s recipe for skirt steak with lentil salad is on the docket for Thursday night though we probably won’t make it with skirt steak because in our market skirt steak hovers in the neighborhood of $24 a pound. Hanger steak’s half that. It’s delicious.

And then you can head out of Good Friday with a pasta frittata that everyone will like much better if you call it spaghetti pie. Bake hot-cross buns for dessert if you’re Anglo-Canadian, or British, or reading this down in Melbourne, paging through your phone at the bar at Lune, where it’s Monday already and the week on its way.

Many thousands of other recipes await your review at NYT Cooking. (Have you tried this sick pan-roasted salmon with jalapeño yet? That could be dinner tonight, in place of the chicken.) Of course, you will need to sign up for a subscription to access them. I hope you’ll do so. I hope you’ll do so and tell your friends to do so, too. It’s a cool and interesting world we’re building here. Spread the word!

Meanwhile, we’ll stand by to help if anything goes wrong. Just reach out if you find yourself in a jam. We’ll try to make things better. Write cookingcare@nytimes.com, and we’ll get back to you. Check us out on Instagram while you wait.

Now, have you read Jason Farago in The New York Review of Books, wrestling with Jasper Johns and his flags? Take a look at that.

I’m late to it, but I liked Mark Seliger’s portrait work on Oscar night, for Vanity Fair.

Also, for different reasons, this new Abrams photo collection with a forward by Roxane Gay and an introduction by my colleague Vanessa Friedman, “Dress Like a Woman.”

Finally, take a step back in time to read Tom Hennessey’s account of a 1980 duck hunt in the Penobscot River, in Gray’s Sporting Journal. It’s like a grown-up “Blueberries for Sal.” I’ll be back tomorrow.