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What to Cook This Weekend
Good morning. Cooking is craft. Some wizards make an art of it, but for most of us it’s just manual dexterity, an act of preparation, something to practice. It’s tricks: how you dice an onion or roll out a pie crust. Do it long enough and you get good. Sometimes it’s prop comedy. I slide a half-dozen crumpet rings into a big cast-iron pan to make buttery fried eggs in a hot oven, crisp at the edges, jammy within. I break out a Mason jar and make cold-brew coffee overnight. Someone has the sniffles, and I use a pressure cooker to make congee in under an hour. I use an immersion blender a lot. (Wirecutter has opinions on which one is best, but I inherited a brandless one from my mom that does just fine, every time.) It’s great for making chimichurri, for blitzing soups, for spinning up aioli. I love it most, though, for emulsifying sauces — and in particular for bringing together this ace recipe for a tuna cacio e pepe (above), from Carolina Gelen. Featured Recipe Tuna Cacio e PepeCarolina cooks her pasta in rather less water than you would ordinarily, which concentrates its starchiness, and then uses a little less than a cup of it to creamify Pecorino Romano with a blender for her sauce. Canned tuna goes in at the end to provide textural balance, and the result is like a pasta tonnato, a studded silkiness, a taste of ocean and sun. That’s a good weekend dinner, this time of year, and you can watch her make it on Instagram, should you need a little more instruction. Of course, so is this tomato and pomegranate salad, alongside grilled lamb. Grill halved peaches over the dying fire while you eat, and then toss them with hot butter, a splash of bourbon and a whisper of cinnamon for dessert. Serve with coffee ice cream. I’d love to smoke bluefish for pâté this weekend, too, a couple of snappers brought out of the bay while we wait for the false albacore to show. That and some crackers, ahead of a bowl of corn chowder and a fig and almond cake? Labor Day may have come early this year. But we’re going to hold on to summer for at least a few weeks more. There are thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you at New York Times Cooking. (You need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions make this whole dance possible. If you haven’t taken one out yet, would you please think about subscribing today? Thanks.) You should reach out for help if you find yourself jammed up by our technology or in a bind with your account. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com and someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me if you’d like to send us an apple or a worm: hellosam@nytimes.com. I can’t respond to every letter on account of: There’s a lot of mail. But I read each one I get. Now, it’s not really anything to do with how to spatchcock a chicken or to pinch a dumpling tight, but Elizabeth O’Connor’s novel “Whale Fall” is worth seeking out. Maggie Shipstead had it right in The New York Times Book Review: It’s blunt and exquisite. I didn’t binge “The Better Sister” on Amazon Prime so much as work through it slowly, in the manner of someone who buys a six-pack of Coke and resolves to drink one only every couple of weeks. (On the other hand, I raced through Elliot Ackerman’s novel “Sheepdogs” in about a day and a half.) Finally, it’s the birthday of Loudon Wainwright III. He’s 79. Here he is singing live on Irish television in 1992, “Men.” Cook while you’re listening, and I’ll see you on Sunday. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started.
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