Good morning. We’re per week into the struggle in Ukraine, and my inbox is stuffed with requests for recipes for borscht. The letters are a reminder that cooking is a cultural act: a approach to really feel linked, to assist, to acknowledge the world and maybe to know it higher.
That it’s a solace, too, is a bonus. Cooking is usually a approach to really feel higher, even in fearful, troublesome instances. So for readers reaching out, there’s white borscht (above), maybe, or vegetarian borscht or winter borscht loaded with the plump mushroom- and onion-filled dumplings often known as vushka, or “little ears.”
Removed from the news, however no much less comforting to those that devour it, I’m intrigued by this recipe for a slow-cooker mushroom and wild rice soup (and for this pressure-cooker version of the identical recipe), stuffed with neat little tips for reaching creaminess with out overcooking the rice.
Additionally by this terrific recipe for crispy frico chicken breasts with mushrooms and thyme. Pink wine vinegar goes into the pan on the finish to steadiness the richness of the mushrooms and cheese, however one subscriber reported utilizing Dijon mustard as a substitute: “That served as simply sufficient of an emulsifier that the pan drippings coalesced into a really luxurious sauce.” Good.
You possibly can make a speedy fish chowder this week, and have sufficient time after dinner to bake breakfast bars with oats and coconut for the morning. You possibly can make rigatoni al forno with cauliflower and broccoli rabe. You possibly can make cauliflower Parmesan and cargo it into hero bread for dinnertime sandwiches.
Or you possibly can keep away from utilizing a recipe totally and make steak au poivre. You don’t want strict directions for that. Cook dinner it on the fly!
Right here’s how: Get a couple of thick strip steaks, some complete black peppercorns, garlic, recent thyme, a shallot, some unsalted butter, a splash of cognac or brandy and a glass of heavy cream. Cook dinner the steaks in a pan as Julia Moskin advises, and set them apart to relaxation whilst you make your no-recipe sauce. Merely return to your pan and add to it some sliced garlic, chopped shallots, the crushed peppercorns and some knobs of butter. Cook dinner over medium-low warmth for a couple of minutes till the garlic and shallots are comfortable, then fastidiously flame the entire affair with a beneficiant splash of cognac or brandy. When the alcohol’s evaporated, add the cream and simmer over low warmth till the sauce cloaks the again of a spoon.
Slice the steaks in opposition to the grain, place them on a heat platter and tip any steak juices out of your slicing board into the sauce. Spoon it generously over the meat, and serve with watercress and oven fries.
There are 1000’s and 1000’s of precise recipes to prepare dinner proper now ready for you on New York Times Cooking. As I point out often, you want a subscription to entry them. Subscriptions assist our work. I hope, should you haven’t achieved so already, that you’ll subscribe today. Thanks.
And do write for help, ought to something go awry whilst you’re cooking or utilizing the location and app. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Somebody will get again to you. Or should you’d wish to ship me a gripe or a mash notice, I’m at foodeditor@nytimes.com. I learn each letter despatched.
Now, it’s nothing to do with mincemeat or Muscadet grapes, however I don’t assume you’ll be upset by Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller and actually the entire forged of “Somebody Somewhere,” on HBO Max.
I loved the New York and the language of Walter Mosley’s 2010 thriller novel, “Known to Evil,” the second of his Leonid McGill sequence. (If you wish to begin on the prime, the primary was “The Long Fall,” from 2009.)
You oughta learn Helen Rosner’s interview with J. Kenji López-Alt, in The New Yorker.
Lastly, right here’s “Kingdom,” a poem from Joyelle McSweeney, chosen by Victoria Chang for The New York Instances Journal. Contemplate that, and I’ll return on Friday.
