Today we have for you:
A quick shrimp dinner for long, stumping Sundays
Good morning. Some weekends are all about feasting: pizzas for the oven; pork shoulders for the pit; a gajillion oysters; corn and tomatoes for miles; an apple buckle for dessert. But not all of them. Sometimes it’s a fast piece of toast and a gulped mug of tea before putting your head into the bilge of a boat for eight hours to diagnose and try to fix an electrical mystery, and then heading home in either triumph or misery to see what to do about dinner. (Right?) Those are the weekends I want something fast, something delicious, something to remind me that a Sunday supper isn’t always about project cooking, but about care and attention. So, for instance, this pili pili shrimp with braised cannellini beans (above), a recipe that Kiano Moju brought us recently. It’s fiery without being excessive about it, sweet from the shrimp, with soft beans and a cool yogurt finish that pairs exceedingly well with rice. There’s cilantro in the recipe, too, but not as a garnish. Instead, Kiano uses a trick she learned from her grandmother, and adds it earlier in the cooking, which mellows its flavor. Featured Recipe Pili Pili Shrimp With Braised Cannellini BeansThat’s my Sunday supper right there, in advance of a few hours of YouTube instruction on the fine art of installing an automatic charging relay. As for the rest of the week. … MondayMelissa Clark’s recipe for cauliflower Parmesan delivers big flavor with relatively little effort, and the results are as good piled into a hero roll as they are served with spaghetti and a Lucali salad. Melissa doesn’t have crushed red pepper flakes in her recipe but I apply them liberally as I layer cheese into the pan.
TuesdayA million years ago, the chef Suvir Saran taught Mark Bittman how to make a fantastic stir-fried chicken with ketchup, a dish loosely based on the Indian dish known as chicken Manchurian (also terrific). It’s a perfect weeknight preparation, fast and flavorful, excellent alongside green beans roasted in a hot oven and rice.
WednesdayHere’s an easy win from Ali Slagle: a one-pot tortellini with prosciutto and peas that comes together in under 30 minutes even if you’re distracted and working slowly. I use bacon in it as often as I do prosciutto — I like the smokiness and don’t always have prosciutto in the refrigerator. (I always have bacon. That’s in the rulebook.)
ThursdayWith leftover rice on hand from earlier in the week (and you should always endeavor to have some in the freezer), Kay Chun’s recipe for beef fried rice comes together quickly. But don’t stint on the velveting before you cook — that’s a traditional Chinese technique that quickly tenderizes the meat with cornstarch and oil, and gives it a lovely texture in the wok. Scatter some cilantro and scallions over the finished dish. I imagine you’ll be making this one a lot.
FridayAnd then you can run out the week with another ace recipe from Melissa, this one for roasted chicken with vinegared grapes, a dish she learned to make 40 years ago while on holiday in England, a teenage Jane Austen fan in thrall to a punk Mr. Darcy.
There are many thousands more recipes to cook this week waiting for you at New York Times Cooking. Go see what you discover there. Then cook and rejoice. Write for help if you find yourself in a jam with our technology or if you’re having an issue with your account. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you. Or you can write to me if you’d like to lodge a complaint or say something nice about my colleagues. I’m at hellosam@nytimes.com. I can’t respond to every letter. But I read each one I get. Now, it’s a far cry from anything to do with cereal or hardtack, but for the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Joe Hagan reported from a cruise ship absolutely crammed with influencers and A-list celebrities. Representative sentences: “The pool fills up. Kate. Dakota. Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Shaun White idles under an umbrella. Lithe bodies glisten in the sun. Leo vapes. A music-business personality wades in and discovers a forgotten vial of liquid LSD in the pocket of his swimsuit.” I think you ought to pre-order David McCloskey’s “The Persian,” out next week. It’s a thriller about the shadow war between Iran and Israel, clever and funny despite its violence. It’s about deceit, and love. Kasia Boddy went deep on Dorothy Parker for The London Review of Books. That’s worth reading, too. Finally, Boston Light opened on this day in 1716, on Little Brewster Island at the mouth of Boston Harbor. Still in service, it is the oldest lighthouse in the United States. Just thought you should know that. I’ll be back next week. 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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