Good morning. I’ve been away from the desk, out in Utah messing around in the snow with friends, and not cooking with recipes at all. Well. Thanks to my editor, Krysten Chambrot, I was able to memorize Michael Solomonov’s game-changer recipe for five-minute hummus a while back, so when it wasn’t morning yogurt parfaits or free-form French toast made out of a beautiful panettone from Sant Ambroeus, I was able to deploy the tehina to devastating effect.
There’s a lot to be done with a hummus as good as Solomonov’s. You can use it as a bed for seared ground beef fragrant with za’atar, with pine nuts as garnish. You can top it with fava beans, for a kind of foul. Me, I cooked today’s no-recipe recipe: a freestyle sabich, the Israeli pita sandwich common in Tel Aviv.
So: warmed pitas spread thickly with the hummus, along with slices of eggplant I fried off in a big pan, eggs I cooked for 5 and a half minutes and would again closer to sea level (up high in the mountains, I think they would have preferred 6 minutes) and a chopped salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and Peppadew peppers over the top, everything adorned with hot sauce and some yogurt I thinned out with lemon juice and good olive oil. It was great. I’m going to make food like that all year.
Back in New York, to anchor the Food section of The Times we sent out to all our subscribers and newsstand customers today, we asked Alison Roman to tell us how she thinks we ought to cook to in 2019. Her message: Spend less time in the kitchen, and more at the table.
Her recipes allow it, with pleasure! Here’s her new take on a slow-roasted salt-and-pepper salmon with just-set eggs and salty salmon roe (above). Also, spicy, simply dressed cold noodles with citrusy cabbage and a garlicky tahini. And a remarkable, six-ingredient chicken to serve over buttered toast and crunchy lettuces that will keep you occupied and happy until the candles start guttering and the wine’s all gone.
Please make one or all of those recipes this week and next. Take the ones you like and commit to them: Mess with them a little, make them again and again without slavish attention to this step or that one, and cook them so as to make the recipes your own. That’s a worthy resolution for the months to come, I think.
There are many thousands more ideas for what to cook on NYT Cooking. (You will need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions to NYT Cooking are going to be all the rage in 2019.) You can also see what we’re up to on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And regardless of your status in our accounts receivable department, you can reach us at [email protected] if you run into trouble with a recipe or our technology. We will get you sorted fast as we can.
Now, it doesn’t have anything to do with focaccia or wild-shot duck, but you should read Elizabeth Wurtzel’s latest piece of memoir, for New York magazine, about discovering that her father is not her father.
If you’re looking for mystery to while away these quiet days after the long run of holidays, maybe look at “The Dry,” by Jane Harper. It’s from 2017 but new to me.
Finally, Roxane Gay turned me on to a lot of good fiction I missed in 2018, with her edited collection “Best American Short Stories 2018.” Here’s a taste that’ll maybe lead you into the whole collection: Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s “Control Negro,” in Guernica. See you on Friday.
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