Good morning. On Sunday, I like a project in the kitchen more than on any other day. It’s a chance to work at the stove without the need to get something on the table in 45 minutes, a time to stretch my skill set. Mostly, it’s an opportunity to explore recipes rather than simply following them. On Sundays I don’t want to fly by wire. I want to fly.
Maybe that’s you, too? Vivian Chan’s new recipe for bibimbap (above) suits beautifully. The dish traces its history to the last dynastic kingdom of Korea, the Josean, which lasted 500 years. It’s a showstopper of a meal with loads of components: a flavorful mixture of rice topped with bulgogi, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, spinach, carrots and cucumbers, drizzled with a spicy gochujang sauce. It’s served as an array on a heated pan, then brought together at the table — in Korean, bibim translates as “mix” and bap as “rice” — with kimchi on the side.
Featured Recipe
Bibimbap
Take a few hours to get that together and you’ll not only remember the eating fondly but the work that went into it, too: kitchen craft as soulcraft.
With Sunday sorted, we can turn to the rest of the week. …
Monday
Julia Moskin adapted this recipe for a spiced chickpea salad with tahini and pita chips from one Hetty Lui McKinnon developed years ago. It brings all the flavors of a great falafel sandwich — tahini, mint, paprika, cucumber, cumin and garlic — into a meal that delivers crunch and softness in equal measure. I follow Julia’s lead and serve it over salad greens instead of cooked ones.
Tuesday
Here’s my recipe for lobster bisque, which I learned one million years ago from the executive chef of the Carlyle Hotel in New York. You can make it with shrimp instead. On a weeknight, I generally do — it’s easier, cheaper and takes much less time.
Wednesday
Melissa Clark’s latest is a blue-ribbon winter salad of warm bacon and brussels sprouts with fried eggs. Bacon and brussels are, of course, a famous duet. But the addition of runny fried eggs makes their music even more beautiful.
Thursday
I love Kay Chun’s recipe for meatloaf for many reasons but principally because it recalls a backhanded compliment I once overheard: “You’re basic but you own it.” In a meatloaf, that’s exactly what you’re looking for. Sear leftover slices for a superior luncheon sandwich.
Friday
And then you can head into the weekend secure in the knowledge that you don’t always need a recipe to put a delicious meal on the table. Sometimes all that’s required is someone bossy (that’s me!) to tell you roughly how to make a dish — in this case a speedy fish chowder — and you can figure out the exact right way to make it for yourself. I believe in you!
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Now, it’s a far cry from anything to do with crêpes Suzette or fancy granola, but Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 thriller “The Killing” is playing on Amazon Prime (and plenty other platforms, too) and it’s absolutely worth watching. Kubrick wrote the screenplay with the noir novelist Jim Thompson, and Sterling Hayden plays the lead — a hardened criminal planning one last heist before his marriage. You can imagine how that goes.
There’s an excerpt from Sloane Crosley’s new memoir, “Grief Is for People,” in New York Magazine this week. It’s about a burglary — and what really went missing. And Dean Browne has a new poem in The New York Review of Books, about basil, “Party After The The.” Read them both.
Finally, the bluegrass musician Doc Watson would have turned 101 today (he died in 2012). Here’s his “Shady Grove” for you. I’m bound to go away. See you next week.